men above the occasions of coarse material drudgery into other
activities, which doubtless will be thrown open, and shall allow more
leisure for spiritual culture. But in this, and all other great
questions affecting human welfare, I throw myself back, finally, upon
the tokens of Providential Design. The world moves forward, not
backward; and the great developments of time are for good, not evil. By
machinery, man proceeds with his dominion over nature. He assimilates it
to himself; it becomes, so to speak, a part of himself. Every great
invention is the enlargement of his own personality. Iron and fire
become blood and muscle, and gravitation flows in the current of his
will. His pulses beat in the steamship, throbbing through the deep,
while the fibres of his heart and brain inclose the earth in an electric
network of thought and sympathy. That which was given to help man, will
not hinder nor hurt him. "For the spirit of the living creature is in
the wheels."

I observe, in the second place, that the words of the text accord with
the testimony which machinery bears to the _dignity of man_. All these
great inventions--these implements of marvellous skill and power--prove
that the inventor, or the worker, himself is _not_ a machine. I know of
nothing which gives me so forcible an impression of the worth and
superiority of mind, of its alliance with the Creative Intelligence, as
the exhibition of an ingenious piece of mechanism. I have stood with
wonder before such a specimen, and seen it work with all the precision
of a reflecting creature. Lifting the most tremendous weights, cleaving
the most solid masses, performing the nicest tasks, as though a living
intellect were in it, informing it and directing its power. I hardly
know of any achievement that stands as a higher witness for the human
mind. The great poem that bursts in a flood of inspiration upon the soul
of genius, and opens the realms of immortal beauty, may lift us to a
nobler plane of endeavor. The heroic act of toil or martyrdom for
principle, certainly has a loftier, because it is a moral, grandeur. But
as an illustration of the _creativeness_ of man's intellect--of its
wondrous capability--of its alliance with that attribute of the Divine
Nature which is evident in the fibres of the grass-blade and the march
of the galaxy--I know of nothing more striking than this piece of
mechanism, which is the product of the most profound and patient
thought, the harm