plants, nor plants without the flitting butterfly or the busy
bee. Realize that all this is worked by fixed laws, and that out
of it (even if sometimes in suffering and pain) springs the
wonderful universe around us. And then say, can you fear for
your own little life, even though it may have its troubles? Can
you help feeling a part of this guided and governed nature? or
doubt that the power which fixed the laws of the stars and of the
tiniest drop of water - that made the plant draw power from the
sun, the tine coral animal its food from the dashing waves; that
adapted the flower to the insect and the insect to the flower -
is also moulding your life as part of the great machinery of the
universe, so that you have only to work, and to wait, and to
love?

We are all groping dimly for the Unseen Power, but no one who
loves nature and studies it can ever feel alone or unloved in the
world. Facts, as mere facts, are dry and barren, but nature is
full of life and love, and her calm unswerving rule is tending to
some great though hidden purpose. You may call this Unseen Power
what you will - may lean on it in loving, trusting faith, or bend
in reverent and silent awe; but even the little child who lives
with nature and gazes on her with open eye, must rise in some
sense or other through nature to nature's God.



Week 3

Lecture II Sunbeams and How They Work