New-York tribune., 1921-06-04
Books u.,,.aa BY D,..,

Bernard Shaw's new play and preface
Back to Methuselah" (Brentano) is an
earnest confession of religious faith
Mr.. Shaw has come down the sawdust
trail to kneel beside H. G. Wells in
worshipping a great dim God who exists
somehow, Somewhere. To be sure, the
smell of sawdust has an effect upon
Shaw which makes his progress to the
mourners' bench somewhat different
from that Of the ordinary convert.
Even under the impulse of deep and
abiding faith he cannot refrain from
stopping now and then to do a few
handsprings. One of the most anus
ing pauses in his journey is devoted to
telling the story of the manner in
which he scored against the deity of
Mat dy and Sankey.
"One evening in 1878 or thereabouts,"
writes Shaw, 81, being then in my
earliest twenties, was at a bachelor
party Of young men of the professional
class in the house of a doctor in the
Kensingtonian quarter of London. They
fell to talking about religious revivals;
and an anecdote was related of q man
who, having incautiously scoffed at the
mission of Messrs. Moody and Sankey,
a then famous firm of American evan
gelists, was subsequently carried home
on shutter, slain by divine vengeance
as blasphemer. A timid minority,
With - -
truth of the incident-for they natu-
rally did not care to run the risk of
going home on shutters themselves
nevertheless showed a certAjn disposi-
tion to cavil at those who exulted in
it, and something approaching to an ar
gument began. At last it was alleged by
the most evangelical of the disputants
that Charles Bradlaugh, the most for
midable atheist on the Secularist plat
form, had taken out his watch publicly
and challenged the Almighty to strike
him dead in five minutes if He really
existed and disapproved of atheism
The leader of the cavilers, with great
heat, repudiated this as gross calum-
N.Y. utCldltHR IudI DIdOIduSn ndQ re-
peatedly and Indignantly contradicted it
and implying that the atheist champion
was far too pious a man to commit such
blasphemy. This exquisite confusion
of ideas reused my sense of comedy 1t
was clear to me that the challenge at
tributed to Charles Bradlaugh was a
scientific experiment of a quite simple,
straightforward anC proper kind to
ascertain whether the expression of
athelstic opinions really did involve
any personal risk. 1t was certainly
the method taught in the Bible, Elijah
having confuted the prophets of Baal
in precisely that way, with every cir
cumstance of bitter mockery of their
god when he failed to send down fire
from heaven. Accordingly l said that
if the question at issue were whether
the penalty of questioning the theology
of Messrs. Moody and Sankey was to
be struck dead on the spot by an in
censed deity nothing could effect a
more convincing settlement of it than
the very obvious experiment attributed
to Mr. Bradlaugh, and that consequently
if he had not tried it he ought to have
tried it. The omission, added, was
one which could easily be remedied there
and then, as [ happened to share Mr..
Bradlaughs views as the absurdity of
the belief in these violent interferences
with the order of nature by a short
tempered and thin-skinned supernatu-
raj deity. Therefore-and at that point
| took out my watch.
"The effect was electrical. Neither
skeptics non devotees were prepared to
abide the result of the experiment In
vain did urge the pious to trust in the
accuracy of their deitys aim with a
thnderbolt and the justice of His dis