Year: 1873

great first cause-we are not the hand
lwork of mere power we are neither
freak OF nature, nor freak Of in
telllgence-we are not the experiment
of a mere mechanic, as if Col >hoilf
make Us to see what he coull ID We
are the children Of personal, power
tul, planning, painstaking, loving Faith
er. He is not merely the way or meth
cd of our production, a force acting
blindly, with humanity as its resultant.
We are the children of his thought;
his feeling, his goodwill the product
Of his skill and calculation. We are
his children as it is quite impossible
for us to be of our earthly parents.
Not bone of US did they plan; not
muscle, not nerve, not drop of blood
did they invent or provide for. The
delicate senses by which we know and
enjoy the beauty and music and fra
grance and flavor of external things.
are no wisdom or genius or arrange
meht of their. Still less (if less be
possible) did they invent and provide
the nicer operations of the mind, its
powers of thinking, of choosing. and
of willing, its powers of memory and
imagination. Indeed many of tie
great family of man would never have
been at all, if their parents had carried
out their plan.


No: we are the children of our
earthly parents only because we are the
children of our Father which is in
heaven. He has made us and not we
ourselves.


The curious mechanism and won
derful adaptions of our physical and
mental being are the forethought and
skill and love--the revelation of the
glorious greatness Of our Father which
Is in heaven.


Then--the world is provided for.
Before the human race was brought
forth the home was provided for it. 1t
was stocked also with food and fuel and
furnished with light and with material
for all possible uses. And if it be
said that nature ministers to us--that
the forces of gravity, heat, electricity,
of winds and Of waters are our SER
wants, we reply, yes; but these have
not provided themselves, nor do they
control themselves. Gravity would
dash humanity to atoms as soon as it
would clod Heat looks after no
man--it would as soon annihilate the
race as not. Electricity cares not for
men whether it blasts man or
tree, it is all the same to it. The
winds and waters make no account of
us they rush and roar with the same
wild carelessness about the homes of
men and over the lonely desert, and
whether the earth is bleak waste or
a populous garden it is all the same to
it.


Mere force takes no thought, pro-
vides nothing, and controls nothing,
but all these things are, and are con-
trolled to our advantage, we are not
therefore the lucky products of mere
force but the children of careful and
loving Father.


But our mental life is provided for
as we'll as our physical life There is
language and its very confusion upon
the face of the earth provides for our
mental stimulus and development:
There is the Bible-the spring Of all
wisdom and knowledge, the great NOV
ing force in all civilization and educa-
ton It is not natural growth--=not
indeed an unnatural one, but it is super
natural-the provision of one Who
perfectly understood mans necessities
and knew perfectly how to meet them.
No mere force; but, our Father


Then, men have sinned and gone so
far astray that it is, confessedly, not
in them to turn about and be holy--yet
many do turn and become holy, yield
ing to a truth and love and power
which actually regenerates them before
our eyes. And whence this truth and
love and power? Net in the sinner
himself, for then indeed. he would
not need to be turned about; and not
In nature. for she can no more furnish
such than her waterfalls can build
mills up5n themselves. They belongto
and are the revelation of our Faith
er.


Second-The human race is one,


"When ye pray say our Father" which
condemns all selfshness, all partiality,
/ al those artificial distinctions iB socie-