Chauncey Giles

“ This truth gives purpose and meaning to the creation. It is not a mechanical universe given up to the control of unconscious laws, the embodiment of awful forces which have no purpose, but act and react upon each other, and which at any moment may come in conflict and reduce everything to chaos. It is not a desolate and dead universe. It is the product of a personal Intelligence. It is warm with a Divine love; it is bright with a Divine wisdom ”

“ In whatever direction we turn we can see in every movement God working; we can hear His voice in every sound; we can see His face, veiled and its glory obscured to adapt it to our feeble vision, in every object that is useful to man. We can look up to Him, and with reverent joy say, in the words of the Psalmist, "Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me." It is a Father's hand, omnipotent in power, guided by infinite wisdom, but tenderer than a woman's, and it is laid upon our heads in loving benediction. ”

“ We think little of it, and yet it is a fact that we are daily and hourly forming the environment in which we must live forever. Every truth or error we learn, every deed we do, every object we look upon, every person we meet, enters into that environment and becomes a part of it which can never be eliminated. The material ideas may fade, but they enter into new combinations and become the elements of a life. ”

“ There is another remarkable process constantly going on in our environment. It is being transferred from without to within us. The objects of the outward world become ideas in the inward world. The memory becomes our environment. Such is its amazing capacity that every object we have seen with its colors, form, relations to other objects, its size and qualities, and all the associations and circumstances connected with them, are gathered into the memory, and form the environment of thought and feeling. They gird us round and bound our existence, and constitute the field of all our activities. ”

“ According to this notion, creation is the author of the parts which compose it, and consequently must have existed prior to itself. It involves the same absurdity that it would to say that a tree created its roots, trunk, limbs, and leaves. In every scientific treatise, and in many theological works, we are constantly told about Nature's works, Nature's laws, as though Nature was an intelligent being. But Nature has no purpose or power of its own; Nature enacts no laws. It is merely a passive instrument in the hands of an intelligent power wielded to accomplish the purposes of infinite love. ”

“ Thus everything in man's environment from the least to the greatest, through all his changing states, is ordered by infinite wisdom to repress and keep in subordination his animal nature, develop his spiritual and distinctly human faculties; to create the purest, the largest, the most lovely spiritual environment, and, at the same time, preserve untouched his spiritual freedom, and make him a man, and not a machine or an animal. ”

“ The position of science, as I understand it, is that our environment has some inherent power in itself from which it acts and helps to fashion body and mind. It is not merely an instrument, but an independent agent which, co-operating with heredity, is the efficient cause of life and all the products of life. If there is any power behind Nature, it is an unknown power; it is the somewhat outside of Nature. It is not the action of an intelligent personal Being who has a distinct end to accomplish, and who is providing the means and using them to accomplish it. ”

“ With such an endless variety of objects differing in form, color, nature, and use, each one of which offers us a special service, are we environed.
This universe of forms and forces which environ us, is itself environed within and without by spiritual forces guided by an infinite intelligence. The kingdoms of Nature are forms of the Divine love; they are the implements which a Divine and personal intelligence provides and uses, moment by moment, for the creation of man and the development of those faculties which constitute a human being. ”

“ The Lord says to everything in the universe, in language which can be understood, "Let us make man." With this light to guide us, and with the consciousness and assurance that we are not walking in the midst of forces which have no supreme intelligence to direct them, let us notice some of the agencies in man's environment and see how they operate in the evolution of his physical and spiritual faculties.
We have no difficulty in discovering that the outward world into which man is born, is adjusted with infinite precision to sustain and develop his physical organism. ”

“ By the ideas he gains from Nature his intellectual faculties are called into play, and acquire strength and enlargement. By working for others and by association with them his affections are awakened. He is drawn into closer union with them. He discovers that they have a common nature and common wants, and can render environment is created entirely distinct from the one another a larger and higher service; and a new material one. He lives in the same place, he breathes the same atmosphere, the same sun shines upon him. But he has risen into a new world. He becomes a factor in social life ”

“ The effects of our environment are described effects are wonders, curiosities, which are produced by the wild play of unconscious elements. They with precision, but they have no meaning. They are like the colors of a kaleidoscope turned by an unconscious hand, without even the purpose of seeing the constant succession of beautiful colors, forms, and useful products. Evolution is the grand result. The largest and most important part of man's environment is entirely ignored. ”

“ In the evolution of human life in its physical, social, intellectual, and spiritual qualities, whether they relate to man as an individual or a race, we bring into the account a third factor of vastly more importance and active power than heredity or environment, a factor which the evolutionists for the most part practically ignore - that factor is God, the Supreme Intelligence, the omnipotent and constantly operating power. ”

“ The Lord creates the material types in their general forms without man's agency. He supplies the materials for food, clothing, and habitation, and equips man with all the means necessary to sustain his existence; endows him with faculties capable of endless enlargement and perfection, and shares with him the work and the delight of adapting himself to his material environment, and of shaping that environment to himself as his wants multiply.
The problems of human life can never be solved while we leave out their most important factor, and that is, that man is a spiritual being. ”

