Action Without Guidance

Any action of man's faculties, without the presence and inspiration of the mighty master of the mind who made them, is not guidance, but merely action. If man is in harmony with his Maker, he is in harmony with all moral truths and relations, and his faculties, under such circumstances, cannot fail to be rightly guided. Being in harmony with their Maker, their Maker becomes their life. If man is out of harmony with God, and just in proportion as this is the case, his faculties are not guided. They may be said to act, and it is action only. Sometimes the action is violent. There is the action of impulse, the action of selfish passion, the action of contradiction and strife; but there is no true guidance. The rightful authority, the authority which would carry them to their true goal, is in abeyance. Like another Phaeton, man has seized the reins of this chariot of fire; but the steeds know that it is not the hand of the true Apollo, and, frenzied in the want of that mastership which they need, they rush wildly on to destruction.

— A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 3, Chapter 2.