The Law of Nature here is as clear as Science can make it. In the words
of Mr. Herbert Spencer, "It is a corollary from that primordial truth
which, as we have seen, underlies all other truths, that whatever amount
of power an organism expends in any shape is the correlate and
equivalent of a power that was taken into it from without,"[82] We are
dealing here with a simple question of dynamics. Whatever energy the
soul expends must first be "taken into it from without." We are not
Creators, but creatures; God is our refuge _and strength_. Communion
with God, therefore, is a scientific necessity; and nothing will more
help the defeated spirit which is struggling in the wreck of its
religious life than a common-sense hold of this plain biological
principle that without Environment he can do nothing. What he wants is
not an occasional view, but a principle--a basal principle like this,
broad as the universe, solid as nature. In the natural world we act upon
this law unconsciously. We absorb heat, breathe air, draw on Environment
all but automatically for meat and drink, for the nourishment of the
senses, for mental stimulus, for all that, penetrating us from without,
can prolong, enrich, and elevate life. But in the spiritual world we
have all this to learn. We are new creatures, and even the bare living
has to be acquired.
Now the great point in learning to live is to live naturally. As closely
as possible we must follow the broad, clear lines of the natural life.
And there are three things especially which it is necessary for us to
keep continually in view. The first is that the organism contains within
itself only one-half of what is essential to life; the second is that
the other half is contained in the Environment; the third, that the
condition of receptivity is simple union between the organism and the
Environment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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