"He painted in vivid and striking colours, the utter incapacity of man to conceive identically of such a being as God. 'The little puny brain of man,' said he, 'which you may hold in the hollow of your hand, cannot contain a true conception of God in all his majesty! the little arteries and fibres of our poor heads would rend and burst asunder with such an idea. "'To form one single correct thought of so great a Spirit, you must first conceive of those things which surround him; as, when we view a painting of some earthly object, there must first be a background to relieve the eye. So when you would conceive of that great Being truly and fully, you must be able to realize the duration of eternity, obliterate the little periods of time and chronology, which require a starting and a resting-place in our human minds,--soar out of the reach of the sickly atmospheres which surround these little planets, and stand erect in the broad and fathomless light of God's own atmosphere! Could the human eye see with such rays, and stretch its glances over the great waves and boundless oceans of light in which he dwells, one single ray of it would blast your optic nerves. "'Even here upon earth, if we are suddenly brought from a dark dungeon into the bright rays of his reflected glory, our little optical machinery quails and dances with the shock; but take that same creature from his gloomy dungeon, and place him in the glassy sea of light in which God dwells! The utter horrors of such a moment, if they did not instantly explode the soul into its elements, would be worse than the terrors of convulsions, and earthquakes, and the black and fathomless chasms of the sea. And yet! some of us desire in our hearts a direct revelation to ourselves from this sublime Being! Know you what you desire? You desire that God should stretch out his mighty power, and draw away the friendly veil of the heavens, and burst upon an astounded world in all his fearful attributes! Before such an immediate presence, the sun and moon would become dark in contrast. The natural laws which he has given us for our protection, of gravitation, electricity, and magnetism, would burst loose from their reflected positions, and all animate and inanimate nature would fall before their First Great Cause! We cannot have direct physical intercourse with God. We are physically incompetent to encounter him, either in his goodness or in his wrath.