“If we admire the wisdom of God in having furnished different degrees of intelligence, so exactly adapted to their different conditions, and in having fitted every part of this stupendous work, not only to serve its own immediate purpose, but also to contribute to the beauty and perfection of the whole; how much more ought we to adore that goodness which has perfected the divine plan, by appointing one wide and comprehensive means of salvation:  a salvation which all are invited to partake; by a means which all are capable of using; which nothing but voluntary blindness can prevent our comprehending, and nothing but wilful error can hinder us from embracing.

“The muses are coy, and will only be wooed and won by some highly-favored suitors.  The sciences are lofty, and will not stoop to the reach of ordinary capacities.  But ’wisdom (by which the royal preacher means piety) is a loving spirit; she is easily seen of them that love her, and found of all such as seek her.’  Nay, she is so accessible and condescending, ’that she preventeth them that desire her, making herself first known unto them.’

“We are told by the same animated writer, ’that wisdom is the breath of the power of God.’  How infinitely superior in grandeur and sublimity, is this description to the origin of the wisdom of the heathens, as described by their poets and mythologists!  In the exalted strains of the Hebrew poetry, we read, that ’wisdom is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.’

“The philosophical author of ‘The Defence of Learning,’ observes, that knowledge has some thing of venom and malignity in it, when taken without its proper corrective; and what that is, the inspired St. Paul teaches us, by placing it as the immediate antidote—­’Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.’  Perhaps it is the vanity of human wisdom, unchastised by this correcting principle, which has made so many infidels.  It may proceed from the arrogance of a self-sufficient pride, that some philosophers disdain to acknowledge their belief in a Being who has judged proper to conceal from them the infinite wisdom of his counsels; who (to borrow the lofty language of the man of Uz) refused to consult them when he laid the foundations of the earth, when he shut up the sea with doors, and made the clouds the garment thereof.

“A man must be an infidel either from pride, prejudice, or bad education; he cannot be one unawares, or by surprise; for infidelity is not occasioned by sudden impulse or violent temptation.  He may be hurried by some vehement desire into an immoral action, at which he will blush in his cooler moments, and which he will lament as the sad effect of a spirit unsubdued by religion; but infidelity is a calm, considerate act, which cannot plead the weakness of the heart, or the seduction of the senses.  Even good men frequently fail in their duty through the infirmities of nature and the allurements of the world; but the infidel errs on a plan, on a settled and deliberate principle.