I set out to say that the beneficent force or Providence that brought us here has had to struggle with the non-beneficent in inert matter, and, at times, with what looks like the deliberately malignant in living matter; micro-organisms everywhere lying in wait for tangible bodies and reducing them back to the original dust out of which they came--the work of one god being held up or wrecked by another god. In the vegetable kingdom are blights and scabs and many forms of fungous diseases; in the animal are hostile bacteria and parasites working without and within. Little wonder our fathers had to invent a Devil, or a hierarchy of good and evil spirits contending with one another, to explain the enigmas of life! But that the good spirits have prevailed over their enemies, that the Natural Providence has been on our side, is, as I have pointed out, proved by the fact that we are actually here, and that life is good to us. The evil of the world is seen to be ingrained in the nature of things, and it has been a spur to development. All the great human evils have been disciplinary. There is always a surplusage, rarely just enough and no more. The gods of life rarely make a clean, neat job of it; there are needless pains, needless wastes, needless failures, needless delays. The good of war--the fortitude, the self-denial, the heroism--we cannot separate from the evil; the good of avarice or greed--industry, thrift, foresight--we cannot separate from the evil. The wealth-gatherers keep the currents going, they subdue the wilderness, they reclaim the deserts, they develop the earth’s resources, they extend the boundaries of civilization, but the evils that follow in their train are many and great. Yet how are we to have the one without the other? Disease is also a kind of trial by battle; it weeds out the weak, the physically unfit, and hardens and toughens the race. The Natural Providence does not study economy, it is not in business with rivals and competitors; bankruptcy is not one of its dangers, it can always meet its obligations; all the goods and all the gold and silver in the universe belong to it. Its methods are too vast and complex for our ideas of prudence and economy. We cannot deal with the whole, but only with its parts. There are no lines and boundaries to the sphere, and no well-defined cleavage between the good and the evil in nature and in life. The broad margin of needless misery and waste in the life of a man as of a nation is a part of the inexactitude and indifference that pervades the whole of nature. From the point of view of the Natural Providence it does not matter, the result is sure; but from our point of view--victims of cyclones, earthquakes, wars, famines, pestilence as we are--it matters a great deal. The streams and rivers throughout the land are bearers of many blessings; the evils they bring are minor and are soon forgotten.