’But why not reveal true things first to the wise?  Are they not the fittest to receive them?’ Yes, if these things and their wisdom lie in the same region—­not otherwise.  No amount of knowledge or skill in physical science, will make a man the fitter to argue a metaphysical question; and the wisdom of this world, meaning by the term, the philosophy of prudence, self-protection, precaution, specially unfits a man for receiving what the Father has to reveal:  in proportion to our care about our own well being, is our incapability of understanding and welcoming the care of the Father.  The wise and the prudent, with all their energy of thought, could never see the things of the Father sufficiently to recognize them as true.  Their sagacity labours in earthly things, and so fills their minds with their own questions and conclusions, that they cannot see the eternal foundations God has laid in man, or the consequent necessities of their own nature.  They are proud of finding out things, but the things they find out are all less than themselves.  Because, however, they have discovered them, they imagine such things the goal of the human intellect.  If they grant there may be things beyond those, they either count them beyond their reach, or declare themselves uninterested in them:  for the wise and prudent, they do not exist.  They work only to gather by the senses, and deduce from what they have so gathered, the prudential, the probable, the expedient, the protective.  They never think of the essential, of what in itself must be.  They are cautious, wary, discreet, judicious, circumspect, provident, temporizing.  They have no enthusiasm, and are shy of all forms of it—­a clever, hard, thin people, who take things for the universe, and love of facts for love of truth.  They know nothing deeper in man than mere surface mental facts and their relations.  They do not perceive, or they turn away from any truth which the intellect cannot formulate.  Zeal for God will never eat them up:  why should it? he is not interesting to them:  theology may be; to such men religion means theology.  How should the treasure of the Father be open to such?  In their hands his rubies would draw in their fire, and cease to glow.  The roses of paradise in their gardens would blow withered.  They never go beyond the porch of the temple; they are not sure whether there be any adytum, and they do not care to go in and see:  why indeed should they? it would but be to turn and come out again.  Even when they know their duty, they must take it to pieces, and consider the grounds of its claim before they will render it obedience.  All those evil doctrines about God that work misery and madness, have their origin in the brains of the wise and prudent, not in the hearts of the children.  These wise and prudent, careful to make the words of his messengers rime with their conclusions, interpret the great heart of God, not by their own hearts, but by their miserable intellects; and, postponing the obedience which alone