THE FAITH OF A NATURALIST 



— some parasite, probably a species of ichneumon- 

 fly, was on hand to curtail the dangerous excess. 



I am only trying to say that after we have painted 

 Nature as black as the case will allow, after we have 

 depicted her as a savage beast, a devastating storm, 

 a scorching desert, a consuming fire, an all-engulfing 

 earthquake, or as war, pestilence, famine, we have 

 only depicted her from our limited human point of 

 view. But even from that point of view the favoring 

 conditions of life are so many, living bodies are so 

 adaptive, the lift of the evolutionary impulse is so 

 unconquerable, the elemental laws and forces are so 

 overwhelmingly on our side, that our position in the 

 universe is still an enviable one. "Though he slay 

 me, yet will I trust in him." Slain, I shall nourish 

 some other form of life, and the books will still bal- 

 ance — not my books, but the vast ledgers of the 

 Eternal. 



In the old times we accounted for creation in the 

 simple terms of the Hebrew Scriptures — " In the 

 beginning God created the heaven and the earth." 

 We even saw no discrepancy in the tradition that 

 creation took place in the spring. But when we 

 attempt to account for creation in the terms of 

 science or naturalism, the problem is far from be- 

 ing so simple. We have not so tangible a point 

 from which to start. It is as if we were trying to 

 find the end or the beginning of the circle. Round 

 and round we go, caught in the endless and begin- 



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