"What is the meaning of it, Watson?"

Every so often, I'll go on a bit of an audiobook kick. At the moment, I'm listening to the Sherlock Holmes Definitive Collection, narrated by Stephen Fry. I'm not sure I'll manage to listen to all 72 hours, but for now I'm enjoying some of Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories about the world's most famous fictional detective.

One part that made me sit up and take notice while falling asleep one night was the conclusion to The Adventure of the Cardboard Box. (It's more exciting than it sounds — the cardboard box in question contains two severed ears). After the solving of a double murder, the story concludes with a profound question.

'"What is the meaning of it, Watson?" said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end?

For Holmes, there are two possibilities. Either our world has a purpose and things happen for a reason — or the universe is ruled by chance. The latter is unthinkable.

I've given a similar answer when I've been asked why I believe that God exists (as I often am during lunchtime slots in Stranraer Academy). One part of my answer is that, if there's no God, it's all meaningless. And yet as human beings we naturally look for meaning and purpose — and have a clear sense of right and wrong — which all fits with the Bible's explanation that we are made in God's image. We think in terms of right and wrong because God is a moral being. And we look for meaning and purpose, because God has a purpose in all that he does.

Indeed, Holmes believes in more than Intelligent Design, or even simply a Creator — he believes in a good God. In The Naval Treaty he says:

'"Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence [ie God] seems to me to rest in the flowers"'.

His reasoning was that everything else is necessary for existence:

'"But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.'"

In other words, the fact that we have flowers shows that God is good. He didn't need to make them for our survival. He could have made the world black and white. The fact that instead it's overflowing with colours and smells and good things to eat points to the existence of a good and generous God.

That doesn't mean we always know the reason God does things. Just because we believe in a good God who does all things for a purpose, doesn't mean we know what that purpose is. Hence Holmes asks: "But what end?"

We can answer his question in general terms. But when confronted with tragedy, we don't need to pretend to know all the reasons. It's enough to know that God is in control, and that he is good.

But one day we will know. Holmes also believed in a day of judgement, when everyone would stand before their Creator. In The Boscombe Valley Mystery he tells a dying man who has just committed murder: '"You are yourself aware that you will soon have to answer for your deed at a higher court than the Assizes"'

A day of reckoning awaits. But Holmes also believes in salvation. In The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle he says: '"I suppose that I am commuting a felony, but it is just possible that I am saving a soul'".

And if people are saved, ultimately it's God that does it. As the detective comments at one point: "There, but for the grace of God, goes Sherlock Holmes".

Until Judgement Day, we wait. And we trust. Indeed a passage in The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger is particularly relevant to the so-called "Assisted Dying" debate. Holmes successful persuades a disfigured woman not to end her own life:

"Your life is not your own," he said. "Keep your hands off it."

She responds, as many still do: "What use is it to anyone?"

Holmes replies: "How can you tell? The example of patient suffering is in itself the most precious of all lessons to an impatient world."

That, then, is the theology of Sherlock Holmes. We don't always know what God is doing, but he's good and he's in control. The alternative is unthinkable. But belief in a good God isn't just wishful thinking, because he's provided evidence of his goodness in Creation. There is a day of judgement coming, ahead of which souls will either be lost or saved. And until then, we keep going, never forgetting that life itself is a gift.

As usual, it’s obvious once Holmes points it out!

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 10th September 2026

The Beauty of the Bramble

The RP Global Alliance website recently featured an old meditation by J. P. Struthers on the humble blackberry, which Stephen had transcribed. It first appeared in Struthers’ children’s magazine, The Morning Watch, in 1906.

One day when his companion on a walk amused himself by slashing off the juicy tops of the brambles in the hedge with his walking-stick, the late Dr. Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, stopped him sharply: “Don’t do that; it’s breaking the Third Commandment!”

When Dr. Benson made that remark about the Third Commandment no doubt the young man was greatly astonished. A little thought would show him that he was doing a useless thing and a wrong thing, but what had slashing brambles to do with the Third Commandment? He wasn’t speaking, much less swearing, or saying bad words! How then could he be taking God’s Name in vain? And one may be sure that that is what he would say to the Archbishop.

But if that lad had learnt the Shorter Catechism in his childhood, he would instantly have said to himself – What is required in the Third Commandment? And then, What is forbidden in the Third Commandment? And he would have repeated the answer in his mind – “The Third Commandment forbiddeth all profaning or abusing of anything whereby God maketh Himself known.” That is one advantage in being brought up a Presbyterian! We are “rooted and grounded” in the faith. Indeed I am pretty sure Dr. Benson himself had got his knowledge of what the Third Commandment means either directly or indirectly from that very Shorter Catechism.

A Bramble-berry, like every other berry, is one of God’s works. It is good for food, and a delight to the eyes, and it grows in waste places, and by the roadside, for poor and weary travellers, and it costs nothing, and it comes late in the year, just before winter, when the harvest is all over and the time of other fruits is past, and it is full of honour, for it plays hide-and-seek, and smiles and beams out of the darkness on the diligent that find it. Yes, there is a lot of love in the making of a bramble-bush, and that is how it is one of the things “by which God maketh Himself known”, that is, shows us what He is.

O the Bramble-bush is the Poor man’s tree,
For it loves the king’s high road,
And none dare say, “It belongeth to me,”
For it roams like the winds of God.
O, the Bramble-bush for me!

O the Bramble-bush is the Bairnies’ tree,
For it loves to trail on the ground,
And by little or big, whatever you be
There are berries to be found.
O the Bramble-bush for me!

And the Bramble-bush is like God’s own tree,
‘Tis the place where dwells Goodwill;
For its thorns are hands that say, “Come, see,
Eat every one your fill.”
O the Bramble-bush for me!

But the Bramble-tree improves by cultivation. I knew a man once one of whose hobbies it was to gather every kind and variety of bramble he could find or hear of, and in his grounds he had specimens of bushes from every part of Europe.

But the special beauty of the Bramble as of every other tree is this. Its thorns remind us of Paradise Lost, but its fruit tells us that Paradise has been regained. Every green leaf, every flower, every whistling bird, every drop of water in the world, proves that the great gulf between us and God is not only not yet “fixed,” but has been bridged by Christ; they all prove to us that God is still in the world, and that he is not far from any one of us. Everything God gives us brings with it an offer of Christ and his salvation. The God Who gives us these little things wishes to give us more, wishes to give us everything He has. 

The Universe: Random or Designed?

On Thursday some of us went to hear Prof. David Galloway (President of the Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons) speak at Glasgow RP Church on 'The Universe: Random or Designed'? Around 100 people were present for what is planned to be the first of 3 public meetings on the issues of Creation and Evolution. As well as local visitors, a good number were present from the RP churches in Airdrie and North Edinburgh. As part of Prof. Galloway's talk, he showed the following video which shows the astonishing fine tuning needed for life to exist:

As well as highlighting some of the incredible design of the universe, Prof. Galloway also talked about a number of areas where Darwinism is increasingly being questioned today.
After the talk there was a time of Q&A, and then supper was provided. Overall it was a very worthwhile evening, and a great introduction to a vitally important topic.