[Footnote 1:  Noverim me, noverim Te.—­BERNARD.]

[Footnote 2:  Shakespeare:  Hamlet, Act III., Sc. 4.]

[Footnote 3:  Howe:  On Regeneration.  Sermon xliii.]

[Footnote 4:  Bookschammer:  On the Will.]

GOD’S EXHAUSTIVE KNOWLEDGE OF MAN.

PSALM cxxxix.  I-6.—­“O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.  Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.  Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with, all my ways.  For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.  Thou, hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.”

One of the most remarkable characteristics of a rational being is the power of self-inspection.  The brute creation possesses many attributes that are common to human nature, but it has no faculty that bears even the remotest resemblance to that of self-examination.  Instinctive action, undoubtedly, approaches the nearest of any to human action.  That wonderful power by which the bee builds up a structure that is not exceeded in accuracy, and regularity, and economy of space, by the best geometry of Athens or of Rome; by which the beaver, after having chosen the very best possible location for it on the stream, constructs a dam that outlasts the work of the human engineer; by which the faithful dog contrives to perform many acts of affection, in spite of obstacles, and in the face of unexpected discouragements,—­the instinct, we say, of the brute creation, as exhibited in a remarkably wide range of action and contrivance, and in a very varied and oftentimes perplexing conjuncture of circumstances, seems to bring man and beast very near to each other, and to furnish some ground for the theory of the materialist, that there is no essential difference between the two species of existences.  But when we pass beyond the mere power of acting, to the additional power of surveying or inspecting an act, and of forming an estimate of its relations to moral law, we find a faculty in man that makes him differ in kind from the brute.  No brute animal, however high up the scale, however ingenious and sagacious he may be, can ever look back and think of what he has done, “his thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing him.”

The mere power of performance, is, after all, not the highest power.  It is the superadded power of calmly looking over the performance, and seeing what has been done, that marks the higher agency, and denotes a loftier order of existence than that of the animal or of material nature.  If the mere ability to work with energy, and produce results, constituted the highest species of power, the force of gravitation would be the loftiest energy in the universe.  Its range of execution is wider than that of any other