Depending on God for the Means as Well as the End

God is not only in the beginning and the end; but in all the intermediate methods and instrumentalities which connect them together. He, who lifts a finger or moves a foot in any enterprise without God, does it at the hazard, not only of displeasing God, but of failing of his object. We ought, therefore, to exercise the same sense of dependence and the same submissiveness of spirit in the choice and employment of the means applicable to a given end, which we exercise in relation to the end, when in the Providence of God it is either accomplished or fails to be accomplished. "Except the Lord build  the  house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." Ps. 127:1.

— Religious Maxims (1846) CLVI.