ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



train of the crippled, unoffending children, or a 

 man being slowly eaten up with cancer, or a mother 

 losing her life in trying to save her child from flood 

 and fire, and scores of other similar things, show what 

 a thin veneer our theology puts upon ugly facts. 



Our ecclesiastical faith must be housed in churches 

 and kept warm by vestments. The moment we take 

 it out into the open and expose it to unroofed and 

 unwarmed universal nature, it is bound to suffer 

 from the cosmic chill. For my part, I do not have to 

 take my faith in out of the wet and the cold. It is an 

 open-air faith, an all-the-year-round faith; neither 

 killing frosts nor killing heats disturb it; not 

 tornadoes nor earthquakes nor wars nor pestilence 

 nor famine make me doubt for one moment that 

 the universe is sound and good. The forces which 

 brought us here and provided so lavishly for our 

 sustenance and enjoyment; that gave us our bod- 

 ies and our minds; that endowed us with such 

 powers; that surrounded us with such beauty and 

 sublimity; that brought us safely through the long 

 and hazardous journey of evolution; that gave us 

 the summer sun, the midnight skies, and the re- 

 volving seasons; that gave human love and fellow- 

 ship and cooperation, childhood, motherhood, and 

 fatherhood, and the sense of justice and mercy, are 

 beneficent and permanent forces. They are directed 

 to me personally because they are directed to all 

 that live; they are the cause of the living, the 



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