when we can not unriddle His conduct in particular dispensations, we must remember that He is God—­that we are to “walk by faith”; and to trust Him as implicitly when we are in the valley of the shadow of death, as when His candle shines upon our heads.  We must remember that it is not for us to be admitted into the cabinet of the King of kings; that creatures constituted as we are could not sustain the view of His unveiled agency; that it would confound, and scatter, and annihilate our little intellects.  As often, then, as He retires from our observation, blending goodness with majesty, let us lay our hands upon our mouths and worship.  This stateliness of our King can afford us no just ground of uneasiness.  On the contrary, it contributes to our tranquillity.

2.  For we know that if His administration is mysterious, it is also wise.  “Great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is infinite.”  That infinite understanding watches over, and arranges, and directs all the affairs of His Church and of the world.  We are perplexed at every step, embarrassed by opposition, lost in confusion, fretted by disappointment, and ready to conclude, in our haste, that all things are against our own good and our Master’s honor.  But “this is our infirmity”; it is the dictate of impatience and indiscretion.  We forget the “years of the right hand of the Most High.”  We are slow of heart in learning a lesson which shall soothe our spirits at the expense of our pride.  We turn away from the consolation to be derived from believing that tho we know not the connections and results of holy providence, our Lord Jesus knows them perfectly.  With Him there is no irregularity, no chance, no conjecture.  Disposed before His eye in the most luminous and exquisite order, the whole series of events occupy the very place and crisis where they are most effectually to subserve the purposes of His love.  Not a moment of time is wasted, nor a fragment of action misapplied.  What He does, we do not indeed know at present, but, as far as we shall be permitted to know hereafter, we shall see that his most inscrutable procedure was guided by consummate wisdom; that our choice was often as foolish as our petulance was provoking; that the success of our own wishes would have been our most painful chastisement, would have diminished our happiness, and detracted from His praise.  Let us study, therefore, brethren, to subject our ignorance to His knowledge; instead of prescribing, to obey; instead of questioning, to believe:  to perform our part without that despondency which betrays a fear that our Lord may neglect His, and tacitly accuses Him of a less concern than we feel for the glory of His own name.  Let us not shrink from this duty as imposing too rigorous a condition upon our obedience.