288 Musings by Camp- Fire and Wayside 



arrested the broods of chaos, the reptilian giants of 

 old, and locked them up in fetters and prisons of 

 stone beneath the hills. Having done for man 

 what he could not do for himself, that and nothing 

 more, she left the balance of forces between him 

 and his competitors in his favor, but not in his favor 

 without strenuous and disciplinary effort. I have 

 said Nature, but when we contemplate this design, 

 this wisdom, this perfection of processes and means 

 to the accomplishment of a high and benevolent 

 purpose, we cannot, without doing violence to our 

 reason, fail to bow our heads and substitute, with 

 voiceless homage, the holy name of God. 



Adam the man must thenceforth win his way 

 with the strength of his arms and the sweat of his 

 face. The discontent, which came of his eating of 

 the tree of knowledge of good and evil precipitated 

 the long battle for the conquest of the earth. It 

 was a huge and apparently a hopeless task. The 

 serried hosts of thorns and thistles, in numbers that 

 no arithmetic could tell, lifted their swords and 

 spears against him. He was the sworn enemy of 

 them all, and they of him. It was a war for the 

 possession of the earth, which they held by title of 

 immemorial possession, and which they would yield 

 only to force. Nor was there any prospect that it 

 would ever cease. Beaten down by stalwart blows 

 and swept from the field, they returned to renew 

 the attack. He never acquired a square foot of 

 soil which the thorns and thistles did not inces- 



