Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/111

they need—not I. But if they need, they must go. We cannot have a 'Deus quidam deceptor.' If there be a God, these trees and stones, these beasts and birds must be His will, whatever else is not. My body, and brain, and faculties, and appetites must be his will, whatever else is not. Whatsoever I can do with them in accordance with the constitution of them and nature, must be His will, whatever else is not. Those laws of nature must reveal them, and be revealed by Him, whatever else is not. Man's scientific conquest of nature must be one phase of His Kingdom on Earth, whatever else is not. I don't deny that there are spiritual laws which man is meant to obey—How can I, who feel in my own daily and inexplicable unhappiness the fruits of having broken them?—But I do say, that those spiritual laws must be in perfect harmony with every fresh physical law which we discover: that they cannot be intended to compete self-destructively with each other; that the spiritual cannot be intended to be perfected by ignoring or crushing the physical, unless God is a deceiver, and his universe a self-contradiction. And by this test alone will I try all theories, and dogmas, and spiritualities whatsoever―Are they in accordance with the laws of nature? And therefore when your party compare sneeringly Romish Sanctity, and English Civilization, I say, 'Take you the Sanctity, and give me the Civilization! The one may be a dream, for it is unnatural; the other cannot be, for it is natural; and not an evil in it at which