In the shadow, unseen, keeping watch above his own, is the
genius of the inventor. The earth gives iron, the sheep give
their wool, the soil gives the dyes, the steel gives the
shuttles, the spinner gives his fingers, but Arkwright and
Jenner explain the warm cloth against the snow and chill of
winter. Nature is a loom, the days and the nights are shuttles,
the sunbeams tint the texture, forests and mines, herds and
flocks furnish the threads, and the cloth of purple and gold
is brilliant with towns and cities--but God is the weaver of
the web. And if man with higher laws can set aside lower ones,
if man with an X-ray can make the body transparent, think you
that the great God by His influence upon man’s intellect and
imagination can not start influences spiritual that will soon
manifest themselves through man’s body upon forces that are
physical? If man were spirit, and spirit alone, prayer could not
be answered in a physical realm, because there would be no point
of connection between a spiritual being and a physical universe.
But man’s body is the medium of communication, and the God of
spirit moving upon the spirit of man acts through the body of
inventor, scientist, surgeon, sower, reaper, nurse, teacher,
statesman, and plays upon these delicate strings called the
forces of nature and so answers prayer.--N. D. HILLIS.
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