THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 359 



the fields; and I believe that the promises are applicable 

 to them also. For evil came not from Nature as she 

 fell created from the hand of God. Behold, every- 

 thing was very good ! The thorn is concealed beneath 

 the rose, but the rose itself is beautiful. Evil came 

 from the Tempter. I want to see the devil recognized 

 as responsible for some of the evil that is in me and the 

 rest of creation. Nature assumes her various forms 

 of life and lo! comes "the Fall," as we call it (man's 

 fall), and enters into them. Man thus is not the only 

 being that suffers ("the whole creation groaneth and 

 travaileth in pain together"), nor is it to man alone 

 (surely!) that the promises are given. For if there be 

 no recompense for undeserved loss in the animal world, 

 then is there no justice, and life becomes hopelessly 

 and forever an inscrutable mystery, and the understand- 

 m<r itself becomes darkened. But with this view of an 



O 



ultimate release from pain in some final restitution all 

 becomes clear and hopeful that otherwise is but a sad 

 despair. We may not see it in our time, but that the 

 light will come who can doubt? Said Thoreau, at the 

 close of his "Walden:" "There is more day to dawn. 

 The sun is but a morning star." 



He is a profound thinker, Mr. Henry Mills Alden, 

 who in his "God in His World" has expressed my 

 thought in this way: 



"If we know not what we shall be, neither do we know 

 what Nature shall be, in her on-going from strength unto 

 strength. There is no antagonism between the Natural and 

 the Spiritual. Humanity has been bound up with Nature 

 from the beginning, and, through the Incarnation, this bond 

 has become a sacrament. If we are to suppose that any change 



