I 



RELIGION AS ADJUSTMENT 



nonsense, — since we must accept, as a prere- 

 quisite 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 ad- 

 mit 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 anthropomor- 

 phism, the conception of malevolence as the 

 source of suffering completely 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 earth- 

 quake, which so sorely puzzled the aged Vol- 

 taire 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 main- 

 taining the earth in a habitable condition. The 

 scientific inquirer must needs recognize the fact 

 that physical forces will work their normal ef- 

 fects, 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 

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