ccession is passive, undirected, or
governed only by accident and outward impulse, it has little more claim
to dignity than the experience of the brute, who receives, with like
passiveness, sensations from abroad through his waking hours. Such
thought, if thought it may be called, having no aim, is as useless as the
vision of an eye which rests on nothing, which flies without pause over
earth and sky, and of consequence receives no distinct image. Thought,
in its true sense, is an energy of intellect. In thought, the mind not
only receives impressions or suggestions from without or within, but
reacts upon them, collects its attention, concentrates its forces upon
them, breaks them up and analyzes them like a living laboratory, and then
combines them anew, traces their connections, and thus impresses itself
on all the objects which engage it.

The universe in which we live was plainly meant by God to stir up such
thought as has now been described. It is full of difficulty and mystery,
and can only be penetrated and unravelled by the concentration of the
intellect. Every object, even the simplest in nature and society, every
event of life, is made up of various elements subtly bound together; so
that, to understand anything, we must reduce it from its complexity to
its parts and principles, and examine their relations to one another.
Nor is this all. Every thing which enters the mind not only contains a
depth of mystery in itself, but is connected by a thousand ties with all
other things. The universe is not a disorderly, disconnected heap, but a
beautiful whole, stamped throughout with unity, so as to be an image of
the One Infinite Spirit. Nothing stands alone. All things are knit
together, each existing for all and all for each. The humblest object
has infinite connections. The vegetable, which you saw on your table
to-day, came to you from the first plant which God made to grow on the
earth, and was the product of the rains and sunshine of six thousand
years. Such a universe demands thought to be understood; and we are
placed in it to think, to put forth the power within, to look beneath the
surface of things, to look beyond particular facts and events to their
causes and effects, to their reasons and ends, their mutual influences,
their diversities and resemblances, their proportions and harmonies, and
the general laws which bind them together. This is what I mean by
thinking; and by such thought the mind