AN OUTLOOK UPON LIFE 



Our good fortune is not that there are or may 

 be special providences and dispensations, as our 

 fathers believed, by which we may escape this or 

 that evil, but our good fortune is that we have our 

 part and lot in the total scheme of things, that we 

 share in the slow optimistic tendency of the uni- 

 verse, that we have life and health and wholeness 

 on the same terms as the trees, the flowers, the grass, 

 the animals have, and pay the same price for our 

 weU being, in struggle and effort, that they pay. 

 That is our good fortune. There is nothing acci- 

 dental or exceptional about it. It is not by the 

 favor or disfavor of some god that things go well 

 or ill with us, but it is by the authority of the whole 

 universe, by the consent and cooperation of every 

 force above us and beneath us. The natural forces 

 crush and destroy man when he transgresses them, 

 as they destroy or neutralize one another. He*is 

 a part of the system of things, and has a stake in 

 every wind that blows and cloud that sails. It is 

 to his final interest, whether he sees it or not, that 

 water should always do the work of water, and 

 fire do the work of fire, and frost do the work of 

 frost, and gravity do the work of gravity, though 

 they destroy him (" Though he slay me, yet will I 

 trust him "), rather than that they should ever fail. 

 In fact, he has his life and keeps it only because 

 the natural forces and elements are always true to 

 themselves, and are no respecters of persons. 

 245 



