APPENDIX. NOTES. 391 



NOTE 15, p. 54. But which in their immediate or remote 

 consequences, may be productive of effects that are important 

 to be attended to, and provided for. When we reflect 

 upon the action of the Deity, we can scarcely avoid taking 

 our ideas of it, in some degree from that of man. Man's 

 attention is usually directed to things that appear to him 

 important, as affecting either his passions or his interests, 

 but he passes by those that appear to him trivial, as having 

 no bearing upon his pain, or pleasure, or welfare. But 

 here there is a great difference, for though some 



By long experience do attain 



To something like prophetic strain, 



the generality can trace the chain of causes and effects, 

 but for a very few links; and therefore they disregard 

 some things as trivial, which, in the event, produce effects 

 of the greatest importance. But it is not so with God ; 

 he sees the most distant consequences of every thing that 

 happens in his whole universe, and therefore knows exactly 

 in what proportions every thing appertaining to the nature 

 of every creature should be measured out to it in order 

 to produce the effects he intends should take place, if I 

 may so speak, during its ministration ; so combining 

 agents and actions, as may infallibly fulfil his law, and 

 general purpose. He foresees the effect of what are 

 regarded as the most trivial things, as the number of our 

 hairs and the death of a sparrow, as well as of those that 

 are most important: and his general object is to provide 

 for the execution of the laws both physical and meta- 

 physical by which he governs the universe, and so upholds 

 all things, but not so as never to suspend the action of 

 these laws. The following events recorded in Scripture 

 were remarkable instances of such suspension. 



