Literature
Short Extracts
From In Pity and In Anger: A Study Of The Use Of Animals In Science by John Vyvyan, 2nd edition, (Michah Publications, 1988), p151-152
The last journey of her* life was not a happy experience, but it was
an informative one. Here, at the centre of institutional Christendom,
she found that the Church had lost the supreme vision of the Christian
faith - the deliverance of all creation, and not of man only, 'into the
glorious liberty of the children of God'; and that in place of this
pristine splendour all that it could now see and teach was a selfish
form of humanism - what man, here and hereafter and at whatever cost to
the rest of life, might obtain for himself alone. Rome provided her with
a confirmation rather than the discovery of this; for she had reached
the same conclusion some years before, after a barren interview with the
Archbishop of Paris. On that occasion, she had remarked to Maitland as
they were walking home: 'How are the mighty fallen!. . . The Church
needs as much saving as the world'.
Only a few would have agreed with her then, but many would do so now.
At that time, as she observed, the Churches tolerated vivisection:
today, as she could hardly have dreamed, they practise it in the
institutions they support.. Even Sisters of Mercy now breed dogs for
this purpose; and official Christianity has consecrated, although it can
never sanctify, the cruelty of man. To preach this brutal apostasy - for
God is conceived as 'merciful and compassionate' in every faith - is to
renounce the life of the spirit, and no longer to point a way that the
noblest men and women will wish or be able to follow; for they have
heard and born witness to a different revelation: 'I desired mercy, and
not sacrifice'.
*Dr. Anna Kingsford (1846-1888)
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