Theosophy in Wales

Theosophy in Cardiff

Cardiff Theosophical Society,

206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales, UK CF24 – 1DL.

Theosophy and the Great War

A Bishop and Animals

Annie Besant

First Published February 15^th 1915

OUR readers will remember the beautiful Russian prayer for the animals taken into war, showing the sense of human responsibility for the sufferings inflicted on them by man. But the Bishop of Oxford is more in sympathy with the contemptuous Pauline comment on the tender Hebrew precept: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn"; St Paul asks: "Doth God take care for oxen?" One might answer that He certainly should, since, according to the Christian teaching, He created them. The Bishop says that it has never "been the custom of the Church to pray for any other beings than those whom we think of as rational". Then why does his Prayer Book call on all living things to praise God? "Ye whales, and all that move in the waters, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever", and so on through a catalogue of animals. May they praise God, and yet not be prayed for to God? That seems a little one-sided. The Pall Mall Gazette, after some not quite nice comments, says finally:

"And yet most people, we fancy, will be on the side of the quadrupeds in this matter. The horses and dogs being used in the war are as brave, faithful, and devoted as any soldiers, and no Christian need feel ashamed of asking the Father of All to have them in his keeping. And it smacks of spiritual 'snobbery' to assume that the providence of the Creator has its limits drawn immediately beneath our own species."

It is the Bishop's view which has led to the excuse in Italy for cruelty to animals: "Non e cristiano" - "It is not a Christian". And this is the root of the cruelties inflicted on animals throughout Christendom, and of the cruelties now in Eastern countries, where Christianity has spread, contrasting sharply with the older indigenous feeling embodied in hospitals for sick and shelters for worn-out animals. - New India, February 5, 1915.