ly-favored suitors. The sciences are lofty, and will not stoop
to the reach of ordinary capacities. But 'wisdom (by which the royal
preacher means piety) is a loving spirit; she is easily seen of them
that love her, and found of all such as seek her.' Nay, she is so
accessible and condescending, 'that she preventeth them that desire
her, making herself first known unto them.'

"We are told by the same animated writer, 'that wisdom is the breath
of the power of God.' How infinitely superior in grandeur and
sublimity, is this description to the origin of the _wisdom_ of the
heathens, as described by their poets and mythologists! In the
exalted strains of the Hebrew poetry, we read, that 'wisdom is the
brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the
power of God, and the image of his goodness.'

"The philosophical author of 'The Defence of Learning,' observes,
that knowledge has some thing of venom and malignity in it, when
taken without its proper corrective; and what that is, the
inspired St. Paul teaches us, by placing it as the immediate
antidote--'Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.' Perhaps it
is the vanity of human wisdom, unchastised by this correcting
principle, which has made so many infidels. It may proceed from the
arrogance of a self-sufficient pride, that some philosophers disdain
to acknowledge their belief in a Being who has judged proper to
conceal from them the infinite wisdom of his counsels; who (to
borrow the lofty language of the man of Uz) refused to consult them
when he laid the foundations of the earth, when he shut up the sea
with doors, and made the clouds the garment thereof.

"A man must be an infidel either from pride, prejudice, or bad
education; he cannot be one unawares, or by surprise; for infidelity
is not occasioned by sudden impulse or violent temptation. He may be
hurried by some vehement desire into an immoral action, at which he
will blush in his cooler moments, and which he will lament as the
sad effect of a spirit unsubdued by religion; but infidelity is a
calm, considerate act, which cannot plead the weakness of the heart,
or the seduction of the senses. Even good men frequently fail in
their duty through the infirmities of nature and the allurements of
the world; but the infidel errs on a plan, on a settled and
deliberate principle.

"But though the minds of men are sometimes fatally infected with
this disease, either through unhappy prepossession, o