suggestions of Omniscience, and the acts of an All-powerful Benevolence.
"What a lesson of humility, my brethren, might not each of us obtain, from a review of his infant hours, and the recollection of his juvenile passions! How differently do the same acts of parental rigour appear, in the eyes of the suffering child, and of the chastened man! When the sophist would supplant, with the wild theories of his worldly wisdom, the positive mandates of inspiration, let him remember the expansion of his own feeble intellects, and pause—let him feel the wisdom of God, in what is partially concealed, as well as in that which is revealed;—in short, let him substitute humility for pride of reason—let him have faith, and live!
"The consideration of this subject is full of consolation, my hearers, and does not fail to bring with it lessons of humility and of profit, that, duly improved, would both chasten the heart, and strengthen the feeble-minded man in his course. It is a blessed consolation, to be able to lay the misdoubtings of our arrogant nature at the threshold of the dwelling place of the Deity, from whence they shall be swept away, at the great opening of the portal, like the mists of the morning before the rising sun. It teaches us a lesson of humility, by impressing us with the imperfection of human powers, and by warning us of the many weak points, where we are open to the attacks of the great enemy of our race; it proves to us, that we are in danger of being weak, when our vanity would fain soothe us into the belief that we are most strong; it forcibly points out to us the vain-glory of intellect, and shows us the vast difference between a saving faith and the corollaries of a philosophical theology; and it teaches us to reduce our self-examination to the test of
