man

a right to call in question the truth of the system preferred by another ? (2.) But it is to be observed farther that there are-there must be, truths lying beyond the range of intuition of man's powers. Only the infinite can look into and comprehend the infinite. There were profound depths in the minds of Newton and Bacon which a child of four years of age could not fathom— which no man could fathom who had not a mind like theirs. It is a matter of the plainest common sense likewise that there must be profound depths in the mind of God which none can fathom who is not the equal of God. Can the arms of a child wield and govern the world? Can a quart - measure take in that which would fill the great “tun" at Heidelberg ?

” Could Loch Katrine contain all the waters of the ocean? There must be truths respecting God which

can not know unless God shall reveal them. There are things in the mind of the stranger that we casually meet, though on the same level with ourselves, which we can not know unless he shall choose to disclose them. He has the power of hiding them forever from our knowledge.

(3.) There is one other thought on this point of the subject. I have adverted to the limitations of the faculties of the mind in the ordinary processes of reasoning and in the power of intuition. I shall now advert to the defect in the limitation of the instruments which man employs in his discoveries, or in enlarging his scope of natural vision. The point now to be made is, that the means or instruments which man employs so successfully in enlarging the range of his natural powers do not disclose or reveal God. Those means or instruments are, in the first place, limited to their own particular range of discovery, and can be employed

only in that direction, or can not be employed to aid man in more than one particular line. The telescope discloses wonders, but it can not be employed by the chemist, the metallurgist, the engineer. The tests of the chemist and his blow-pipe accomplish wonders, but they can not be employed in the purposes of astronomy. The electrical machine accomplishes wonders, but it can not be employed to determine the distance and magnitude of the planets, the height of the atmosphere, or the cause of the tides.' Least of all can any of these be employed on moral subjects. They can not determine the great questions about God, and the nature of the human soul, and the destiny of man in distant worlds. The astronomer directs his glass to the blue fields of ether, and brings suns and systems to view before unknown to man, but he does not see God on his throne. The electrical machine may be turned forever, throwing out a continuous stream of light, but it does not reveal God, or cast a ray of light on the destinies of the human soul. All these are limited to their proper objects—all come short of revealing God.

Such, then, are some of the limitations of the human mind as suggested by the nature of the case.

We turn to the next general point proposed to be considered, to the illustrations which have been furnished on the subject by the experiment which the world has been making to answer the great questions which it must be the province of a revelation to answer, if a revelation is given to man.

This need not detain us long, though the subject is one that might be pursued to much greater length than the limits of these Lectures will allow.

The general remark to be illustrated is, that the trial

a

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has been made, and so made that it is not necessary that it should be repeated.

If a revelation was to be given to man; if it be assumed for a moment that such was the divine purpose, it would seem to be not an unreasonable expectation that man himself should be allowed to make the experiment to see whether he could do without one; that is, whether such a revelation was necessary for man. This may be presumed to be reasonable, because (a) it would settle a great question forever, disposing man to receive and believe the revelation if he himself failed, and (6) it would be in accordance with the ordinary method of the divine arrangements in other things. Whatever man can do, it is, as before remarked, left for him to do; and whatever God may do for man, it is commonly preceded by the effort of man himself in that direction. Great discoveries in science and art are thus left for man to accomplish, if they are within his power; if the ordinary powers of man are insufficient for them, God creates and brings upon the stage some great mind, endowed in that direction beyond the ordinary powers of man, like Bacon or Newton, Watt or Fulton, Whitney or Morse, elevated above common men on these subjects as Isaiah or David were above ordinary men in the knowledge of spiritual things.

The trial on this subject, as it has actually occurred in the world, has related to two points: to the powers of man in relation to religion in general, and to those powers in relation to a “book-revelation.'

In regard to the former of these, the powers of man in relation to religion in general, I remark, first, that the time allowed to man for the experiment was sufficiently long to permit the experiment to be fairly made. If we assume now that Christianity had its

origin at the time commonly ascribed to it, about eighteen hundred years ago, then, according to the common chronology, there were four thousand years previous in which the experiment was to be made. According to Chevalier Bunsen, Lepsius, and others of that school, there were not far from twenty thousand years from the time when man appeared upon the earth. It could not be denied that, taking either position, the time was sufficiently long to admit of a fair trial on this subject in regard to the capability of the human powers to devise a system of religion; for, if man could not devise a system that would meet his wants in that time, it might be reasonably doubted whether he could do it at all. It may be added also, that, on the supposition that vast and eternal interests were connected in any way with embracing a true system of religion, it might be difficult to reconcile it with any just notions of benevolence in the Deity if the time had been longer, and if those interests were exposed to farther peril. Indeed, one great difficulty now to be explained, on the supposition that the revelation of a plan of salvation was delayed so long, is to reconcile that fact with the benevolence of God, leaving, during that long period, the eternal welfare of so many millions of souls to be jeoparded by the delay in giving a revelation to man: a difficulty which has its parallel, however, in the fact that so many millions were suffered to die of pestilence, of the plague, and of fever, before the healing art was in any way perfected, and while the substances constituting the materia medica of the world were actually in existence, but were as yet undiscovered by man.

The next thing to be observed in regard to this trial is, that the character of the mind mainly employed in the experiment was all that could be demanded in such an experiment. If we were asked which of the classes of mind that have existed on the earth would be best adapted for original investigations of this nature, we should say that the qualifications would be most likely to be found in the Hindu mind, the Arabic, the Greek, and the Teutonic. These, indeed, in some respects run into each other, and may perhaps be regarded as of the same type or class; but of all the intellects that God has made in the world, a great question of this kind could be more safely intrusted to these classes of mind than to any other.

Now, laying out of view at present all reference to the others, it may be said that of these classes of mind the Greek was better adapted to this inquiry than either of those which have been referred to. That mind

was, in some respects, the best that the world has seen as if God had created it for the very purpose of settling forever this great inquiry. For acụteness, for depth, for accurate analysis, for subtle philosophical distinctions, for fervor, and for enthusiasm-being equally fitted for eloquence, for poetry, and for philosophythat mind stands pre-eminent among all that God has made. The Greeks had a language, too, fitted, above all others spoken among men, for such inquiries—a language in which the highest conceptions of philosophy and religion could be better expressed than in any other, and in which the nicest shades of thought could be perpetuated—the language, in fact, adopted by the authors of the New Testament under, as we believe, the guidance of the Holy Ghost-selected from all the languages of the world as best adapted to express the great ideas of the Christian Revelation. The Greeks, too, gave themselves to this inquiry,