ge, whose inmost spirit He ever sees, and who is of more
awful value in His sight than all the stars of the sky. _How_ the
living and omniscient Spirit of God has access to the inner spirit of
man, I neither know nor could perhaps understand if it were revealed;
nor how He can teach that spirit without the gospel or the ordinary
means of grace, so as to bring it under law to God. But when I saw
a child (Laura Bridgman) who was born deaf, dumb, and blind,
marvellously educated by the genius and wisdom of her remarkable
instructor, I could not but feel how grand ends might be accomplished
in the human soul by means which before this experience I would have
pronounced as impossible;--and it suggested also to me how a poor
heathen even, like that blind girl, might be really taught by another
person, and be receiving light within, though for a time utterly
ignorant of either the name, the character, or the purposes of the
unseen and unheard teacher, who yet in his own way gradually was
training his scholar for fellowship with God and man.[A] We ignorant
and sinful men must confine our judgments as regards others to what is
right or wrong in their actions, and that solely to guide ourselves in
our personal duties towards God and one another. But as to deciding
the eternal fate of any man, that, thank God! can be done only by Him
to whom all men belong. When disposed to occupy the throne of the
judge, and to scrutinise human character with a jealous regard for the
righteousness of God, let us at once do so by summoning ourselves to
the bar!

[Footnote A: As an illustration of this, see a remarkable account of
a North American Indian, narrated by Brainerd in his Diary, date
September 21, 1745.]

This, however, amidst all perplexities we may certainly rely upon with
perfect confidence, that whatever is finally decided, and whatever
punishment is finally awarded to any, will be in accordance with the
perfect will of "God, whose name is love;" so that all the true and
just, the good and loving in the universe, will, when they know all
the grounds of His judgment, sympathise with their whole soul in His
decisions, and see His glory revealed in them. We also know that there
will be "a multitude greater than any man can number" in God's family;
that they will be gathered "out of every nation, kindred, and tongue;"
and this we may hope for, that the number of the lost may be to those
who are saved fewer far than the number of those