Thus not the zeal alone of those who seek him God, but the blindness of those who seek him not. proves We run carelessly to the precipice after having veiled our eyes to hinder us from seeing it. Between us and hell or heaven, there is nought but life, the frailest thing in all the world. If it be a supernatural blindness to live without seeking to know what we are, it is a terrible blindness to live ill while believing in God. The sensibility of man to trifles, and his insensibility to great things, is the mark of a strange inversion. This shows that there is nothing to say to them, not that we despise them, but because they have no common sense : God must touch them. We must pity both parties, but for the one we must feel the pity born of tenderness, and for the other the pity born of contempt. We must indeed be of that religion which man despises that we may not despise men. People of that kind are academicians and scholars, and that is the worst kind of men that I know. I do not gather that by system, but by the way in which the heart of man is made. To reproach Miton, that he is not troubled when God will reproach him. Is this a thing to say with joy? It is a thing we ought then to say with sadness. Nothing is so important as this, yet we neglect this only. This is all that a man could do were he assured of the falsehood of that news, and even then he ought not to be joyful, but downcast. Suppose an heir finds the title-deeds of his house. Will he say, "Perhaps they are forgeries?" and neglect to examine them? We must not say that this is a mark of reason. To be so insensible as to despise interesting things, and to become insensible to the point which most interests us. What then shall we conclude of all these obscurities, if not our own unworthiness? |