ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



break out of their natural bounds and run riot for a 

 season ; the human forces do the same thing and 

 give rise to various excesses. The crimes and mis- 

 demeanors of man are exceptional as the outbreaks 

 §n nature are exceptional. They relate man to na- 

 ture and show how the same plan runs through both. 

 A world with storm and the warring and violence 

 of the elements left out would be a radically differ- 

 ent world — an impossible world. And a world of 

 man, a Quaker world, is equally impossible. 



If some being of infinite wisdom and love had 

 made the world and made man to live in it, we could 

 ask him some embarrassing questions; but, let me 

 repeat, the world was not made, it is only a link in a 

 chain of cosmic events, and it is not for man any 

 more than for any other creature. Each must "work 

 out his own salvation, with fear and trembling." 



Introduce design into nature and you humanize 

 it and get into difficulties at once. It is above design. 

 We have no language in which to speak the ultimate 

 truth, no language in which to describe the charac- 

 ter and the doings of the Infinite. The ways of the 

 Infinite are not only past finding out, they are un- 

 speakable by reason of our finite relations to them. 

 We cannot arraign the Nature God. It does not de- 

 sign, nor make, nor govern, nor employ means to 

 ends, as do the man-made gods. It is. All things are 

 a part of its infinite complexity. Nature rests for- 

 ever in itself. It neither fails nor succeeds. In itself 



48 



