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embrace in a glance, at once far-reaching and minute, the 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 suffering, 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 
