representative--man fallible and weak. The judge on the bench represents God's Wisdom and Equity, though his decisions are often far enough from that Divine pattern. The magistrate represents God's authority, though in his hands that authority is sometimes made the warrant for tyranny and oppression. So, in like manner, the preacher represents the Holy Ghost, though he does not always represent Him worthily either in manner or matter. It is part of a plan. He who chooses man, sinful like ourselves, and encompassed with infirmities, to convey His pardon to the guilty, chooses as the organ of the Eternal Wisdom, "_holy, one, manifold, subtle, eloquent, undefiled, having all power, overseeing all things, the Brightness of Eternal Light, the unspotted mirror of God's Majesty_ [Footnote 120] --man, with stammering lips, with a feeble intellect and an impure heart. [Footnote 120: Wisd. vii. 22-26.] And there is a reason in this plan. When the Church goes out to evangelize a new and strange people, she seeks, as soon as possible, to secure some of the natives to aid her in her work, who know the speech, and the manners, and the habits of thought, of those with whom they have to deal. No doubt her old, tried missionaries could furnish an instruction which would be more complete in itself, but the words of the neophyte will be better understood and received. So God, when He speaks to man, chooses as His instrument one who understands the dialect of earth. An angel would be a messenger answering better to His dignity, but less to our necessities; so He considers our welfare alone, and passes by Raphael, "who is one of the daily angels," and Michael, "who is one of the chief princes," and Gabriel, who is the _strength of God_, and chooses Moses, who was "slow of speech," and Jeremias, who was diffident as a child, and Amos, who was but a herdsman, following the flock--to utter His will to man. {375} The human alloy in the Divine Word, no doubt, makes it less accurate, but it makes it more easily understood. Oh! it is a mercy of God thus to disguise Himself and dilute His word. The children of Israel said to Moses: "_Speak thou to us, and we will hear. Let not the Lord speak any more to us, lest we die_." [Footnote 121] Who could look upon the Lord and live? Who could listen to His voice in its untempered majesty and not be afraid? "_The word of God is more penetrating than any two-edged sword, reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also, and the marrow_." [Footnote 122] [Footnote 121: Exod. xx. 19.] [Footnote 122: Heb. iv. 12.]