I know it is very difficult to believe that. It has been always
difficult; and for this reason. Our souls and minds are disorderly;
and therefore order does not look to us what it is, the likeness and
glory of God. I will explain. If God, at any moment, should create
a full-grown plant with stalk, leaves, and flowers, all perfect, all
would say, There is the hand of God! How great is God! There is,
indeed, a miracle!--Just because it would seem not to be according
to order. But the tiny seed sown in the ground, springing up into
root-leaf, stalk, rough leaf, flower, seed, which will again be sown
and spring up into leaf, flower, and seed;--in that perpetual
miracle, people see no miracle: just because it is according to
order: because it comes to pass by regular and natural laws. And
why? Because, such as we are, such we fancy God to be. And we are
all of us more or less disorderly: fanciful; changeable; fond of
doing not what we ought, but what we like; fond of showing our
power, not by keeping rules, but by breaking rules; and we fancy too
often that God is like ourselves, and make him in our image, after
our own likeness, which is disorder, and self-will, and
changeableness; instead of trying to be conformed to his image and
his likeness, which is order and law eternal: and, therefore,
whenever God seems (for he only _seems_ to our ignorance) to be
making things suddenly, as we make, or working arbitrarily as we
work, then we acknowledge his greatness and wisdom.
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