... The sun makes daylight not only on our
earth, but also on the other planets; and daylight is of the utmost
utility to us; for by its means we can commodiously carry on those
occupations which in the night-time would either be quite impossible,
or at any rate impossible without our going to the expense of artificial
light.[2]

[Footnote 2: Christian Wolff: _Vernuenftige Gedanken von den
Absichten der natuerlichen Dinge_, 1782, pp. 74 ff.; quoted by
James in _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p.492.]

MECHANISTIC SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY. With the rise of mechanistic
science there has come about a sharp collision between
the conception of the goodness of the universe as theology declares
it, and of its blindnesses and indifference as science seems
to unfold it to us. Contrast the picture of a cosmos which
was deliberately and considerately made by God to serve
every exigency of man's welfare, with the picture earlier
quoted from Bertrand Russell as the natural scientist gives it
to us. It is no longer easy to say the Heavens declare the
glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. As
far as we can see natural processes go on without the slightest
reference to the welfare of man, who is but an accidental
product of their indifferent forces. The universe is a system
of blind regularities. "Omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless
way." Nature is thoroughly impersonal, and indeed,
were it to be judged by personal or human standards, it could
with more accuracy be maintained that it is evil than that it is
good. As Mill puts it in a famous passage:

In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or
imprisoned for doing to one another, are Nature's everyday
performances. Killing, the most criminal act recognized by human laws,
Nature does once to every being that lives, and in a large proportion
of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters
whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow-creatures....
Nature impales men, breaks them as if on the wheel,
casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them to death,
crushes them with stones like the first Christian martyr, starves
them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by the quick
or slow venom of her exhalations.... A single hurricane destroys
the hopes of a season; a flight of locusts or an inundation desolates a
district; a trifling chemical change in an edible root starves a million
of p