ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



dence? Must you and I have a special hold upon the 

 great Mother's apron strings? 



I see the Nature Providence going its impartial 

 way. I see drought and flood, heat and cold, war 

 and pestilence, defeat and death, besetting man at 

 all times, in all lands. I see hostile germs in the air 

 he breathes, in the water he drinks, in the soil he 

 tills. I see the elemental forces as indifferent to- 

 ward him as toward ants and fleas. I see pain and 

 disease and defeat and failure dogging his footsteps. 

 I see the righteous defeated and the ungodly tri- 

 umphant — this and much more I see; and yet I 

 behold through the immense biological vista be- 

 hind us the race of man slowly — oh, so slowly ! — 

 emerging from its brute or semi-human ancestry 

 into the full estate of man, from blind instinct and 

 savage passion into the light of reason and moral 

 consciousness. I behold the great scheme of evolu- 

 tion unfolding despite all the delays and waste and 

 failures, and the higher forms appearing upon the 

 scene. I see on an immense scale, and as clearly as in 

 a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes 

 out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Prov- 

 idence is best; that we are made strong by what we 

 overcome; that man is man because he is as free to 

 do evil as to do good; that life is as free to develop 

 hostile forms as to develop friendly; that power 

 waits upon him who earns it; that disease, wars. 

 the unloosened, devastating elemental forces, have 



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