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needed, there is, at least, the general and most sufficient reply, that we are no judges of the right collocation of different points in God's revelation to man. When we see the fitness of anything, even as we can judge, we may glorify Him and be thankful; when we cannot, we may and should "put our mouth in the dust" and be humble. If things are not made more plain to us than they are, or even are less plain than they might have been, let us remember our state of trial, and acknowledge that all such may be, for ought we know, exactly so revealed as they are, and so placed as they are, for our trial. There is no reason why we should not be tried just as much as to difficulties put before our intellect, as by temptations appealing to our passions; and, as Bishop Butler has remarked, there are some men who, but for the former, might be found to have hardly any trial at all. (Analogy, Part ii., chapter 6.) If the particular objection here advanced be analyzed, it will be found to be but this:—Why should there have been an omission of this law of the Levirate in Leviticus, when, in the same place, there is the record of a prohibitory exception to it? But who shall pretend to account for the omissions of Holy Scripture? Take but that one record in St. Luke's Gospel of the two disciples who, on the morning of the Resurrection, walked to Emmaus, and were met by Jesus on the way, as they talked of those things which had come to pass, and were sad. What can be more wonderful to our conception than what we find, and what we do not find! After their converse concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a Prophet mighty in word and deed before God and all the people, we find that He himself, "beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself."[1] But we do not find a single syllable of all this discourse recorded in the Gospel.
