ithout
food the body will perish. In short, we have never comprehended the
doctrine of the Persistence of Force. Instead of being content to
transform energy we have tried to create it. Natural Law, Environment, p.
266.

July 19th. 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 biological
principle that without Environment he can do nothing. Natural Law,
Environment, p. 267.

July 20th. Who has not come to the conclusion that he is but a part, a
fraction of some larger whole? Who does not miss, at every turn of his
life, an absent God? That man is but a part, he knows, for there is room
in him for more. That God is the other part, he feels, because at times
He satisfies his need. Who does not tremble often under that sicklier
symptom of his incompleteness, his want of spiritual energy, his
helplessness with sin? But now he understands both--the void in his life,
the powerlessness of his will. He understands that, like all other
energy, Spiritual power is contained in Environment. He finds here at
last the true root of all human frailty, emptiness, nothingness, sin.
This is why "without Me ye can do nothing." Powerlessness is the normal
state, not only of this, but of every organism--of every organism apart
from its Environment. Natural Law, p. 268.

July 21st. Friendship is the nearest thing we know to what religion is.
God is love. And to make religion akin to Friendship is simply to give it
the highest expression conceivable by man. The Changed Life, p. 49.

July 22d. The entire dependence of the soul upon God is not an
exceptional mystery, nor is man's helplessness an arbitrary and
unprecedented phenomenon. It is the law of all Nature. The spiritual man
is not taxed beyond the natural. He is not purposely handicapped by
singular limitations or unusual incapacities. God has not designedly made
the religious life as hard as possible. The arrangements for the
spiritual life are the same as for the natural life. When, in their hours
of unbelief, men challenge their Creator for placing the obstacle of
human frailty in the way of their highest development, their protest is
against the order of Nature. Natural Law, p. 269.

July 23d