THE NATURAL PROVIDENCE 



kind does draw this inference, and it is well for 

 them to do so. But the case of the bird is different. 

 The bit of suet that I feed on is not so conspicuously 

 something extra, something added to the tree; it 

 is a part of the tree; it is inseparable from it. I am 

 compelled, as it were, to distil it out of the tree, so 

 that instead of being the act of a special providence, 

 it is the inevitable benefaction of the general provi- 

 dence of nature. What the old maple holds for me is 

 maple-sugar, but it was not put there for me; it is 

 there just the same, whether I want it or not; it is & 

 part of the economy of the tree; it is a factor in its 

 own growth; the tree is not thinking of me (pardon 

 the term), but of itself. Of course this does not make 

 my debt to it, and my grounds for thankfulness, any 

 the less real, but it takes it out of the category of 

 events such as that which brings the suet to the nut- 

 hatch. The Natural Providence is not intermittent, 

 it is perennial; but it takes no thought of me or you. 

 It is life that is flexible and adaptive, and not matter 

 and force. "We do not," says Renan, "remark in 

 the universe any sign of deliberate and thoughtful 

 action. We may affirm that no action of this sort has 

 existed for millions of centuries." I think we may 

 affirm more than that — we may affirm that it 

 never existed. Some vestige of the old theology still 

 clung to Renan's mind — there was a day of crea- 

 tion in which God set the universe going, and then 

 left it to run itself; the same vestige clung to Dar- 



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