Is not our whole question settled?  If these fundamental forces, these oceans of air and energy, forces so great that man cannot measure them, so delicate and fine that man does not discover them in thousands of years, are all waiting and palpitating to rush into the service of man to advance his plans, and hint of plans larger than he ever dreamed, until he grows great by handling these ineffable factors, how can it be otherwise than that the energies, thoughts, and loves back of these forces, and out of which they come, and of which they are the visible signs and exponents, are working together with man?  Then, in all probability, nay in all certainty, all other forces, whether they be thrones or dominions, principalities or powers, things present or things to come, will also lend all their energies to the help of man.  God does not aid in the lowest and leave us to ourselves in the highest.  He does not feed the body and let the soul famish, does not help us to the meat that perishes and let us starve for the bread of eternal life.

Scripture passages, literally thousands in number, proclaim God’s control of the regular operations of nature, his sovereignty over birth, life, death, disease, afflictions, and prosperity, over what we call accident, his execution of righteous retributions, bringing of deliverance, setting up thrones, and casting down princes.  He upholds all things by the direct exercise of his power.  “The uniformities of nature are his ordinary method of working; its irregularities his method upon occasional condition; its interferences his method under the pressure of a higher law.”  There can be no general providence which is not special, no care for the whole which does not include care for all the parts, no provided safety for the head which does not number all the hairs.  The Old Testament doctrine of a special and minute providence over the chosen nation is expanded by Christ’s loving teaching and ministrations into an equal care for the personal individual (Matt. vii, 11; xviii, 19; Heb. iv, 16).  The cold glacial period of human fear that poured its ice floe over the mind of man, making him feel like an orphaned race in a godless world, has retired before the gentle beams of the Sun of Righteousness, and the winter is past, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds and hearts has commenced.

It is everywhere recognized that the great outcome of a man’s life is not the title to a thousand acres.  He is soon dispossessed.  It is not all the bonds and money he can hold.  A dead man’s hands are empty.  It is not reputation that the winds blow away.  But it is character that he acquires and carries with him.  He has a fidelity to principle that is like Abdiel’s.  He is faithful among the faithless.  He has allegiance to right that the lure of all the kingdoms of the earth cannot swerve for a moment.  He counts soul so much above the body that no fiery furnaces, heated seven times hotter than they are wont, sway him for a moment from adherence to the interests of soul as against even the existence of the body.