OF EDUCATION 9 1 



God, and by the fear of God, but not even by sense 

 and reason. Not sense and reason, but nonsense and 

 unreason — prejudice and fancy — greed and haste — 

 have led them to such results as were to be expected 

 — to superstitions, persecutions, wars, famines, pesti- 

 lence, hereditary disease, poverty, waste — waste in- 

 calculable, and now too often irremediable — waste of 

 life, of labor, of capital, of raw material, of soil, of 

 manure, of every bounty which God has bestowed on 

 man, till whole countries, some of the finest in the 

 world, seem ruined forever ; and all because men 

 will not learn nor obey those physical laws of the 

 universe which (whether we be conscious of them 

 or not) are all around us, like walls of iron and of 

 adamant — say rather, like some vast machine, ruth- 

 less though beneficent, among the wheels of which, 

 if we entangle ourselves in our rash ignorance, they 

 will not stop to set us free, but crush us, as they 

 have crushed whole nations and whole races ere now 

 to powder. . . . 



" To those who believe in God, and try to see all 

 things in God, the most minute natural phenomenon 

 cannot be secular. It must be divine ; I say deliber- 

 ately, divine ; and I can use no less lofty word. The 

 grain of dust is a thought of God ; God's power made 

 it ; God's wisdom gave it whatsoever qualities or 

 properties it may possess. Only look at all created 

 things in this light — look at them as what they are, 

 the expressions of God's mind and will concerning 

 this universe in which we live — " the voice of God 

 revealed in facts " — and then you will not fear physi- 



