Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

GRADUAL DECAY OF THEOLOGICAL VIEWS.
disease than diminished it ; moreover, he accepted that wild
dream of a hysterical nun the worship of the material,
physical sacred heart of Jesus and was one of the first to
consecrate his diocese to it ; but, on the other hand, the re-
ligious spirit gave in him one of its most beautiful manifesta-
tions in that or any other century ; justly have the people of
Marseilles placed his statue in the midst of their city in an
attitude of prayer and blessing.
In every part of Europe and America, down to a recent
period, we find pestilences resulting from carelessness or
superstition still called " inscrutable providences." As late
as the end of the eighteenth century, when great epidemics
made fearful havoc in Austria, the main means against them
seem to have been grovelling before the image of St. Sebastian
and calling in special " witch-doctors "
that is, monks
who cast out devils. To seek the aid of physicians was, in
the neighbourhood of these monastic centres, very generally
considered impious, and the enormous death rate in such
neighbourhoods was only diminished in the present century,
when scientific hygiene began to make its way.
The old view of pestilence had also its full course in Cal-
vinistic Scotland the ; only difference
Roman Catholic countries relief was
being that, while in
sought by fetiches,
gifts, processions, exorcisms, burnings of witches, and other
works of ; expiation, promoted by priests in Scotland, after
the Reformation, it was sought in fast-days
of witches promoted by Protestant elders. Accounts of the
filthiness of Scotch cities and villages, down to a period well
87
and executions
within this century, seem monstrous. All that in these
days is swept into the sewers was in those allowed to remain
around the houses or thrown into the streets. The old the-
ological theory, that " vain is the help of man," checked scientific
thought and paralyzed sanitary endeavour. The result
was natural : between the thirteenth and seventeenth
centuries thirty notable epidemics swept the country, and
some of them carried off multitudes; but as a rule these
! never suggested sanitary improvement; they were called
"visitations," attributed to Divine wrath against human sin,
and the work of the authorities was to announce the particular
sin concerned and to declaim against it. Amazing the-