Contemporary to Mr Fry's comments and their discussions was THE SUNDAY CALLED SEPTUAGESIMA, Or The Third Sunday Before Lent. For those of us who follow the Prayerbook the Collect for the Sunday will be known, and this section in particular,
"that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness."
Of course what Fry has forgotten is that our loving God is also a just God and where there is justice there must be punishment. Indeed it is people such as Mr Fry with his blasphemies which are delivering the children of men unto God's wrath, for he does not like his name to be taken in vain or slandered and this draws our attention to another of the Commandments which also answers another of Mr Fry's accusations.
"the Lord thy God is a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,"
It is one of the most heartening aspects of the Christian faith that we are not separated from those that come before or are to come after us, we are all part of a continuum of both the quick and the dead. Therefore we are responsible and party to the failings of past generations, and rather than to think of what has passed as beyond our control we must endeavour to right it any cost, likewise we can benefit of the piety of those before us, the noble benefactor who endows a choir of singers continues to enrich the worship of all those who follow after him, similarly the iconoclast who breaks down the altar removes the ability for future generations to render worthy praise. It is not in the strictest sense the fault of the future generations, but unless they right the wrong they must expect to be punished.
However, although this may explain to some degree why those who seem innocent are punished it does not adequately answer it, but the idea of a single continuum of the quick and the dead does. If we remember that God is a just God and thus a loving God then we can expect justice to be rendered unto all, in this life or the next. Those who are little stained with sin in this life will far quicker attain the Kingdom of Heaven that the notorious sinner. This Fry forgets, he sees death as the end and so of course the painful death of the small child seems to him a gross injustice. But it is not, for the pure child purified further by suffering can expect swift, everlasting paradise compared to the long and slow torment that will be rendered unto blasphemers such as Mr Fry.
Yet, I hear voices still clamouring that this does not explain why the child suffers when others do not, and indeed it doesn't and so for this I cite the learned 17th century divine George Herbert,
"So that if a farmer hath both a fair harvest, and that so well inned and imbarned, and continuing safe there, yet if God give him not the grace to use and utter this well, all advantages are to his loss. Better it were his corn burnt than not spiritually improved."
In other words it is better for us to suffer if it cause devotion than for us to be comfortable but Godless. This is a hard idea to fathom in this modern age, to think that a loving God would rather us suffer so we acknowledged him than be in bliss and forget, yet it is often the case: the family that loose the child pray to God for another, the death causes recourse to the Church; sickness causes prayer and poor fortune a reevaluation of what really matters beyond what we materially accumulate.
The other thing to realise here is that not all this is instantaneous, an Eastern Priest once said to a woman who had lost a sister in childhood that he was sure the child was no in heaven intercessing for her sisters conversion, indeed that may have been God's plan, we in the modern Church would shy away from such comments but perhaps there is some truth in them and one way of explaining the mysterious ways in which God works.
