own ground-work, — I mean to say, from the nature itself of his reason.
Now, I say that faith is absolutely necessary to man, in the gloomy and obscure paths of this life; for his reason is weak, and it requires to be assisted; because it is corrupted, and it requires to be cured; because it is changeable, and it requires to be fixed. Now, faith alone is the aid which assists and enlightens it, the remedy which cures it, the bridle and the rule which retain and fix it. Yet a moment of attention; I shall not misemploy it.
I say, first, that reason is weak, and that an aid is necessary to it. Alas! my brethren, we know not, neither ourselves, nor what is external to us. We are totally ignorant how we have been formed, by what imperceptible progressions our bodies have received arrangement and life, and what are the infinite springs, and the divine skill, which give motion to the whole machine. " I cannot tell/' said that illustrious mother, mentioned in the Maccabees, to her children, "how ye came into my womb; for I neither gave you breath nor life, neither was it I that formed the members of every one of you: but doubtless the creator of the world, who formed the generation of man, and found out the beginning of all things, will also, of his own mercy, give you breath and life again, as ye now regard not your own selves for his law's sake/' Our body is itself a mystery, in which the human mind is lost, and overwhelmed, and of which the secrets shall never be fathomed; for there is none but him alone who hath presided at its formation, who is capable of comprehending them.
That breath of the Divinity which animates us, that portion of ourselves which renders us capable of loving and of knowing, is not less unknown to us; we are entirely ignorant how its desires, its fears, its hopes, are formed, and how it can giye to itself its ideas and images. None have yet been able to comprehend how that spiritual being, so different in its nature from matter, hath possibly been united in us with it by such indissoluble ties, that the two substances no longer form but one whole, and the good and evil of the one become the good and evil of the other. We are a mystery therefore to ourselves, as St. Augustine formerly said; and it would be difficult to say, what is even that vain curiosity which pries into every thing, or how it hath been formed in our soul.
In all around us we still find nothing but enigmas; we live as strangers upon the earth, and amid objects which we know not. To man, nature is a closed book; and the Creator, to confound, it would appear, human pride, hath been pleased to overspread the face of this abyss with an impenetrable obscurity.
Lift up thine eyes, O man! consider those grand luminaries suspended over thy head, and which swim, as I may say, through those immense spaces in which thy reason is lost. Who, says Job, hath formed the sun, and given a name to the infinite multitude of stars? Comprehend, if thou canst, their nature, their use, their properties, their situation, their distance, their revolutions, the equality or the inequality of their movements. Our age hath pene-
