God--find out the
Almighty to perfection"--that is to say, by help of courses of
reasoning and accumulations of science, apprehend the nature of the
Deity, in a more exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of
comparative ignorance; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the
beginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing Himself to
His creatures should be a _simple_ way, which _all_ those creatures
may understand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity
or enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator should
be possible to all; and the admission to such communion must be
rested, not on their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their
having a human soul. In order to render this communion possible, the
Deity has stooped from His throne, and has, not only in the person of
the Son, taken upon Him the veil of our human _flesh_, but, in the
person of the Father, taken upon Him the veil of our human _thoughts_,
and permitted us, by His own spoken authority, to conceive Him simply
and clearly as a loving father and friend; a being to be walked with
and reasoned with, to be moved by our entreaties, angered by our
rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, and
glorified by our labour; and, finally, to be beheld in immediate and
active presence in all the powers and changes of creation. This
conception of God, which is the child's, is evidently the only one
which can be universal, and, therefore, the only one which _for us_
can be true. The moment that, in our pride of heart, we refuse to
accept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire Him, instead of
stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into His glory, we
hoping that, by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge
higher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as He rises,--God
takes us at our word. He rises into His own invisible and
inconceivable majesty; He goes forth upon the ways which are not our
ways, and retires into the thoughts which are not our thoughts; and we
are left alone. And presently we say in our vain hearts, "There is no
God."

[18] This passage, to the end of the section, is one of the last, and
best, which I wrote in the temper of my youth; and I can still ratify
it, thus far, that the texts referred to in it must either be received
as it explains them, or neglected altogether.

I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of His own
creation as under th