Minerals are possessed of power no less astonishing, which may be observed whenever an opportunity is offered to call it forth.  Active poisons, able to slay the most powerful men and beasts, lie hid within their bosoms.  They have strong attractive and repelling powers.  From the iron is made the strong cable which holds the vessel fast in her moorings, enabling it to outride the collected force of the winds and waves which threaten its destruction.  From it also are manufactured the manacles which bind the strong man, or fasten the lion in his cage.  Gold possesses a power which charms nearly all men to sacrifice their ease, and too many their moral principles, to pay their blind devotions at its shrine.

Who will contend that the power of action is confined to the animal creation alone, and that inanimate matter can not act?  That there is a superior power possessed by man, endowed with an immaterial spirit in a corporeal body, none will deny.  By the agency of the mind he can accomplish wonders, which mere physical power without the aid of such mental skill, could never perform.  But with all his boasted superiority, he is often made the slave of inanimate things.  His lofty powers of body and soul bend beneath the weight of accumulated sorrows, produced by the secret operations of contagious disease, which slays his wife, children, and friends, who fall like the ripened harvest before the gatherers scythe.  Nay, he often submits to the controlling power of the vine, alcohol, or tobacco, which gain a secret influence over his nobler powers, and fix on him the stamp of disgrace, and throw around him fetters from which he finds it no easy matter to extricate himself.  By the illusions of error and vice he is often betrayed, and long endures darkness and suffering, till he regains his native energies, and finds deliverance in the enjoyment of truth and virtue.

What is that secret power which lies concealed beyond the reach of human ken, and is transported from land to land unknown, till exposed in conditions suited to its operation, will show its active and resistless force in the destruction of life, and the devastation of whole cities or nations?  You may call it plague, or cholera, or small pox, miasma, contagion, particles of matter floating in the air surcharged with disease, or any thing else.  It matters not what you call it.  It is sufficient to our present purpose to know that it has the ability to put forth a prodigious power in the production of consequences, which the highest skill of man is yet unable to prevent.

I might pursue this point to an indefinite length, and trace the secret powers possessed by all created things, as exhibited in the influence they exert in various ways, both as regards themselves and surrounding objects.  But you will at once perceive my object, and the truth of the positions I assume.  A common power pervades all creation, operating by pure and perfect laws, regulated by the Great First Cause, the Moving Principle, which guides, governs, and controls the whole.[11]