ave to confess
ourselves a very stupid race, who for twelve hundred years could not
discover, or at least use the boundless wealth which God had given
us, because we had not wit enough to invent so simple a thing as a
steam-engine.

All we should do, instead of boasting, is to bless God that he
revealed to us just what we needed, and at the very time at which we
needed it, and confess that it is HE that giveth us power to get
wealth. It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.

Look again at another case, even more extraordinary, which has
happened during our own times--indeed within the last ten years--the
discovery of gold in Australia.

There had been rumours and whispers of gold for years before; and
yet no one looked for gold, cared for it, hardly believed in it.
God had dulled their understanding and blinded their eyes for some
good purpose of his own. That is what the Bible would have said of
such a matter, and that is what we should say.

And at last some man finds lying out upon the downs a huge lump of
gold--by accident (as men call it; by the special providence of God,
as they ought to call it); and at that every one starts up and
awakes, and begins looking for gold. And now that their eyes are
opened, behold! the gold is everywhere. Not merely in lonely
forests and unexplored mountains, but on farms where the sheep have
been pastured for years past; ay, even Melbourne streets were full
of gold, under the feet of the passengers and the wheels of the
carriages; there had the gold been all along, but men could not see
it till God opened their eyes. Verily, verily, God is great, and
man is small. I do not say that this was a miracle in the common
meaning of the word; but I do say that this was a striking instance
of that everlasting and special providence of the living God, who
ordereth all things in heaven and earth, from the rise of a nation
to the fall of a sparrow; and does so, not by breaking his own laws,
but by making his laws work exactly as he will, when he will, and
where he will; and I say that it is a fresh proof of the great
saying, that no man can see a thing unless God shows it to him. For
it is the Lord who gives us power to get wealth. It is he that hath
made us, and not we ourselves; and in him we live and move, and have
our being.

This, then, was what Moses commanded--to remember that they owed all
to God. What they had, they had of God's free gift. What they
were, the