but matter,--one of which must be true, and all of which approach as
near to the mutual contradictions as can well be conceived,--for the
very purpose of rebuking the presumption of man, and of teaching him
humility; that He had left these obscurities at the very threshold--nay,
within the very mansion of the mind itself,--for the express purpose of
deterring man from playing the dogmatising fool when he looked abroad.
Yet, in spite of his raggedness and poverty at home, no sooner does man
look out of his dusky dwelling, than, like Goldsmith's little Beau,
who, in his garret up five pair of stairs, boasts of his friendship with
lords, he is apt to assume airs of magnificence, and, glancing at
the infinite through his little eye-glass, to affect an intimate
acquaintance with the most respectable secrets of the universe!

It is undeniable, then, that the perplexities which uniformly puzzle
man in the physical world, and even in the little world of his own mind,
when he passes a certain limit, are just as unmanageable as those found
in the moral constitution and government of the universe, or in the
disclosures of the volume Revelation. In both we find abundance of
inexplicable difficulties sometimes arising from our absolute
ignorance, and perhaps quite as often from our partial knowledge. These
difficulties are probably left on the pages of both volumes for some of
the same reasons; many of them, it may be, because even the commentary
of the Creator himself could not render them plain to finite
understanding, though a necessary and salutary exercise of our humility
may be involved in their reception; others, if not purely (which seems
not probable) yet partly for the sake of exercising and training that
humility, as an essential part of the education of a child; others,
surmountable, indeed, in the progress of knowledge and by prolonged
effort of the human intellect, may be designed to stimulate that
intellect to strenuous action and healthy effort--as well as to supply,