Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/68

 ment in separate nations of each of those sentiments to the exclusion of the other. True it is, indeed, that the wrath of God destroys kingdoms; but God—operates through a myriad of instrumentalities, each and all adapted to our faculties and each and all constituting the connecting links between us and the world around us. The exclusion of all reliance on these instrumentalities in a blind dependence on the unseen and unknown, necessarily severs us from that source of strength supplied to us in abundance in the natural wealth of forces and activities surrounding us. What has created the difference between the civilized man and the savage of the past? The intelligent and persistent investigation of details. Here a fact, there an operation, next the combination of both intelligently exhibited, thence adopted by observing men. A myriad of these details constitute our visible progress. The denial of this investigation or the exclusion of all spirit to promote it through assumed terror of unseen spirits separates men from God, as it shuts them off from his visible operations which hang before us as the apples on the tree.

“The wealth he supplies to us is the adaptable concretion of himself ready to our intelligence. Neglect of this by superstitious terrors is the rejection of God. His power thus rejected and cringed from instead of being conformed to, becomes a terrible potency and its operation is indeed a wrath. Man’s nature must grow and bloom as the flower grows and blooms, according to its inherent qualities left to