408 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



more surrounded by difficulties than any of the many 

 schemes of religion which men have opposed to it. The 

 simplicity of most of these is but an apparent simplicity, 

 complete in the eyes of the shallow thinker, but which en- 

 tirely disappears when subjected to the gaze of a superior 

 discernment. True, the difficulties of Christianity may 

 be more strikingly apparent than those of philosophic 

 religions, but it is only because God in His goodness, 

 instead of confining it to the acute and the highly 

 talented, has brought it down to the level of the whole 

 race of man ; and thus common capacities are brought in 

 contact with truths of so lofty and abstruse a character 

 that the greatest minds can but see their importance and 

 consistency without being able to comprehend them. 

 It is well, however, that the heart of the simplest can be 

 made to feel their fitness ; and that the excellence of 

 doctrines too mighty to be grasped by the most capacious 

 minds can be so appreciated by babes as to be made effect- 

 ual to their salvation. 



'After all our reasonings, my dear William, it is 

 through the heart alone that we can lay hold of the 

 Saviour ; and to prepare the heart " by working faith in 

 it " is the office of that Spirit which God giveth to all who 

 ask it. Have you ever considered the doctrine of the 

 Trinity, and the peculiar fitness which it gives to the 

 character of God as a God of man ? Perhaps the query 

 is rather obscure ; what I mean to express is this. One 

 great proof of the wisdom of the Deity is derived from 

 that exquisite adaptation of parts which obtains through- 

 out creation. You have studied this in the human frame, 

 and must have seen in extending your view, that not 

 more admirably are the parts of that frame fitted to each 

 other than man as a whole is fitted to external nature. 

 Now, by rising a little higher, and taking with you the 



