administration of human affairs is, that you cannot comprehend
them. You have not faith enough in God to believe that he is able
to maintain this knowledge of human affairs, this interest in
them, and the power and the disposition to mould them to divine
issues. You are willing to admit that God can do a few great
things, but you are not willing to admit that he can do a great
many little things. It is well enough, according to your notion,
for God to make a mastodon, or a megatherium, but quite
undignified for him to undertake a mosquito or a horse-fly. It
would not compromise His reputation with you were you to catch Him
lighting a sun, or watching with something of interest the rise
and fall of a great nation, but actually to listen to the prayer
of a little child, and to answer that prayer with distinctness of
purpose and definite exercise of power, would not, in your
opinion, be dignified and respectable business for a being whom
you are proud to have the honor of worshipping!

I do not know how these people who do not believe in the intimate
special providence of God can believe in God at all. I can
conceive how God could rear Mont Blanc, but I cannot conceive how
He could make a honey bee, and endow that honey bee with an
instinct--transmitted since the creation from bee to bee, and
swarm to swarm--which binds it in membership to a commonwealth,
and enables it to build its waxen cells with mathematical
exactness, and gather honey from all the flowers of the field. It
is when we go into the infinity below us that the infinite power
and skill become the most evident. When the microscope shows us
life in myriad forms, each of which exhibits design; when we
contemplate vegetable life in its wonderful details; when
chemistry reveals to us something of the marvellous processes by