ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



trumps her own trick; she scuttles her own ship; she 

 mines her own defenses; she poisons her own foun- 

 tains; she sows tares in her own wheat; and yet she 

 wins, because she is the All. The tares are hers, the 

 parasites are hers, the devastating storms and 

 floods are hers, the earthquakes and volcanoes are 

 hers, disease and death are hers, as well as youth 

 and health. The cancer that eats into a man's vitals 

 — what keeps it going but Nature's forces and 

 fluids? The bacteria that flourish in our bodies and 

 bring the scourges of typhoid fever, diphtheria, 

 tuberculosis, are all hers, and a part of her system 

 of things. A malignant tumor is as much an expres- 

 sion of Providence as is a baby or a flower. Nature 

 cuts the ground from under her own feet; she saws 

 off the limb upon which she is perched, but if she 

 falls, she alights in her own lap. 



In walking through a blighted potato-field this 

 morning, I said, "Here is one form of vegetable life 

 destroying another form and bringing loss and dis- 

 content to the farmer's heart." What purpose in the 

 economy of Nature is served by this blight? Who or 

 what is the gainer? After the minute organisms that 

 prey upon the potato-vines have done their work, 

 they too perish, so that two forms of life are blotted 

 out. What was it all for? Why is this tragedy of one 

 form of life bringing to naught other forms, which 

 we witness on every hand, in vegetable and animal 

 life, and in human history, being constantly en- 



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