From pride and presumption,
O Lord, keep us free,
And make our hearts humble,
And loyal to Thee,
That living or dying,
In Thee we may rest,
And prove to the scornful
Thy statutes are best._

THOMAS WISTAR

If we should be told that at birth a strange and wonderful gift had
been bestowed upon us, one such that by means of it, in after life, we
could accomplish almost anything we wished, how we should guard it! With
what delight we would make it work, to see what it would do! We should
never be tired of such a toy, because every day it would reveal new
possibilities of power and delight.

Such a gift God has given us in our power to think. What a mysterious
and deep-hid gift it is! Nerves and sensations, a few convolutions in
the brain, acts of attention and observation, certain reactions
following certain stimuli: the result, a world of worlds spread out
before us; unlimited intellectual possibilities within our grasp!

What is thinking? Thinking is an attempt to express infinite thoughts,
affections, relations, and events, in finite terms. The child strings
buttons. The philosopher strings God, angels, devils, brutes, men, and
their appurtenances and deeds. Hence no real thought will quite go into
words. Out beyond the word hangs the infinite remainder of our idea. The
search for a vocabulary is the search for a clearer articulation