Look from the hillock on which you stand, at the ascending and descending grades of human intellect, and contemplate the immeasurable distance between the minds of a Newton and a Hicks; of a Hicks and an Esquimaux: you will find the last unable to comprehend truths of which you possess indubitable evidence, and yourself unable to understand many of the laws by which the universe is governed, although you may have before you, the demonstrations by which the great philosopher has proved their truth. Indeed after all this boast of regulating the conduct by those facts and circumstances only which we understand, every observer must perceive, that under the practical exercise of this principle, even the common affairs of life would stand still; that we all act on the moral certainty of the existence and operation of things, the cause or production of which is beyond our comprehension; and that it is from the evidence of their actual existence, and not the discovery of the means of it, that our belief in them is established. And such is the weakness of that understanding on which you so much rely, that even on subjects where it can with propriety be exercised, we every day see men believing and disbelieving propositions under the influence of their interests and inclinations, and sincerely changing their opinions, with their situations and circumstances. "Reason," (says the author[71] of a review of the internal evidence of the christian religion,) "is undoubtedly our surest guide in all matters which lie within the narrow circle of her intelligence. On the subject of revelation her province is only to examine its authority and when that is once proved, she has no more to do, but to acquiesce in its doctrines; and is therefore never so ill employed as when she pretends to accommodate them to her own ideas of rectitude and truth. God, says this _self sufficient teacher_, is perfectly wise, just, and good; and what is the inference? That all his dispensations must be conformable to our notions of perfect wisdom, justice, and goodness: but it should first be proved, that man is as perfect and as wise as his Creator, or this consequence will by no means follow; but rather the reverse, that is, that the dispensations of a perfect and all wise being, must probably, appear unreasonable, and perhaps unjust, to a being imperfect and ignorant." And in reply to the objections to the divine origin of the christian religion, from the apparent incredibility of some of its doctrines, particularly those concerning the trinity, and atonement for sin by the sufferings and death of Christ, one of which is asserted to be contrary to all the principles of human reason, and the other to all our ideas of divine justice, he says, "No arguments founded on principles which we cannot comprehend, can possibly disprove a proposition already proved on principles which we do understand: and therefore on this subject they ought not to be attended to: that three