But is not this too true of some at least of us in this very day?  Must not people now see signs and wonders before they believe in God?

Do they not consider whatever is strange and inexplicable, as coming immediately from God?  While whatever they are accustomed to, or fancy that they can explain, they consider comes in what they call the course of nature, without God’s having anything to do with it?

If a man drops down dead, they say he died “by the hand of God,” or “by the visitation of God:”  as if any created thing or being could die, or live either, save by the will and presence of God:  as if a sparrow could fall to the ground without our Father’s knowledge.  But so it is; because men’s hearts are far from God.

If an earthquake swallowed up half London this very day, how many would be ready to cry, “Here is a visitation of God.  Here is the immediate hand of God.  Perhaps Christ is coming, and the end of the world at hand.”  And yet they will not see the true visitation, the immediate hand of God, in every drop of rain which comes down from heaven; and returneth not again void, but gives seed to the sower and bread to the eater.  But so it always has been.  Men used to see God and His power and glory almost exclusively in comets, auroras, earthquakes.  It was not so very long ago, that the birth of monstrous or misshapen animals, and all other prodigies, as they were called, were carefully noted down, and talked of far and wide, as signs of God’s anger, presages of some coming calamity.—­Atheists while they are in safety, superstitious when they are in danger—­Requiring signs and wonders to make them believe—­Interested only in what is uncommon and seems to break God’s laws—­Careless about what is common, and far more wonderful, because it fulfils God’s laws—­Such have most men been for ages, and will be, perhaps, to the end; shewing themselves, in that respect, carnal and no wiser than dumb animals.

For it is carnal, animal and brutish, and a sign of want of true civilization, as well as of true faith, only to be interested and surprised by what is strange; like dumb beasts, who, if they see anything new, are attracted by it and frightened by it, at the same time:  but who, when once they are accustomed to it, and have found out that it will do them no harm, are too stupid to feel any curiosity or interest about it, though it were the most beautiful or the most wonderful object on earth.

But I will tell you of a man after God’s own heart, who was not like the dumb animals, nor like the ungodly and superstitious; because he was taught by the Spirit of God, and spoke by the Spirit of God.  One who saw no signs and wonders, and yet believed in God—­namely, the man who wrote the 139th Psalm.  He needed no prodigies to make him believe.  The thought of his own body, how fearfully and wonderfully it was made, was enough to make him do that.  He looked on the perfect order and law which ruled