all the difficulties which this ignorance and want of capacity occasioned, will have a proper notion of the nature of those objections which human weakness urges against the divine authority of Scripture, on account of the seeming difficulties with which some things in it are attended. You, my dearest Lady Elizabeth, have the advantage of bringing to the important inquiry, on which we are about to enter, a pure and unprejudiced mind. You will easily perceive the folly and impropriety of rejecting with scorn, or pronouncing with arrogance, upon such parts of these high themes as are involved in obscurity. Continue, upon such occasions, to act as you have hitherto acted, and you will avoid the errors into which pride and ignorance are so apt to fall. You remember the book book of natural philosophy into which you used sometimes to look, and in which you occasionally met with passages that you read with much delight, though you seldom could go through half a chapter without finding something which you were obliged to pass as unintelligible, for want of previous information. The chapter upon optics in particular, concerning which you were extremely curious, you found you could then make nothing of But what was the consequence ? Did you take upon you to deny the truth of what the learned author had advanced upon any of these subjects, because it was not level to your apprehension? Did you say that you knew yourself to be a judge of what you could not judge, and pretend to decide upon what was, and what was not properly stated, concerning things of of whose powers and properties you were utterly ignorant? No! With characteristic modesty you confessed the subjects to be above your comprehension; and, feeling your deficiency in respect to the knowledge requisite to qualify you for entering on the abstruser points, you referred them to a future period; resolving meanwhile, by diligence and application, to prepare yourself for receiving further information. How wise! how just! is the beautiful and striking observation of our Saviour, with respect to this ingenuousness of disposition: Verily, " verily, I say unto you, that unless ye become as little children, ye shall "in nowise enter into the kingdom of "heaven.' Docility, charming as it is in youth, is no less necessary towards the improvement of our riper years. When When with youth we lose all teachableness of disposition, our case may indeed be reckoned hopeless; for how shall we then prepare for that future scene, for which the present is meant to educate us? If we become careless or intractable; as the opportunities of improvement increase, the opportunities of improvement will to us have been enlarged in vain. We shall remain confined to the narrow space which we had in youth been forced to cultivate; and when the period arrives in which we must render an account of our transactions, find that the only acquisition we have made, consists in having added presumption to igno rance. Persevere then, my most engaging young friend, persevere in the path on which you have already entered. So shall you go forward from strength to |