stament, "from the first
of Genesis to the last of the Prophets," is an allegory, "woven like a
beautiful tapestry" to picture forth to the eye a history whose real
meaning is to be found within the soul; if you dwell upon it only as
picture, only as history, it is a letter that kills; if you see your
own selves in it and by it, then it gives life.[19] You may learn the
whole Bible by heart and speak to any point in divinity according to
text and letter, and yet know {246} nothing of God or of spiritual
life.[20] "If you be always handling the letter of the Word, always
licking the letter, always chewing upon that, what great thing do you?
No marvel you are such starvelings!"[21] The letter is the husk; the
Word, the Spirit, is the kernel; the letter is the earthen jar, the
Spirit is the hidden manna; the letter is the outer court, the Spirit
is the inner sanctuary; the letter is the shadow, the Spirit is the
substance; the letter is the sheath, the Spirit is the sharp two-edged
sword; the letter is the hard encasing bone that must be broken, the
Spirit is inward marrow which nourishes the soul; the letter is
temporal, the Word is eternal[22]--"if ye once know the truth
experimentally after the Spirit ye will no longer make such a stir
about Forms, Disciplines, and Externals as if that were the great and
only Reformation!"[23] The real difficulty, the true cause of
spiritual dryness, is that "men strive and contend so much for the
letter and the external part of God's worship, that they neglect the
inward and internal altogether; for where is the man who is so zealous
and hot for the internal as he is for the external. If we press men to
the inward before the outward, or do as I do, lift up that; either how
cold and heartless they are, or else how quarrelsome and malicious they
are!"[24] When once the inward core of things has been grasped and the
transforming experience has occurred, making a new man--freed,
illuminated, sin-delivered, with "God the Life of the life and the Soul
of the soul"[25]--the outward forms and the external things will fall
into the right perspective and will receive their proper emphasis.
Imitating St. Augustine's great saying: "Love God absolutely and then
you may do as you please," Everard says, "Turn the man loose who has
found the living Guide within him, and then let him neglect the outward
if he can; just as you would say to a man who loves his wife with all
tenderness, 'you may beat