Editorial August 22, 1908 Issue

THE SPIDER'S WEB

John B. Willis

Sitting in the quiet of the evening hour, attention was divided between the glories of the sunset sky and the delicate wonders of a spider's web which chanced to interlace the point of view. The splendors of the west were not more astonishing, more conducive to inquiring thought, than were the design and delicate perfection of the enginery with which the little weaver was so patiently and so effectively plotting the capture of the unwary winglets that thronged the air. With an art so amazingly clever as to put to shame the handiwork of men, this little cannibal was laying his plans for a feast upon the first neighbor that he could entrap, and ere the sun's soft rays had forsaken the west he had attained his end, played his part in the continuous and universal tragedy of animal life. The more the observer thought of the pitiful facts of this reign of fear, of all the cruelty involved in that struggle for existence among both beasts and men, in which the life of one creature is believed to find its fulfilment in depriving perchance a thousand others of their right, of opportunity or of life, the more shockingly unideal and undivine it all appeared.

Whether one wander these sunny days through woodland and valley, where thought is continually attracted to the teeming denizens of the animal world, or whether he find delight in the descriptions of nature, so exquisitely portrayed by a Wordsworth or a Scott, he cannot have followed any path but a little way before meeting with some evidence of the compass and continuance of that murderous cruelty which leaves its bloody record upon every page of nature. Like the spider's web, much of evil seems absorbingly interesting until its full meaning is apprehended.

To the Christian Scientist the gruesome events that lead us to turn shudderingly from so much of earthly experience, point to the identification of the sense of life in matter and its outcome with that devil (evil) which Christ Jesus advisedly declared to be the father of lies, and "a murderer from the beginning." He perceives that what has been named a law of nature, with its perpetual rule of selfishness and suffering, is the very antipode of that law of the Spirit of life which Christ Jesus honored, and which, as he declared, after it shall have annulled the law of carnality among men and beasts, after it shall have brought into subjection all principalities and powers, will establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. Surely when the Master prayed, "Thy kingdom come," he expressed a faith and expectation which embraced an order and condition of life for every creature, in which fear and fighting should have no place; the reign of peace of which the prophet says, "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. ... They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

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