ies an intellectual defect
also, the not perceiving that the present corrupt condition of
human nature (which condition this harlot muse helps to
perpetuate) is a temporary or superficial state. The good word
lasts forever: the impure word can only buoy itself in the gross
gas that now envelops us, and will sink altogether to ground as
that works itself clear in the everlasting effort of God.

May I not call it temporary? for when I ascend into the pure
region of truth (or under my undermost garment, as Epictetus and
Teufelsdrockh would say), I see that to abide inviolate, although
all men fall away from it; yea, though the whole generation of
Adam should be healed as a sore off the face of the creation.
So, my friend, live Socrates and Milton, those starch Puritans,
for evermore! Strange is it to me that you should not sympathize
(yet so you said) with Socrates, so ironical, so true, and who
"tramped in the mire with wooden shoes whenever they would force
him into the clouds." I seem to see him offering the hand to you
across the ages which some time you will grasp.

I am glad you like Sampson Reed, and that he has inspired some
curiosity respecting his Church. Swedenborgianism, if you should
be fortunate in your first meetings, has many points of
attraction for you: for instance, this article, "The poetry of
the Old Church is the reality of the New," which is to be
literally understood, for they esteem, in common with all the
Trismegisti, the Natural World as strictly the symbol or exponent
of the Spiritual, and part for part; the animals to be the
incarnations of certain affections; and scarce a popular
expression esteemed figurative, but they affirm to be the
simplest statement of fact. Then is their whole theory of social
relations--both in and out of the body--most philosophical, and,
though at variance with the popular theology, self-evident. It
is only when they come to their descriptive theism, if I may say
so, and then to their drollest heaven, and to some autocratic not
moral decrees of God, that the mythus loses me. In general, too,
they receive the fable instead of the moral of their Aesop. They
are to me, however, deeply interesting, as a sect which I think
must contribute more than all other sects to the new faith which
must arise out of all.

You express a desire to know something of myself. Account me "a
drop in the ocean seeking another drop," or God-ward, striving to
keep so true a