Do some of you not understand me?  Then look at it thus.  If you took out the eye of an animal, and held it up to anything, a man or a tree, a perfect picture of that man or that tree would be printed on the back of the dead eye:  but the eye would not see it.  And why?  Because it is cut off from the live brain of the animal to which it belonged; and therefore, though the picture is still in the eye, it sends no message about itself up to the brain, and is not seen.

And how does the picture on the eye send its message about itself to the brain, so that the brain sees it?  And how, again—­for here is a third wonder, greater still—­do we ourselves see what our brain sees?

That no man knows, and, perhaps, never will know in this world.  For science, as it is called, that is, the understanding of this world, and what goes on therein, can only tell us as yet what happens, what God does:  but of how God does it, it can tell us little or nothing; and of why God does it, nothing at all; and all we can say is, at every turn, “God is great.”

Mind, again, that these are not all the wonders which are in the ear and in the eye.  It is wonderful enough, that our brains should hear through our ears, and see through our eyes:  but it is more wonderful still, that they should be able to recollect what they have heard and seen.  That you and I should be able to call up in our minds a sound which we heard yesterday, or even a minute ago, is to me one of the most utterly astonishing things I know of.  And so of ordinary recollection.  What is it that we call remembering a place, remembering a person’s face?  That place, or that face, was actually printed, as it were, through our eye upon our brain.  We have a picture of it somewhere; we know not where, inside us.  But that we should be able to call that picture up again, and look at it with what we rightly call our mind’s eye, whenever we choose; and not merely that one picture only, but thousands of such;—­that is a wonder, indeed, which passes understanding.  Consider the hundreds of human faces, the hundreds of different things and places, which you can recollect; and then consider that all those different pictures are lying, as it were, over each other in hundreds in that small place, your brain, for the most part without interfering with, or rubbing out each other, each ready to be called up, recollected, and used in its turn.

If this is not wonderful, what is?  So wonderful, that no man knows, or, I think, ever will know, how it comes to pass.  How the eye tells the brain of the picture which is drawn upon the back of the eve—­how the brain calls up that picture when it likes—­these are two mysteries beyond all man’s wisdom to explain.  These are two proofs of the wisdom and the power of God, which ought to sink deeper into our hearts than all signs and wonders;—­greater proofs of God’s power and wisdom, than if yon fir-trees burst into