THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 



natural law and order, the good of that system of 

 things out of which we came and which is the source 

 of our health and strength. It is good that fire 

 should burn, even if it consumes your house; it is 

 good that force should crush, even if it crushes you; 

 it is good that rain should fall, even if it destroys 

 your crops or floods your land. Plagues and pesti 

 lences attest the constancy of natural law. They set 

 us to cleaning our streets and houses and to readjust 

 ing our relations to outward nature. Only in a live 

 universe could disease and death prevail. Death is 

 a phase of life, a redistributing of the type. Decay 

 is another kind of growth. 



Yes, good in everything, because law in every 

 thing, truth in everything, the sequence of cause and 

 effect in everything, and it may all be good to me if 

 on the right principles I relate my life to it. I can 

 make the heat and the cold serve me, the winds and 

 the floods, gravity and all the chemical and dynami 

 cal forces, serve me, if I take hold of them by the 

 right handle. The bad in things arises from our 

 abuse or misuse of them or from our wrong relations 

 to them. A thing is good or bad according as it 

 stands related to my constitution. We say the order 

 of nature is rational; but is it not because our reason 

 is the outcome of that order? Our well-being consists 

 in learning it and in adjusting our lives to it. When 

 we cross it or seek to contravene it, we are destroyed. 

 But Nature in her universal procedures is not ra- 

 259 



