could not talk sensibly about it. It is recorded of Father Adam Tanner, a celebrated theologian of our Society, that he was once seized by a grievous illness while on a journey, and took refuge in a peasant’s hut. His illness grew worse, and the people of the place, seeing that he was about to die, began to examine his effects, and amongst other mathematical instruments they found a glass containing a fearful and terrible monster, completely equipped with horns, wings, darts, and spear, and resembling a dragon in its appearance. The simple people at once called out with one voice: “That is the devil in the glass! the man is surely a wizard!” And together with their pastor, whom they called in to advise them, they resolved that after the man’s death they would not bury him in consecrated ground; and they would most certainly have carried out that determination had not one come up who understood the matter better, and explained to them that the dragon they took for the devil was nothing more than a beetle enlarged by a microscope, a kind of glass that makes small things look large, and thus apparently increased in size the beetle that seemed so terrible in their eyes. It is impossible for a man to pronounce a sensible opinion on a thing that he does not understand, and if he goes so far as to blame and find fault with it, he is guilty of rashness and presumption.
They who scrutinize and blame the works of God, are foolish and presumptuous. There, my dear brethren, you have an example of the foolish presumption of those men who curiously scrutinize the wonderful Works of God’s Providence in this life, and try to find out why things are arranged in this or that manner, forming rash judgments about them, and finding fault with them, as if God could or should have managed better. Why is this man born amongst Turks, and that other amongst Christians? Why was the true faith introduced so late into some countries, many souls meanwhile being eternally lost, while other lands received the light much sooner? Why is a country so largely Infected with heresy, and another altogether free from it? Why are so many innocent peoples harried by war, while others live in peace? Why must the descendants bear the punishment of the sins of their ancestors, although the latter got off scot free? Why is this man rich, that one poor, etc.? These curious questions and many similar ones often trouble our minds. Why has God made such arrangements? Are they quite right and just?
For they do not understand them.
O poor, blind, deaf, and ignorant mortal! Why do you trouble yourself about things you cannot and should not understand as