Wesley Corpus

with all his wisdom and philosophy, . What points of knowledge did he gain * That life is sacred all,--and vain : Sacred, how high, and vain, how low, [e could not tell; but died to know. 9. “He died to know !” and so must you, unless you are now a partaker of Christian faith. O consider this ! Nay, and consider, not only how little you know of the immensity of the things that are beyond sense and time, but how uncer tainly do you know even that little ! How faintly glimmering a light is that you have ! Can you properly be said to know any of these things? Is that knowledge any more than bare conjecture? And the reason is plain. You have no senses suitable to invisible or eternal objects. What desiderata then, especially to the rational, the reflecting, part of man kind are these? A more extensive knowledge of things invisible and eternal; a greater certainty in whatever know ledge of them we have; and, in order to both, faculties capable of discerning things invisible. 10. Is it not so? Let impartial reason speak. Does not every thinking man want a window, not so much in his neighbour's, as in his own, breast? He wants an opening there, of whatever kind, that might let in light from eternity. He is pained to be thus feeling after God so darkly, so uncertainly; to know so little of God, and indeed so little of any beside material objects. He is concerned, that he must see even that little, not directly, but in the dim, sullied glass * of sense; and consequently so imperfectly and obscurely, that it is all a mere enigma still. 11. Now, these very desiderata faith supplies. It gives a more extensive knowledge of things invisible, showing what eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither could it before enter into our heart to conceive. And all these it shows in the clear est light, with the fullest certainty and evidence. For it does not leave us to receive our notices of them by mere reflection from the dull glass of sense; but resolves a thousand enigmas of the highest concern by giving faculties suited to things invisible.