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embrace in a glancCj at once far-reaching and minute^ tlie whole 

 and the details_, — to see at once the two ends of the chain? 

 That which excites our admiration with men of genius is not 

 only their gigantic project, but the powerful grasp with which 

 they seize both the plan and the details of its execution. It is 

 this kind of what we may call intellectual omnipresence which 

 made Michael Angelo at once the most gifted artist and the 

 most accurate mathematician ; which enabled Napoleon, while 

 tracing the plan of a distant campaign, to calculate accurately 

 the rations of his soldiers and arrange the minutest details of 

 each camp ; by which a great writer, when carried aloft on 

 the wings of a soaring imagination, selects the most felicitous 

 expressions and uses the most suitable epithets. 



Now, multiply and raise this gift of genius to its highest 

 power, ascend to its primal source, and we have God embosomed 

 in the most imposing grandeur, exercising the most watchful 

 providence, the sovereign Being that nothing can limit, but that 

 nothing can escape, not even the sparrow that on a winter^s 

 night falls dead on the icy ground. We cannot, then, get rid 

 of the idea of a superintending Providence by means of con- 

 templating His grandeur, for the very grandeur itself furnishes 

 a strong argument against Fatalism. But the questions I have 

 alluded to are terrible even for the Christian, and we may not 

 dare to attempt lightly to pass them by. Faith does not so 

 completely illumine the darkness that surrounds us, that no 

 mystery remains in the spectacle of the world. Yes, indeed, in 

 history the apparent share of fate or destiny is immense, and 

 this is the third objection. Look at the hereditary trans- 

 mission of evil and suflPering, the influence of matter on spirit, 

 the inborn disposition of races and characters. Here are 

 problems which baffle us, and again, and again, contradict our 

 experience. Indeed, we are forced to confess that in human 

 history there are pages after pages whose sense is hidden to us. 

 The ways of God are ever obscure to us : He maketh dark 

 water and thick clouds his pavilion, the walls of which our 

 feeble sight seek in vain to penetrate. But despite the darkness, 

 we can fix our eyes on the expression, " God is love," and this 

 conviction we can oppose to all we see and all we hear. Nay, 

 to the thoughts of our brain, and the sorrows of our hearts, 

 " He is love," and thus in all His works there must be a 

 harmony complete and supreme. Looked at from this point 

 of view, the history of our race is no longer a vain conflict 

 of opposing passions, instincts, and chances. Above, amid all 

 this restless agitation, all these clashing wills, all these seeming 

 accidents, there is, though we cannot trace it, a divine plan 

 which leaves no place for fatality. It is true the design is 



