. The organism must either depend on his environment, or be
self-sufficient. But who will not rather approve the arrangement by which
man in his creatural life may have unbroken access to an Infinite Power?
What soul will seek to remain self-luminous when it knows that "The Lord
God is a Sun?" Who will not willingly exchange his shallow vessel for
Christ's well of living water. Natural Law, p. 270.

July 24th. The New Testament is nowhere more impressive than where it
insists on the fact of man's dependence. In its view the first step in
religion is for man to feel his helplessness. Christ's first beatitude is
to the poor in spirit. The condition of entrance into the spiritual
kingdom is to possess the child-spirit--that state of mind combining at
once the profoundest helplessness with the most artless feeling of
dependence. Natural Law, p. 271.

July 25th. 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."
Natural Law, p. 271.

July 26th. 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. Natural Law, p. 272.

July 27th. Do not think that nothing is happening because you do not see
yourself grow, or hear the whirr of the machinery. All great things grow
noiselessly. You can see a mushroom grow, but never a child. Mr. Darwin
tells us that Evolution proceeds by "numerous, successive, and