Article November 30, 1912 Issue

Man gives too much attention to things material at the...

Dallas (Tex.) News

Man gives too much attention to things material at the expense of things spiritual; he thinks material law to the exclusion of spiritual law. Men are too prone to doubt that which they do not cognize with the physical senses. One sometimes hears it said, "I don't believe anything I don't see." The fact is that no man ever saw the cause of anything; he only sees the effect. Still, he believes there is a cause. This being true, it would seem perfectly logical for him to know that God is "the great First Cause," notwithstanding it is said in Holy Writ that "no man hath seen God at any time," for as Paul says, "We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." Yet even the "things which are seen" reflect intelligence, from animals to trees and plants. A tree planted near a terrace or ravine will not send its growing roots out of the earth to be killed by heat and lack of moisture. It does not do things that are certain to destroy it. (In this it shows more intelligence than some individuals who eat and drink things which they know will be their destruction.) Why doesn't it? If did, it would no longer manifest the intelligence that guides it. Two trees grow side by side in the same kind of soil and under similar conditions, one a peach and the other a crabapple; yet they take those elements from the soil which are necessary to the making of the sweet, juicy peach on the one and the sour, acrid crabapple on the other. Each leaves every other element alone. Why and how does it do it? Men see manifestations and demonstrations of the forces of nature—centrifugal, centripetal, gravity, cohesion, adhesion, and so on—and know they cause the physical phenomena which are apparent; but they see only the phenomena, not the forces themselves.

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