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I am well aware that I am speaking of a region of experience in which there is abundant room for self-deception. I know that those who, out of the abundance of the heart, speak very freely of these things with their lips are apt not only to shock one’s sense of reverence, but to betray a deplorable want of logic in the inferences they draw from trifling facts—facts whose significance to themselves cannot possibly be conveyed to others, and may indeed very likely be in large measure fanciful or even distorted. I think that we are wrong when we attempt to found any sort of proof or argument in favour of what is called “a particular providence” exclusively upon the occurrences of our own lives. People forget that what is most convincing to themselves, because it was within the four walls of their own experience that it happened, is for that very reason least convincing to others—that is, in the way of argument, though the impression may, of course, be sympathetically shared, and may rightly have special weight with those who have reason to trust the speaker. But, as a general rule, I believe that reverence and reason combine to demand that the personal and intimate dealings of Divine Providence with each one should be mainly reserved for personal and intimate use and edification. Proof or argument as to the general truth that God does guide His people individually must be founded upon a wider basis than is afforded by any one person’s experience. I believe that there are abundant reasons, of a far-reaching and deep kind, to justify each one in looking for the minutest individual guidance. I cannot, indeed, as I have already stated, understand how those who believe in a providential order at all can limit it to the larger outlines, or, as is so often done in practice, to the pleasing results of the Divine government. If we believe, in any real and honest sense, that the ordering of all human affairs is in the hands of one supreme Ruler, how can we stop short of believing that the minutest trifle affecting any one of us is under the same all-pervading care? It would, I think, be as reasonable to say that God created animals, but left it to each one to develop its own fur or feathers. And, again, if we attribute our preservation from danger to Him, how can we flinch from the parallel belief that by His ordinance also we were exposed to it; yes, and in some cases doomed to suffer the worst it can wreak upon us “without reprieve”?