flame of themselves, or yon ground opened, and a fountain of water sprung out.  Most people think much of signs and wonders.  Just in proportion as they have no real faith in God, just in proportion as they forget God, and will not see that he is about their path, and about their bed, and spying out all their ways, they are like those godless Scribes and Pharisees of old, who must have signs and wonders before they would believe.  So it is:  the commonest things are as wonderful, more wonderful, than the uncommon; and yet, people will hanker after the uncommon, as if they belonged to God more immediately than the commonest matters.

If yon trees burst out in flame; if yon hill opened, and a fountain sprang up, how many would cry, ’How awful!  How wonderful!  Here is a sign that God is near us!  It is time to think about our souls now!  Perhaps the end of the world is at hand!’ And all the while they would be blind to that far more awful proof of God’s presence, that all around them, all day long, all over the world, millions of human ears are hearing, millions of human eyes are seeing, God alone knows how; millions of human brains are recollecting, God alone knows how.  That is not faith, my friends, to see God only in what is strange and rare:  but this is faith, to see God in what is most common and simple; to know God’s greatness not so much from disorder, as from order; not so much from those strange sights in which God seems (but only seems) to break his laws, as from those common ones in which he fulfils his laws.

I know it is very difficult to believe that.  It has been always difficult; and for this reason.  Our souls and minds are disorderly; and therefore order does not look to us what it is, the likeness and glory of God.  I will explain.  If God, at any moment, should create a full-grown plant with stalk, leaves, and flowers, all perfect, all would say, There is the hand of God!  How great is God!  There is, indeed, a miracle!—­Just because it would seem not to be according to order.  But the tiny seed sown in the ground, springing up into root-leaf, stalk, rough leaf, flower, seed, which will again be sown and spring up into leaf, flower, and seed;—­in that perpetual miracle, people see no miracle:  just because it is according to order:  because it comes to pass by regular and natural laws.  And why?  Because, such as we are, such we fancy God to be.  And we are all of us more or less disorderly:  fanciful; changeable; fond of doing not what we ought, but what we like; fond of showing our power, not by keeping rules, but by breaking rules; and we fancy too often that God is like ourselves, and make him in our image, after our own likeness, which is disorder, and self-will, and changeableness; instead of trying to be conformed to his image and his likeness, which is order and law eternal:  and, therefore, whenever God seems (for he only seems to our ignorance) to be making things suddenly, as we make, or working arbitrarily