“I say, sir, that with the eyes fixed on the social organization of nations, you see only the springs of the machine, and lose sight of the sublime workman who makes them act; I say that you do not recognize before you and around you any but those officeholders whose commissions have been signed by a minister or king; and that the men whom God has put above those officeholders, ministers, and kings, by giving them a mission to follow out, instead of a post to fill⁠—I say that they escape your narrow, limited field of observation. It is thus that human weakness fails, from its debilitated and imperfect organs. Tobias took the angel who restored him to light for an ordinary young man. The nations took Attila, who was doomed to destroy them, for a conqueror similar to other conquerors, and it was necessary for both to reveal their missions, that they might be known and acknowledged; one was compelled to say, ‘I am the angel of the Lord;’ and the other, ‘I am the hammer of God,’ in order that the divine essence in both might be revealed.”