happened sometimes that minds of the highest order have entered
into enmity with the Christian faith, have arraigned it as a curse
to man, and have fought against it even upon Christian impulses,
(impulses of benignity that could not have had a birth except in
Christianity.) All comes from the labyrinthine intricacy in which
the _social_ action of Christianity involves itself to the
eye of a contemporary. Simplicity the most absolute is reconcilable
with intricacy the most elaborate. The weather--how simple would
appear the laws of its oscillations, if we stood at their centre!
and yet, because we do _not_, to this hour the weather is a
mystery. Human health--how transparent is its economy under ordinary
circumstances! abstinence and cleanliness, labor and rest, these
simple laws, observed in just proportions, laws that may be engrossed
upon a finger nail, are sufficient, on the whole, to maintain the
equilibrium of pleasurable existence. Yet, if once that equilibrium
is disturbed, where is the science oftentimes deep enough to rectify
the unfathomable watch-work? Even the simplicities of planetary
motions do not escape distortion: nor is it easy to be convinced
that the distortion is in the eye which beholds, not in the object
beheld. Let a planet be wheeling with heavenly science, upon arches
of divine geometry: suddenly, to us, it shall appear unaccountably
retrograde; flying when none pursues; and unweaving its own work.
Let this planet in its utmost elongations travel out of sight, and
for _us_ its course will become incoherent: because _our_
sight is feeble, the beautiful curve of the planet shall be dislocated
into segments, by a parenthesis of darkness; because our earth is
in no true centre, the disorder of parallax shall trouble the laws
of light; and, because we ourselves are wandering, the heavens
shall seem fickle.