Not so fast, Mr. Emerson! The real reason why you and all those who are like you do not believe in God's intimate cognizance and administration of human affairs is, that you cannot comprehend them. You have not faith enough in God to believe that he is able to maintain this knowledge of human affairs, this interest in them, and the power and the disposition to mould them to divine issues. You are willing to admit that God can do a few great things, but you are not willing to admit that he can do a great many little things. It is well enough, according to your notion, for God to make a mastodon, or a megatherium, but quite undignified for him to undertake a mosquito or a horse-fly. It would not compromise His reputation with you were you to catch Him lighting a sun, or watching with something of interest the rise and fall of a great nation, but actually to listen to the prayer of a little child, and to answer that prayer with distinctness of purpose and definite exercise of power, would not, in your opinion, be dignified and respectable business for a being whom you are proud to have the honor of worshipping! I do not know how these people who do not believe in the intimate special providence of God can believe in God at all. I can conceive how God could rear Mont Blanc, but I cannot conceive how He could make a honey bee, and endow that honey bee with an instinct--transmitted since the creation from bee to bee, and swarm to swarm--which binds it in membership to a commonwealth, and enables it to build its waxen cells with mathematical exactness, and gather honey from all the flowers of the field. It is when we go into the infinity below us that the infinite power and skill become the most evident. When the microscope shows us life in myriad forms, each of which exhibits design; when we contemplate vegetable life in its wonderful details; when chemistry reveals to us something of the marvellous processes by which vitality is fed, we get a more impressive sense of the power and skill of the Creator than we do when we turn the telescope toward the heavens. Yet Mr. Emerson would have us believe that the Being who saw fit to make all these little things, to arrange and throw into relation all these masses of detail, to paint the plumage of a bird, and the back of a fly, as richly as he paints the drapery of the descending sun, does not condescend to take practical interest in the affairs of men and women! My God, what blindness! Bird, bee, blossom--be my teacher. I do not like Mr. Emerson's lesson.