New Cyclopaedia of Prose Illustrations, Adapted to Christian Teaching

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Eternal Father, the Watchman of Israel, neither slumbereth nor sleepeth, you will not wonder that, by a law as benign as it is authoritative, God has impressed activity upon his favorite creature, man, and has provided that his shall not be a zoophite existence, clinging in blind helplessness as a parasite to its guardian rock, but a life beautiful and holy, a life of quickened pulses, and an activity and an energy of which insensate matter knows not; and finding in the rapturous doing of every-day life its very soul and essence of joy. There is a necessity in man, then, for activity. Act he must and will; and it is the province of religion to direct and control this tendency, so that his doing may be according to that which is right.