d 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. Whereas his
greatness, his wisdom, are rather shown in not making as we make,
not working as we work: but in this is the greatness of God
manifest, in that he has ordained laws which must work of
themselves, and with which he need never interfere: laws by which
the tiny seed, made up only (as far as we can see) of a little
water, and air, and earth, must grow up into plant, leaf, and
flower, utterly unlike itself, and must produce seeds which have the
truly miraculous power of growing up in their turn, into plants
exactly like that from which they sprung, and no other. Ah, my
friends, herein is the glory of God: and he who will consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow, that man will see at last that
the highest, and therefore the truest, notion of God is, not that
the universe is continually going wrong, so that he has to interfere
and right it: but that the universe is continually going right,
because he hath given it a law which cannot be broken.

And when a man sees that, there will arise within his soul a clear
light, and an awful joy, and an abiding peace, and a sure hope; and
a faith as of a little child.

Then will that man crave no more for signs and wonders, with the
superstitious and the unbelieving, who have eyes, and see not; ears,
and cannot hear; whose hearts are waxen gross, so that they cannot
consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: but all his cry
will be to the Lord of Order, to make him orderly; to the Lord of
Law, to make him loyal; to the Lord in whom is nothing arbitrary, to
take out of him all that is unreasonable and self-willed; and make
him content, like his Master Christ before him, to do the will of
his Father in heaven, who has sent him into this noble world. He
will no longer fancy that God is an absent God, who only comes down
now and then to visit the earth in signs and wonders: but he will
know that God is everywhere, and over all things, from the greatest
to the least; for in God, he, and all things created, live and move
and have their being. And therefore, knowing t