THE SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK

I have been informed that suffering is sent as a purification for sin, but I find it difficult to think that a child of four or five can be sunk in such black depths of iniquity as to deserve the punishment that befalls not a few of the children whom our optimistic divines might see any day, if they choose, suffering torments in children’s hospitals. Again, I am told that though the child himself may not have sinned very deeply, he deserves to suffer on account of his parents’ wickedness. I can only repeat that if this is the divine sense of justice it differs from mine, and that I think mine superior.