erative of natural
law. Fruit-bearing without Christ is not an improbability, but an
impossibility. As well expect the natural fruit to flourish without air
and heat, without soil and sunshine. How thoroughly also Paul grasped
this truth is apparent from a hundred pregnant passages in which he
echoes his Master's teaching. To him life was hid with Christ in God.
And that he embraced this not as a theory but as an experimental truth
we gather from his constant confession, "When I am weak, then am I
strong."

This leads by a natural transition to the second of the three points we
are seeking to illustrate. We have seen that the organism contains
within itself only one half of what is essential to life. We have next
to observe, as the complement of this, how the second half is contained
in the Environment.

One result of the due apprehension of our personal helplessness will be
that we shall no longer waste our time over the impossible task of
manufacturing energy for ourselves. Our science will bring to an abrupt
end the long series of severe experiments in which we have indulged in
the hope of finding a perpetual motion. And having decided upon this
once for all, our first step in seeking a more satisfactory state of
things must be to find a new source of energy. Following Nature, only
one course is open to us. We must refer to Environment. The natural life
owes all to Environment, so must the spiritual. Now the Environment of
the spiritual life is God. As Nature therefore forms the complement of
the natural life, God is the complement of the spiritual.

The proof of this? That Nature is not more natural to my body than God
is to my soul. Every animal and plant has its own Environment. And the
further one inquires into the relations of the one to the other, the
more one sees the marvelous intricacy and beauty of the adjustments.
These wonderful adaptations of each organism to its surroundings--of the
fish to the water, of the eagle to the air, of the insect to the forest
bed; and of each part of every organism--the fish's swim-bladder, the
eagle's eye, the insect's breathing tubes--which the old argument from
design brought home to us with such enthusiasm, inspire us still with a
sense of the boundless resources and skill of Nature in perfecting her
arrangements for each single life. Down to the last detail the world is
made for what is in it; and by whatever process things are as they are,
all organisms find in surro