haste. Think over it, by the light which our Lord's parables, His
analogies between the physical and social constitution of the world,
afford; and consider whether those awful words--fulfilled then, and
fulfilled so often since--"The kingdom of God shall be taken from you,
and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof," may not be the
supreme instance, the most complex development, of a law which runs
through all created things, down to the moss which struggles for
existence on the rock.

Do I say that this is all? That man is merely a part of nature, the
puppet of circumstances and hereditary tendencies? That brute
competition is the one law of his life? That he is doomed for ever to be
the slave of his own needs, enforced by an internecine struggle for
existence? God forbid. I believe not only in nature, but in Grace. I
believe that this is man's fate only as long as he sows to the flesh, and
of the flesh reaps corruption. I believe that if he will

Strive upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die;

if he will be even as wise as the social animals; as the ant and the bee,
who have risen, if not to the virtue of all-embracing charity, at least
to the virtues of self-sacrifice and patriotism: then he will rise
towards a higher sphere; towards that kingdom of God of which it is
written--"He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him."

Whether that be matter of natural Theology, I cannot tell as yet. But as
for all the former questions; and all that St Paul means when he talks of
the law, and how the works of the flesh bring men under the law, stern
and terrible and destructive, though holy and just and good,--they are