Man’s need for bread, we saw, led to the establishment of commerce, and commerce did far more than secure to man food and clothing and shelter. It brought men together and discovered themselves to themselves. Power lent itself to the uses of man’s social nature, awakened and developed by commerce, and made it possible for men to come into relations with one another, not simply in states and nations, but on all the earth. The need for bread helped to the formation of society, the nature of power and the applications to which it lent itself widened the social domain into a universal brotherhood, to which man, as a spirit, was correlated. But many saw bread only in its relations to hunger, and power only in its relations to wealth and worldly dominion. So, many see in truth no purpose except the practical and material ends to which it can be put. In the esteem of the utilitarians, it was well enough that learned men consecrated their genius and their industry to the study of the subtle subject of heat. It was well that they discovered the real nature of heat, and saw that it was not caloric, but a mode of motion. Because this opened the way for our railroads and steamboats and quick methods of transportation, which have contributed so much to the world’s wealth. It was well that the impracticable and theoretical men, who had nothing better to do, spent ages studying the nature of electricity, and finally discovered that there were certain metals for which it had affinity, and that it had speed equal to thought itself. For these studies have enabled the practical and substantial men to order their corn and meat by telegraph, and the practical housewives to order their roast beef by telephone. It is well that people who had no practical turn of mind spent years in considering the structure of the human frame, and the plants and minerals capable of ministering to it, for in this way the doctors have got ideas by which they are enabled to keep us practical men alive, so that we can trade longer, and build more factories and eat more victuals.
Now it is true that the knowledge the intelligence comes to by insight into the relations and nature and truth of things, can be turned to practical account. But the truth the mind finds by study was not primarily intended to open the way for steam cars and telegraphs and the production of wealth. These things are incidental. Truth is the provision God has made for the intellect. The knowledge of the stars has helped man to sail the sea and to take his bearings on any part of its surface. But the practical account to which this knowledge has been turned is not to be compared, in value, to the effect it was intended to have on the human mind, strengthening it, ennobling it, and harmonizing it with the divine mind.
RIGHTEOUSNESS.
“While smitten with the fatal wanness of approaching doom, the flamboyant pleiad of the men of violence descends the steep slope to the gulf of devouring time: lo! at the other extremity of space, when the last cloud has but now faded in the deep sky of the future, azure forevermore, rises resplendent the sacred galaxy of the true stars—Orpheus, Hermes, Job, Homer, Æschylus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hippocrates, Phidias, Socrates, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Euclid, Pythagoras, Lucretius, Plautus, Juvenal, Tacitus, Saint Paul, John of Patmos, Tertullian, Pelagius, Dante, Gutenberg, Joan of Arc, Christopher Columbus, Luther, Michael Angelo, Copernicus, Galileo, Rabelais, Calderon, Cervantes, Shakspere, Rembrandt, Kepler, Milton, Molière, Newton, Descartes, Kant, Piranesi, Beccari, Diderot, Beethoven, Fulton, Montgolfier, Washington: and the marvelous constellations, brighter from moment to moment, radiant as a tiara of celestial diamonds, shine in the clear horizon, and, as it rises, blends, with the boundless dawn of Jesus Christ.”
CHAPTER IV.
THE PROVISION FOR THE MORAL NATURE OF MAN.
Two elements are essential to the process of thinking, the intellect and the truth. One is within, the other is without. The one is subjective, the other is objective. Two elements are also essential to the process of volition, the will and the right. The one within, the other without. The one subjective, the other objective. Before sight is possible, there must be an eye and there must be light. The one is within, the other is without. The one is subjective, the other is objective. Before hearing, there must be an ear and there must be sound. The one is within, the other is without. The one is subjective, the other is objective. Before breathing there must be lungs and there must be atmosphere. The one is within, the other is without. The one is subjective, the other is objective.