“ There is a reciprocal action constantly going on between man and his environment. The Lord touches him on all sides and in every conceivable form by his environment, rouses him to action, calls his faculties into play, enlarges and enriches his intellect with mental images, and awakens his affections to, conscious life. By these means the infant man soon outgrows his environment. He is not content to lie in the cradle or in the mother's arms. He creeps, he walks, he sees a larger world than the nursery, and he longs to explore it. He begins to have ideas, tastes, and purposes of his own. ”

“ Heredity and environment play a most important part in all the theories of evolution. They are, indeed, regarded as the chief factors whose product is life. A creative power is attributed to them a power inhering in them and even if not self-originating, has its source in Nature which stands in many theories of the creation in place of God. The creation taken collectively is called Nature, and then the particular operations and objects in the world are called the works of Nature. ”

“ I need not speak of the exquisite adaptations of light to the eyes, and the uses it performs in giving color to the various objects of nature, revealing their forms and photographing them upon the sensitive retina of the eye, where they become ideas and food for the sustenance and development of the natural mind and the materials of knowledge. I only need to mention how attraction is adapted to our strength. ”

“ It is the universal motor adapted in the most exquisite manner to every form and state of the lungs, which communicate their general motion to every part of the body, and set every wheel in its infinitely complex organism revolving upon its axis, and give to every muscle and nerve the power to expand and contract and vibrate in the performance of its use, and in this way to fill every organ in the whole universe of the body with the power of sensation. ”

“ The most common things are the best examples of this adaptation, and of the agency of environment in effecting the Lord's purpose concerning us. Take the atmosphere as an example. We live in an ocean of air as fishes in an ocean of water. It presses upon us on all sides; we breathe it every moment. It contains the substances we need to purify and vitalize the blood and give us natural sensation and consciousness. It is the universal symbol of life, because it is the material medium by which physical life is given to us. Notice its adjustment to our physical organism and to all our needs.. ”

“ They give us power; they sustain our life; they run on our errands and are obedient to our will.
But we are not only environed by these invisible and formless forces, we are set in the midst of an infinite variety of objects which constitute the three kingdoms of the material universe. They, too, stand ready to offer us their service. They supply us with an abundance and variety of food. They are corn, posed of the same elements as our material bodies and can be woven into their organic forms. ”

“ The Lord has placed man in an environment designed with infinite wisdom to call all his faculties into orderly play. The essential principle of a human being is love, and love, as I have said in former lectures, is a vital substance, the embodiment of power. It is of its nature to act ”

“ The theory of evolution as it is commonly understood is that they are original, but not intelligent causes; that they are the drift of blind and purposeless forces, and that the products of these forces and substances are the creation of the wonderful organisms and conscious activities we find in the three kingdoms of Nature. But how do the scientists know that Nature has this power? ”

“ There is always an element of uncertainty and incompleteness in the attainment of every apparent good that he may have constant occasion to use his judgment; his natural appetites and desires are strong and clamorous for gratification that his spiritual faculties may gain power by controlling them; he is placed in the midst of many attractions and repulsions and conflicting interests that he may freely choose the right; he is led to feel his own weakness, and brought into despair that he may distrust his own wisdom and seek strength and light from their fountain in the Lord. ”

“ To attribute the works of Nature or the influences of Nature to itself, is as absurd as brush and colors and canvas on which they were laid, it would be to attribute the Dresden Madonna to the brush and colors or the Cologne cathedral to the stones of which it is constructed. ”

“ It is to the material body what steam is to machinery: it sets it in motion. It is a well-known fact that there is no sensation in the material body until the atmosphere enters the lungs and sets the whole machinery of the body in action. When respiration is suspended, as in swooning and suffocation, consciousness is lost. There can be no sensation without motion. ”

“ A large muscle is stronger than a small one, because it can receive the influx of more power, on the same principle that a large vessel will hold more than a small one. The use of the power we possess is the Divine method of increasing it. It is an instance of the essential nature of perfect love which desires "to give its own to become another's own." The Lord seeks to give to every living thing the power to co-operate with Him in its own development. ”

“ This is a most important law of human progress, and demonstrates that man possesses faculties entirely distinct from and superior law of human progress, and demonstrates that man to the plant and animal. The animal can hear sounds even more accurately than men; he hungers and thirsts, and the objects in his environment form the same images upon his eye. But he cannot make the same use of them. They do not enlarge and change his nature, and, consequently, he is content with his environment. ”

“ The winds which seem to human ignorance so wild and lawless are running on His errands; the waves that ebb and flow with ceaseless and apparently idle motion are doing His work; the more interior and subtile forces which elude man's senses and seem to be subject to no law are His servants, doing His bidding and promoting His ends. ”

“ Physically it means the material objects which we can see, the sounds which we can hear, the forces which constantly act upon us. It comprises the air we breathe, the food we eat, the houses we dwell in, the occupations we pursue, and all external things that in any way touch us. Socially and civilly it means the society in which we move, the direct and indirect influence we receive from friends, acquaintances, and all the men and women with whom we associate and come in contact in the employments, the duties, and the pleasures of life. ”