This form of study and the study itself are well enough when confined to
their right proportion; but desire for wealth, in its endeavor to adapt
nature to the wants of man, has forced the study out of its proportion,
and deduced from it an untruth. In proving the being of a God from
nature alone, we get only the idea of power joined to a dead necessity
of laws; and it must be in the study of the human soul, with its
personality and volition, that we shall get the other ideas, which,
joined to that of power, prove to us the being of a personal God. Nature
has been studied and analyzed and searched with all the social and
individual power of the age, while the science of mind and soul has
stood still; and so it is that men no longer believe there is any God
but cause and effect; not the nation which is right is successful, but
'God is always on the side which has the most cannon;' not the just man,
but the shrewd man, will succeed; not God but rain and sunshine, will
bring forth the harvest.
Give us back the time when men fought hand to hand in ordeal of battle,
or bared their feet to walk over burning ploughshares in their firm
trust that God would defend the right; give them back with all their
superstitions and darkness, if with them we may receive again the lost
knowledge of a God who is 'Our Father,' a God who loves and protects His
children.
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