Plagues and famines and wars are fortuitous and not a part of the regular order like health, or growth, or development. They are accidents of nature. The cloud-burst that sends the creek out of its banks is an accident in the same sense; it is an exceptional occurrence. If the fountains of nature were not full enough and permanent enough to stand such drains, or if the tendency in nature to a certain order and moderation were less marked, life would disappear from the globe. Nature’s capital of life is invested in ten thousand enterprises and the risks are many, but if the gains did not exceed the losses, if more seeds did not fall upon fertile places than upon barren, if more babies did not survive than perish, what would become of us? In our human schemes we aim to cut out losses, waste, delays and failure, and arraign the Eternal when it does not follow the same methods. But so far as I can see all that the Eternal aims at in the vast business of the universe is to keep the capital unimpaired and live on the income. The inroads which storms, pestilence, earthquakes make upon it are soon made good and some interest does accrue. Life does advance. In the course of the biologic ages there has been a great loss in species, apparently without any loss in the development impulse. New species appear as the old disappear. Nature’s investment in mere size and brute strength was doubtless a good one under the conditions, but she gradually changed it and began to lay the emphasis upon size of brain and complexity of nervous system, just as man in his material civilization has passed from the simple to the complex, from the go-cart to the automobile, from the signal fires to telegraph and telephone. The failures and shortcomings of the Eternal, as well as the progress of its work, are analogous to those of man. Indeed, God is no more a god than man is. He evinces the same methods, the same mixture of good and evil, the same progress from the simple to the complex, the same survival of the fittest. We exalt and magnify our little human attributes and name it God; we magnify and intensify our bad traits and call it the Devil. One is as real as the other. Both are real to the imagination of man, but Nature knows them not, except so far as she knows them in and through man.