CHAPTER VI The Cosmic Root of Holiness "If we are faithless, He abideth faithful; for He can not deny Himself."-2 Tim. 2:13. CHAPTER VI THE COSMIC ROOT OF HOLINESS HE biologist has discovered the parallel operation of two fundamental laws, the first being the law of the Struggle for Life, and the second, the law of the Struggle for the Life of Others. In these two equally important and primary laws of nature, I believe, are to be found the germ and the lower stages of what, in the moral sphere, we call Holiness and Love. The first of these biological laws to attract the attention of scientists was the Struggle for Life and the Survival of the Fittest. Darwin's name will forever be associated with the exposition of this law in the "Origin of Species." Darwinianism has been greatly modified and added to by later investigation; other factors in the evolutionary process besides natural selection have been discovered and are now emphasized; but the great law which Darwin ex pounded still holds its place as one of the premises of biology. What is this law? Briefly this: (1) Living substance, called Protoplasm, has a native tendency to vary. Organisms made of protoplasmic cells vary from one another. The offspring is always a little different from the parents, one seed or one child differing from another, even of the same parentage. (2) The second fact is, that every living being begins its life in a certain environment. Enveloping it are air, light, heat, and other things in varying conditions and quantities. It must eat; and there are some things it can eat, and some it can not. There are certain physical and chemical facts which it meets. Every living creature is not sufficient unto itself, but is a related being-related to a complex world. (3) The third fact is that in order to live and reproduce, a living being must be more or less in harmony with its environment. It must be "reconciled." "Alienation" from its world, by lack of adaptation to the factors upon which its being depends, is death. If it can endure the degree of light, or temperature, for instance, in which it is placed, if it can assimilate any of the matter about it as food, if it can resist successfully its living enemies, it can live and reproduce. If it be ill-adapted to its world, it dies. (4) Another fact is that, in the endless variations among living beings, some are natively better adapted to endure stress upon their powers of resistance than others. In times when the stress is great the "fittest," that is, those that fit the best, live, while others die. Those that live reproduce, and, by the law that the characteristics of parents are likely to be transmitted to offspring, those characteristics that best fit living beings to their world are passed on to accumulate as the generations come and go. Thus comes about a "selection" by nature of the beings that best fit their environment. An illustration may help to make this law clearer to those unaccustomed to biological study. How did the giraffe get his long neck and forelegs? The history of his peculiarities can be imagined thus: Mr. Darwin assumes that the |