TIME AND CHANGE 
served ways of the Eternal, if these bodies had had 
worlds in their train, teeming with life, which met 
the same fate as the central colliding bodies. 
Does not force as we know it in this world go its 
own way with the same disregard of the precious 
thing we call life? Such long and patient prepara- 
tions for it, —- apparently the whole stellar system 
in labor pains to bring it forth, — and yet held so 
cheaply and indifferently in the end! The small in- 
sect that just now alighted in front of my jack-plane 
as I was dressing a timber, and was reduced to a 
faint yellow stain upon the wood, is typical of the 
fate of man before the unregarding and unswerving 
terrestrial and celestial forces. The great wheels 
go round just the same whether they are crushing 
the man or crushing the corn for his bread. It is all 
one to the Eternal. Flood, fire, wind, gravity, are 
for us or against us indifferently. And yet the earth 
is here, garlanded with the seasons and riding in the 
celestial currents like a ship in calm summer seas, 
and man is here with all things under his feet. All 
is well in our corner of the universe. The great mill 
has made meal of our grist and not of the miller. 
We have taken our chances and have won. More 
has been for us than against us. During the little 
segment of time that man has been upon the earth, 
only one great calamity that might be called cosmi- 
cal has befallen it. The ice age of one or two hun- 
dred thousand years was such a calamity. But man 
270 
