The Water-Babies and Eschatology.
I was first introduced to The Water-Babies by a small quote in Bernard Heuvelmans On the Track of Unknown Animals. It was in grade school I decided to check The Water-Babies out from the library. I did not get very far in the book the first time I read it. I am reading it again a second time and now realize that part of the problem the first time around was I missed the humor in the book.
Take this portion:
“And next he [Tom] had a fright; for, as he scrambled up a sandy brow—whirr-poof-poof-cock-cock-kick—something went off in his face, with a most horrid noise. He thought the ground had blown up, and the end of the world come.
And when he opened his eyes (for he shut them very tight) it was only an old cock-grouse, who had been washing himself in sand, like an Arab, for want of water; and who, when Tom had all but trodden on him, jumped up with a noise like the express train, leaving his wife and children to shift for themselves, like an old coward, and went off, screaming “Cur-ru-u-uck, cur-ru-u-uck—murder, thieves, fire—cur-u-uck-cock-kick—the end of the world is come—kick-kick-cock-kick.” He was always fancying that the end of the world was come, when anything happened which was farther off than the end of his own nose. But the end of the world was not come, any more than the twelfth of August was; though the old grouse-cock was quite certain of it.
So the old grouse came back to his wife and family an hour afterwards, and said solemnly, “Cock-cock-kick; my dears, the end of the world is not quite come; but I assure you it is coming the day after to-morrow—cock.” But his wife had heard that so often that she knew all about it, and a little more. And, besides, she was the mother of a family, and had seven little poults to wash and feed every day; and that made her very practical, and a little sharp-tempered; so all she answered was: “Kick-kick-kick—go and catch spiders, go and catch spiders—kick.”
I think the authors who are caught up in the whole End Times literature market need to take a look at that passage. There are certain authors how have been predicting the end of the world in the next few years for several decades. I know one man who never got married because he read The Late Great Planet Earth back in the day. He thought it would be wrong to bring children into the world so close to the tribulation. I guess he never read that no man shall know the hour.
In someways it is very sad, this man forsake the first commandment that God gave us because he thought he was doing the work of the Lord by not marrying and having children. Zeal never brings clarity, that is why you must have your ideas thought out before you come to a situation where you are forced to show your hand.
On a humorous note, think about this passage:
“Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyles: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.”