Page:Valid Objections to So-called Christian Science (1902).pdf/43

 telligent Creator, that we might perceive and understand the properties, qualities, and differences of objects beyond ourselves; and that wonderfully adaptive piece of mechanism, the human hand, was evolved, that we might seize hold of material things, make them subservient to will and purpose, and thus help to fulfil the intent of God to make us masters of the world.

Action in life, as Demosthenes asserted in respect of oratory, is an all essential factor. To ignore our relations and obligations in material things is the beginning of death. To moon and to dream, and nothing further—is to drift, unconscious of the tide that sweeps us, until the force of Nature's might, gathering behind, o'erwhelms us in destruction.

But all this mooning and dreaming, this waiting for things to come out right of themselves; this neglecting to exert our personal influence; this dawdling over serious verities; this refusal to perceive evil and pain, present or to come; this banishing of the real importance of the material universe; this ignoring of the fact that the whole of human progress and happiness is due to the application of systematic knowledge to the