Page:The Bible- Its True Character and Spiritual Meaning.djvu/23

Rh itself an expression in such language without the mediation not of one only but of many distinct series of ideas. If the Scriptures really treated in their letter in all its parts of love and faith, of the Divine Character and human duty, of that which bears directly upon man's spiritual life, and those subjects concerning which alone he needs a revelation, it is inconceivable that such teaching could be given by God to man without containing spiritual arcana, distinct from the series of natural ideas composing the letter. Every writing has the author in it; all that there is in his mind concerning the subject is involved, and possible therefore to be evolved. Thought clothes itself in speech; and abstract intellectual truth clothes itself with the images of sensuous thought before it can put on a garment of language. All our ideas are derived in the first instance from impressions of phenomena; and the images of these become not only the basis of subsequent thoughts, but their appropriate sign and expression. Our intellectual conceptions, which are born on the one side of sensuous impressions, must on the other hand think themselves out, or clothe themselves with sensuous images, before they can find expression. How then shall truth divine,