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.
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