CH. v.] RELIGION AS ADJUSTMENT. t63 



life which characterize nature s process of evolution might 

 have been avoided. It may be said that such a supposition 

 is sheer nonsense, since we must accept, as a pre-requisite 

 for all speculation on the subject, the properties of matter 

 and motion as we find them, necessitating as they do the 

 process of evolution as we observe it. But to say this is to 

 concede all that is here maintained, and implicitly to admit 

 that, instead of postulating a quasi-human Will as the source 

 of phenomena, we must rest content with the recognition of 

 an Inscrutable Power, of which the properties of matter 

 and motion, necessitating the process of evolution, with 

 pain and wrong as its concomitants, are the phenomenal 

 manifestations. 



With the entire elimination of anthropomorphism, the 

 conception of malevolence as the source of suffering com 

 pletely vanishes, and the mind assumes an attitude of 

 reverent resignation with reference to the workings of 

 Divine power. Even such a catastrophe as the Lisbon 

 earthquake, which so sorely puzzled the aged Voltaire and 

 the youthful Goethe, lost its worst horrors when geology, 

 discarding mythological explanations, referred it to the 

 action of those same subterranean energies which are ever 

 maintaining the earth in a habitable condition. The scien 

 tific inquirer must needs recognize the fact that physical 

 forces will work their normal effects, though the result be 

 the sending of rain alike upon the just and upon the unjust. 

 The expansive energy of steam will slay not only the wicked 

 engineer who has neglected his boiler, but also the innocent 

 Children peacefully playing on the deck overhead. 



Streams will not curb their pride, 



The just man not to entomb, 

 Nor lightnings go aside 

 To leave his virtues room. * 



But the flood and the earthquake, like the wickedness of 

 men, in so far as the arrangements of society are not yet 



