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If we judged by what seemed to us likely, how sure should we feel that it would have been set down! Oh! how many difficulties might have been met! how many objections have been answered! how many heresies have been avoided! how great a flood of light have been thrown upon various points of history, prophecy, and doctrine! and how great a guide have been given for all in life and conduct! had it seemed good to the Holy Ghost to let the Evangelist record that discourse. If we judged by our sense of likelihood, should we not say, "What could be so full of interest and of edification! How important! how needful for us to know what our Lord said, when beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself!'" But not one word of it is set down, and, perchance, for the very cause that it would have too much abridged our trial had we possessed such an exposition, and that we may learn in all things not to judge amiss as to the hard things or the secret things in God's Word nor to think "His ways are as our ways." Had that discourse been placed before us, perchance there had never been an Arian or a Socinian in the world. (How good we might think it!) Had the whole marriage law of God, if we may so say, been systematically set down in His holy Word, it may be there would have been none now to tamper with it. (How happy, too, we should think it!) But we might as well say, "How happy if Adam had had no trial put upon him, and so had never fallen!"
But our duty is, as it is, and as God has thought fit to set it before us. He has revealed to us His law and will in such manner and degree as seemed to Him good. It is our's to receive it and to seek to understand it as most humbly and reverently we may, and, asking His grace and help, to do our best to keep it: to keep it individually in our own lives,
