Cedar Falls gazette. [volume] (Cedar Falls, Iowa) 1860-1895, 1861-04-12

ply uoiIlg HS uuty, ana wnen from different
and distant rooms these parts are assembled,
and cunning fingers put them together, every
wheel knows its place, and every pivot and
every screw its home, though it be picked
without discrimination from a dish contain
ing ten thousand. Yet among these parts
there are screws of which it takes one hun
dred and fifty thousand to make pound,
and shafts and bearings which are so deli
catcly turned that five thousand shavings will
only extend lineal inch along the stcel.--
Ihls is the way American watches are made,
and this is the way in which the highest
practicable perfection is reached in the man.
ufacture of these pocket monitors.
Here we have small work, organized. and
great elaboration Of related details. When
DR.. Scott wrote his passages on card, his
work was very simple. He did only one
thing--he made letters. When he had made
letter after letter until the little space was fill.
ed, his work was done. 1t was not part of
some complicated and inter dependent whole.
related to thousand other parts in other
hands. Isupposeit may be as delicate work
to drill a jewel with hair of steel. armed
with paste ofdiamond-dust, as to write" Our
Father under microscope; but when the
jewel has to bc drilled with relation to the
reception ola revolving metal;c pivot, the
process becomes very much nicer. So here
are hundred processes going on at the same
time, in different parts of building, all rea-
ted to each other, each delicate almost b.
yond description, and effected with such pre-
cision that mistake is so much an cxcep-
lon that it is surprise. have seen the
huge steam engines at Scranton which fur.
nish power for the blast Of the furnaces
there. and their magnitude and power and
most Impressive majesty of movement have
made me tremble; yet as works Of man they
are no greater than Waltham watch.
| 1t seems to me that man occupies a posi-
ton just half way between infinite greatness
and infinite littleness, and that he can neither
ascend nor descend to any considerable de-
| gree without bringing up against wall which
shows where man ends and God begins. II
| seems, too, that that kind of human power
which can reach down deepest into the inf
mite littleness is more remarkable than that
which rises highest toward the infinite great
ness. 1t is more difficult and more re-
markable thing to write the Lords PRAYER on
single line less than an inch long. than it
would be to paint it on the face of The Pais-
AIDES, upon line mile long, in letters the
length of the painters ladder. I have heard
of a watch so small that it was set in a ring,
and worn upon the finger; and such watch
seems very much more marvellous to me than
the engines of the Great Eastern.
Illumination upon the memories which
have recalled has brought to my mind sub.
ject that has very important bearing upon
my own life and the life of the world and it
is for this reason that write about them
We are in the habit of regarding God
as the author of all the great movements of
the universe, but as having nothing to do d.
rectly with the minor movements Mr. EN-
erson becomes equally flippant and irrevercnt
when he speaks Of "pistareen Providence
we kindly take the Creator and upholdcr Of
all things under our patronage, and saw "it
is very well for him to swing star into
space, and set bounds 10 the sea and order
the goings OF great systems, and even to min
lister TO the lives OF great men, but when il
comes to meddling with the affairs of the
daily HE OF a thousand millions Of men, wo-
men and children--pshaw He's above all
that"
Not so fast Mr.. Emerson! The real rea
son why you and all those who are like Won
do not believe in Gods intimate cornizance
and administration of human affairs is that
you cannot comprehend them. You have
not faith enough in God to believe that he is
able TO maintain this knowledge of human
affairs, this interest in them, and the power
and the disposition to moul, them to divine
issues. You are willing to admit that God
can do a few great things, but YOU are not
willing to admit that he can do great MANY
little things. It is well enough, according 10
your notion, for God to make lmastodon or
a megathelium, but quite undignified for him
TO undertake mosquito or horse-hy. It
would not compromise his reputation with
you were you not to catch Him lighting n
sun, or watching with something of interest
the rise and fall of great nation, but actual
~ to listen to prayer with distinctness of
purpose and definite exercise of power, would
not, in your opinion, be dignifed and re-
spectacle business for being whom you are
proud to have the honor of worshiping
do not know how these people who do
not believe in the intimate special providence
OF God can believe in God at all. can con-
ceive how God could rear Mount Blanc, but
| cannot conceive how He could make a
honey bee, and endow that honey bee with an
instinct-transmtted since the creation from
bee to bee and swarm to swarm-which binds
1t IN membership to a commonwealth. and
enables it to build its waxen cells with math-
ematlcal exactness, and gathering honey from
all the flowers of the field. II is when we po
into the infinity below us that the infinite
power and skill become the most evident
When the microscope shows us life in myriad
forms, each of which exhibits design; when
we contemplate vegetable life in its wonder
ful details; when chemistry reveals to ms
something OF the marvellous processes by
which vitality is fed, we get a more impress
slve sense OF the power and skill of the Crea-
tor than we do when we turn the telcscope
toward the heavens Yet Mr.. Emerson
would have US believe that the Being who
saw tit to make all these little things, to ar
range AMI throw into relation all these masses
Of detail, to paint the plumage Of bird and
the back of fly as richly as he paints the
drapery Of the descending sun, does not con-
descend to take practical interest in the az
fairs Of men and women! NV God. what
blindness Bird, bee, blossom nv teach
er. do not like Mr.. Emerson's lesson.
Theological seqcnce Of disbelief in what Mr..
Emerson calls pistarecn Providence" is
belief in pantheism or polytheism. There is
certainly nothing ridiculous in the faith that
the Being who contrived and arranged and
adjusted the infinite littlcness Of creation.
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