DEGENERACY
Before Lord Shaftesbury began his work among the poor of England, he tells us that he witnessed this occurrence:
I must have been fourteen years old, or a little more, and I was walking down from the churchyard, just as we are to-day, when I was startled by hearing a sudden yell, a drunken voice singing, and a noisy sound of laughter coming up from the main road below; then they turned the corner, and I saw four men staggering along under a coffin, and jesting with song and horrible laughter as they drew near me. I looked at the coffin. I could see the rough boards were hastily nailed together; great cracks half revealed what was inside. Just as they passed me one of the men slipt, and the coffin fell from their shoulders and rolled over into the road. It was horrifying to me; and then they began to swear at one another, using foul language. I thought they would have fought over the poor dead creature’s corpse. I came away feeling that if God preserved my life I would do something to help the poor and him that had no friend.
(719)
Perhaps too much attention is being paid to various theories concerning evolution and development. It might be well sometimes to devote at least a little consideration to the serious possibilities of devolution and degeneracy.
Dr. Carpenter, a London zoologist, speaks thus of certain organisms brought to light by the scientific Atlantic dredging expedition: “This little organism is clearly a dwarfed and deformed representative of the highly developed Apiocrinus of the Bradford clay, which, as my friend Wyville Thomson said, seems to have been going to the bad for millions of years.” Thus we learn that a lowly creature living on the ocean floor is the degenerate result of that which has been going to the bad for millions of years.
But if such a vast course of degradation is possible in a sea-worm, what are the possibilities of degradation in a soul?
(720)