ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



reign is over, and hell, his headquarters, no longer 

 casts its lurid light upon human life. 



In an equal measure the old Hebraic conception 

 of God as a much-magnified man, the king anc 

 ruler of heaven and earth, with heaven as his throne 

 has gone out. God is now little more than a name 

 for that tendency or power in the universe which 

 makes for righteousness, and which has brought 

 evolution thus far on its course. 



To account for the world as we find it, we are 

 compelled to look upon it as the inevitable result 

 of the clashing and interaction of purely natural 

 forces resulting in both so-called good and evil; that 

 is, in what is favorable to life, and in what is against 

 life. But as life is adaptive and assimilative, it slowly 

 turns the evil into good, of course at the expense of 

 delays and waste and suffering, and thus develop- 

 ment becomes possible, and man, after untold mil- 

 lions of years, appears. 



When we look forth upon the universe, what do 

 we see? When we look upon the non-U ving world, 

 we see a mere welter and chaos of material forces — 

 a conflict of chemical and physical principles seek- 

 ing a stable equilibrium — water running, winds 

 blowing, mountains decaying, stars and systems 

 whirling, suns waning or waxing, nebula? condens- 

 ing, vast orbs colliding, and all issuing in a certain 

 order and system under the rule of purely mechani- 

 cal and mathematical laws. The stellar universe is a 



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