know that we are born, and that we die; science has been able to grapple with all the phenomena of these two great physical facts, with the exception of the most material of all—­those which should tell us what is life, and what is death.  Something that we cannot comprehend lies at the root of every distinct division of natural phenomena.  Thus far shalt thou go and no farther, seems to be imprinted on every great fact of creation.  There is a point attained in each and all of our acquisitions, where a mystery that no human mind can scan takes the place of demonstration and conjecture.  This point may lie more remote with some intellects than with others; but it exists for all, arrests the inductions of all, conceals all.

We are aware that the more learned among those who disbelieve in the divinity of Christ suppose themselves to be sustained by written authority, contending for errors of translation, mistakes and misapprehensions in the ancient texts.  Nevertheless, we are inclined to think that nine-tenths of those who refuse the old and accept the new opinion, do so for a motive no better than a disinclination to believe that which they cannot comprehend.  This pride of reason is one of the most insinuating of our foibles, and is to be watched as a most potent enemy.

How completely and philosophically does the venerable Christian creed embrace and modify all these workings of the heart!  We say philosophically, for it were not possible for mind to give a juster analysis of the whole subject than St. Paul’s most comprehensive but brief definition of Faith.  It is this Faith which forms the mighty feature of the church on earth.  It equalizes capacities, conditions, means, and ends, holding out the same encouragement and hope to the least, as to the most gifted of the race; counting gifts in their ordinary and more secular points of view.

It is when health, or the usual means of success abandon us, that we are made to feel how totally we are insufficient for the achievement of even our own purposes, much less to qualify us to reason on the deep mysteries that conceal the beginning and the end.  It has often been said that the most successful leaders of their fellow men have had the clearest views of their own insufficiency to attain their own objects.  If Napoleon ever said, as has been attributed to him, “Je propose et je dispose,” it must have been in one of those fleeting moments in which success blinded him to the fact of his own insufficiency.  No man had a deeper reliance on fortune, cast the result of great events on the decrees of fate, or more anxiously watched the rising and setting of what he called his “star.”  This was a faith that could lead to no good; but it clearly denoted how far the boldest designs, the most ample means, and the most vaulting ambition, fall short of giving that sublime consciousness of power and its fruits that distinguish the reign of Omnipotence.