242 
inclosing it within a tiny receptacle.” Suddenly the child 
disappeared, and in his stead an angel form was there, while 
a solemn voice replied, “ Not more foolish than to hope with a 
finite mind to understand the infinity of God.” In fact, we 
may well echo the poet’s words, — 
% 
“ In this wild maze their vain endeavours end ; 
How can the less the greater comprehend, 
Or finite reason reach Infinity ? 
For what could fathom God were more than He.” 
True: but the human may conceive of, though it cannot fully 
fathom, or take in, or image, the Divine. Man’s intellect, we 
must remember, is in the likeness of God’s ; it is immortal, and 
though limited in esse, is intended for an unlimited and eternal 
growth ; so it may possess, if it cannot itself form, a concep- 
tion, though an inadequate one, of the Immortal and Perfect ; 
and, having a potentiality of infinite advancement, may formu- 
late the Infinite within itself : just as a finite formula in 
mathematics is capable of representing an infinite extension. 
To this Personal Being, All-good, All-wise, Self-existent, 
the longings and yearnings of humanity, frail, weak, and 
ignorant, yet ever conscious of a possibility of better things, 
are eagerly directed. The sceptic himself knows that in the 
midst of the impure and false he involuntarily longs for, and 
by that very longing admits the existence of, the pure and the 
true, and that not as an abstraction, but as a Person. The 
affections seek Him as their rest ; for rest they must have, 
and they cannot rest in the restlessness of the finite. The 
intellect seeks Him because it must have, and rest in, truth, 
and it cannot rest in the half-truths of the finite. Affections 
and intellect, heart and mind, soul and spirit, alike stretch 
forward to Him whose very Being is so wondrously impressed 
upon them. 
And this is the great Sorrow of Scepticism, that it cuts man 
off from his highest good. There must be, it tells us, no 
Personal Deity; no “golden chain” which binds each soul to 
“ the feet of God ” ; no Providence, though the inmost recesses 
of the heart seem to testify that there cannot but be one. 
“ Mother ! some Hand, through sky, o’er sea, 
Leads wandering birds protectingly ; 
’Mid floating piles, and ocean dark, 
That Hand will guide thy homeless bark.” 
A rigid “self-denying ordinance” bears all these away, and 
