feed it, the
very mortar in the wall give lime to its roots? Were not electricity,
gravitation, and I know not what of chemical and mechanical forces, busy
about the little plant, and every cell of it, kindly and patiently ready
to help it, if it would only help itself? Surely this is true; true of
every organic thing, animal and vegetable, and mineral, too, for aught I
know: and so we must soften our sadness at the sight of the universal
mutual war by the sight of an equally universal mutual help.

But more. It is true--too true if you will--that all things live on each
other. But is it not, therefore, equally true that all things live for
each other?--that self-sacrifice, and not selfishness, is at the bottom
the law of Nature, as it is the law of Grace; and the law of bio-geology,
as it is the law of all religion and virtue worthy of the name? Is it
not true that everything has to help something else to live, whether it
knows it or not?--that not a plant or an animal can turn again to its
dust without giving food and existence to other plants, other
animals?--that the very tiger, seemingly the most useless tyrant of all
tyrants, is still of use, when, after sending out of the world suddenly,
and all but painlessly, many an animal which would without him have
starved in misery through a diseased old age, he himself dies, and, in
dying, gives, by his own carcase, the means of life and of enjoyment to a
thousandfold more living creatures than ever his paws destroyed?

And so, the longer one watches the great struggle for existence, the more
charitable, the more hopeful, one becomes; as one sees that, consciously
or unconsciously, the law of Nature is, after all, self-sacrifice;
unconscious in plants and animals, as far as we know; save always those
magnificent instances of true self-sacrifice shown by the social insects,
by ants, bees, and others, which put to shame by a civilization truly
noble--why should I not say divine, for God ordained it?--the selfishness
and barbarism of man. But be that as it may, in man the law of
self-sacrifice--whether unconscious or not in the animals--rises into
consciousness just as far as he is a man; and the crowning lesson of bio-
geology may be, when we have worked it out, after all, the lesson of
Christmas-tide--of the infinite self-sacrifice of God for man; and Nature
as well as religion may say to us--

"Ah, could you crush that ever craving lust
For bliss, which kil