ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



Not by placing God afar off in the heavens — a 

 supersensuous, supermundane, supernatural being 

 — do we make the problem easier. Not till we 

 bring Him down to earth and incarnate Him (the 

 old myth of Christ again), and identify Him with 

 everything without us and within — not till God be- 

 comes man — do we see a light under the feet of 

 Fate; not till then do we see love and fatherhood 

 and brotherhood and sacrifice and humility and 

 beneficence and altruism in Nature. When we see 

 man as a part of Nature, we see him as a part of 

 God. 



In humanity alone do we see the face of justice, 

 of mercy, of charity, of forgiveness, of reverence, 

 of renunciation — human virtues, they, too, come 

 out of the heart of Nature. If this is a hard gospel, 

 still it is tangible, real, livable. We cannot live other 

 than on familiar terms with Nature. In her we see 

 the sources of our power, our help, our health. We 

 know the conditions of our well-being. We know 

 the price we have to pay for each blessing. Our 

 reason, our intelligence, we come by honestly and 

 inevitably. Their fountainhead is in Nature. 



Amid the agony and turmoil of war we need not 

 lose faith. We know that Nature is still Nature. 

 If disease and pestilence and famine rage, we know 

 that there are weapons with which to fight them. 

 We know that order comes out of chaos, that life 

 comes out of death. We have neither to curse our 



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