Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/194

iv them; and most consequently of their weight,—that arising, namely, from the subduing influence of God's words, as such, upon the human soul, is lost. Any one, who has been engaged in religious discussion, will, probably, if he have been led frequently to discuss the same subject, have found himself alleging an accustomed text without an adequate feeling of its import, and been checked perhaps and chided, in the midst, by the greatness of some of the words, which he has taken into his mouth. Something of the same kind is observable in the pulpit. It requires so constant an effort in any degree to realize things spiritual, that even earnest-minded persons may be sometimes observed to speak there of truths the most awful, in a tone, which, if their own words were echoed to them, would startle and pain themselves. This is in fact simply the old observation on the tendency of familiarity with a subject to diminish our sense of its greatness.

Other causes have operated to diminish the force of Scripture-teaching upon the subject of Holy Baptism. It was intended, doubtless, that truth should be preserved upon earth by being transmitted; and this, with regard not only to the great sum of religion, and the main articles of the Faith, but the right understanding of Holy Scripture also. Hence, while all have been made capable of understanding truth, when proposed to them, few, comparatively, have been entrusted with the power of distinguishing for themselves between truth and error, otherwise than they have been taught. A spiritual mind, however limited, will see truth for itself, but it is only by having at the first faithfully followed guidance to that truth. This instinctive adherence, however, to an inherited system, although implanted in us for the maintenance of truth, may become almost equally subservient to the propagation of error. And God, in that mysterious dispensation whereby He makes the trials of the children to depend upon the character of the parents, and entrusts each