No words can bring so full a realization of the quiet power in the progress of Nature as will the simple process of following the growth of a tree in imagination from the working of its sap in the root up to the tips of the leaves, the blossoms, and the fruit.  Or beginning lower, follow the growth of a blade of grass or a flower, then a tree, and so on to the movement of the earth, and then of all the planets in the universe.  Let your imagination picture so vividly all natural movements, little by little, that you seem to be really at one with each and all.  Study the orderly working of your own bodily functions; and having this clearly in mind, notice where you, in all movements that are or might be under the control of your will, are disobeying Nature’s laws.

Nature shows us constantly that at the back of every action there should be a great repose.  This holds good from the minutest growth to the most powerful tornado.  It should be so with us not only in the simple daily duties, but in all things up to the most intense activity possible to man.  And this study and realization of Nature’s method which I am pleading for brings a vivid sense of our own want of repose.  The compensation is fortunately great, or the discouragement might be more than could be borne.  We must appreciate a need to have it supplied; we must see a mistake in order to shun it.

How can we expect repose of mind when we have not even repose of muscle?  When the most external of the machine is not at our command, surely the spirit that animates the whole cannot find its highest plane of action.  Or how can we possibly expect to know the repose that should be at our command for every emergency, or hope to realize the great repose behind every action, when we have not even learned the repose in rest?

Think of Nature’s resting times, and see how painful would be the result of a digression.

Our side of the earth never turns suddenly toward the sun at night, giving us flashes of day in the darkness.  When it is night, it is night steadily, quietly, until the time comes for day.  A tree in winter, its time for rest, never starts out with a little bud here and there, only to be frost bitten, and so when spring-time comes, to result in an uneven looking, imperfectly developed tree.  It rests entirely in its time for rest; and when its time for blooming comes, its action is full and true and perfect.  The grass never pushes itself up in little, untimely blades through the winter, thus leaving our lawns and fields full of bare patches in the warmer season.  The flowers that close at night do not half close, folding some petals and letting others stay wide open.  Indeed, so perfectly does Nature rest when it is her time for resting, that even the suggestion of these abnormal actions seems absolutely ridiculous.  The less we allow ourselves to be controlled by Nature’s laws, the more we ignore their wonderful beauty; and yet there is that in us which must constantly respond to Nature unconsciously, else how could we at once feel the absurdity of any disobedience to her laws, everywhere except with man?  And man, who is not only free to obey, but has exquisite and increasing power to realize and enjoy them in all their fulness, lives so far out of harmony with these laws as ever to be blind to his own steady disobedience.