First, it is evident that there is power not ourselves.  We did not make this world.  We did not put into it even the lowest force, gravitation.  It is more than our minds can compass to measure its power.  We have no arithmetic to tell its power on every mote in the sunbeam, or flower, or grain-head bowing toward the earth, tree brought down with a crash, or avalanche with thunder.  Much less can we measure the power that holds the earth to the sun spite of its measureless centrifugal force.  We did not make the next highest force, cohesion.  The particles of rock and iron cohere with so great an energy that gravitation cannot overcome it.  But it is not by our energy.  We did not make the next highest force, chemical affinity, that masters both gravitation and cohesion.  Water, the result of chemical affinity between oxygen and hydrogen, can be rent into its constituent elements with nothing less than a stream of lightning.  We did not make the next highest force, vegetative life.  That masters gravitation, and lifts up the tree in spite of it; masters cohesion—­the tree’s rootlets tear asunder the particles of stone; masters chemical affinity—­it takes the oxygen from air and water.  We did not create that force, measureless to our minds.  We say it must have come out of some omnipotence greater than all of them.  The conclusion of all minds is, there is a power not ourselves.

It is unthinkable that these forces before mentioned should have originated themselves.  It is equally so that they could maintain and continue themselves.  There must be some continual upholding by a word of power.

It is equally plain that there is intelligence, thought, and plan behind these forces.  They are not blind Samsons grinding in a prison-house, and liable at any moment to bring down in utter ruin every pillar of the universe on which they can put their hands.

If intelligent and planful, there must be personality.  We may as well call it by the name by which it is universally known, God.

Now does this intelligent and powerful personality know our plans and lend his powers to the accomplishment of our purposes?  It is better to put it the other way.  Mr. Lincoln taught us the truer statement when one said to him, in the awful anxiety of the war, “I think God is on our side;” he answered, “My great concern is to know if we are on God’s side.”  So our question is better thus:  Does this intelligent, powerful personality accept and use our energy in the accomplishment of his plans?

That will depend on what he wants done.  If he only wants mountains lifted, he can put the shoulder of an earthquake under the strata of a continent and tilt them up edgewise, or toss up a hundred miles of strata and let them come down the other side up.  If he wants mountains carried hence and cast into the sea, he can bring rivers to carry for thousands of years numberless tons.  If he wants worlds held in rhythmic relations to their sun, he can take gravitation.  Man is of no use; he cannot reach so far.