THE UNIVERSAL BENEFICENCE" 



marine Amazons and Mississippis were seeking an 

 escape which they never find; their quest is ever re- 

 newed. Nature is Nature because her work is never 

 complete; her journey is never ended; the fixity and 

 equilibrium which her elements appear to seek, is 

 ever deferred; life can appear and go on only in a 

 changing, unstable world, and it is this flux and 

 mutability of things that bring all our woe, and all 

 our joy as well. If winds did not blow, and bodies 

 fall, and fire consume, and floods overpower, if the 

 equilibrium of things were not perpetually broken, 

 — which opens the door to all our troubles and dis- 

 asters, — where should we find the conditions of our 

 life? 



Life has appeared in an unstable world, and is 

 conditioned upon this instability. Fixity means 

 death. It is in the line of organic effort that living 

 forms appear; it is jn^aa iinperfedLworld thaLae 

 strive for the perfection that we never reach. 

 Blessed be the fact that our capacity for life, for 

 happiness, is always greater than the day yields. 

 Satiety checks effort. 



The Nature Providence is stern and even cruel 

 in some of its dealings with us, but not in all, else we 

 should run away from home. It is genial and friendly 

 in the genial season — in a June meadow, in a field 

 of ripening grain, in an orchard bending with fruit, 

 in the cattle on a thousand hills, in the shade of the 

 friendly trees, in the bubbling springs, in the paths 



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