This passage spiritually alludes to the strength and vigour of the human intellect, when guided by just principles, as the passage at the head of this meditation does when influenced by evil, darkened by error, without any acknowledgment that truth is from God alone. The progress of true religion is pointed out by the Lord walking through the sea with his horses; and the restoration of the church, and destruction of evil and error, is imaged by the Lord riding on a white horse, followed by the armies of heaven, also riding on white horses.
How instructive, then, is the correspondence of the horse. Powerful as are our understandings, it is the Lord also who has so endowed us; and as all our sufficiency is of God, without whom we can do nothing, all our intellectual faculties must be exercised under His guidance, and for the furtherance of the truth, and with the acknowledgment that all our talents are from Him. Then will they, indeed, be a glory and a rejoicing unto us. Without these acknowledgments, "a horse, that is, the understanding, is a vain thing for safety, neither will it deliver any one by its great strength."
THE ass represents that quality of knowledge which is derived from the senses alone, and which, though of the same nature as intellectual truth, is of a lower kind, and differs from it in many respects.
