e utter an audible
voice, by undulating the air, as we do? Has he direct relations to
matter, as we have? How could his offer of worldly power and riches be
any real temptation to the Saviour, when Jesus knew that Satan had no
power to make his offer good?

There are indeed few things, in revelation or out of revelation, in mind
or in matter, which we really and fully comprehend. If, therefore, we
are to teach children nothing but what they understand, we must either
teach them nothing at all, or our rule must be materially qualified. No
one knows absolutely but God. Among created beings, there are almost
infinite gradations of intelligence, although the highest created
intelligence begins its range infinitely below that of the Divine mind.
A given formula of words, therefore, may express very different degrees
of truth according to the degree of intelligence of the party using it.

A catechism or a creed may convey twenty different degrees of meaning to
twenty successive persons, varying in age, character, and culture. Yet
the very youngest and feeblest shall understand something of its
meaning, while the wisest and oldest shall not have exhausted it. The
young and feeble intellect, receiving a formula of truth with suitable
explanations of its terms, takes in at once a portion of its meaning and
gradually grows into a fuller comprehension of what it has received. A
statement of doctrine received by a child at the age of five, conveys to
him a few feeble rays of light. The same statement at the age of ten,
means to him far more than it did before, while at twenty it is all
luminous with knowledge.

The mind itself grows and expands, and with every addition to its own
vigor and stature, does it find new truths in those expressive and
pregnant formulas of doctrine with which it has from childhood been
familiar. It is like looking at a material object, first with the naked
eye, and then with glasses of continually increased magnifying power.
The more we increase the power, the more we see in the same bit of
matter. Yet no glass will ever reveal to us the very interior essence of
even the smallest particle of dust. God only knows fully either any
single thing or the sum of things. Because, however, we cannot see into
the essence of a pebble or a grain of sand, shall we shut our eyes to it
altogether? Shall we not look at it, first as an infant does, then as a
child, then as a youth, then as a man, then as a philosopher?