It seems to me that man occupies a position just half way between
infinite greatness and infinite littleness, and that he can
neither ascend nor descend to any considerable degree without
bringing up against a wall which shows where man ends and God
begins. It seems, too, that that kind of human power which can
reach down deepest into the infinite littleness, is more
remarkable than that which rises highest toward the infinite
greatness. It is a more difficult and a more remarkable thing to
write the Lord's Prayer on a single line less than an inch long,
than it would be to paint it on the face of the Palisades, upon a
line a mile long, in letters the length of the painter's ladder. I
have heard of a watch so small that it was set in a ring, and worn
upon the finger; and such a watch seems very much more marvellous
to me than the engines of the Great Eastern.

We are in the habit of regarding God as the author of all the
great movements of the universe, but as having nothing to do
directly with the minor movements. Mr. Emerson becomes equally
flippant and irreverent when he speaks of a "pistareen Providence."
We kindly take the Creator and upholder of all things under our
patronage, and say, "it is very well for him to swing a star into
space, and set bounds to the sea, and order the goings of great
systems, and even to minister to the lives of great men, but when
it comes to meddling with the little affairs of the daily life of
a thousand millions of men, women, and children--pshaw! He's
above all that."

Not so fast, Mr. Emerson! The real reason why you and all those
who are like you do not believe in God's intimate cognizance and