ful to make the words of his messengers rime
with their conclusions, interpret the great heart of God, not by their
own hearts, but by their miserable intellects; and, postponing the
obedience which alone can give power to the understanding, press upon
men's minds their wretched interpretations of the will of the Father,
instead of the doing of that will upon their hearts. They call their
philosophy the truth of God, and say men must hold it, or stand outside.
They are the slaves of the letter in all its weakness and
imperfection,--and will be until the spirit of the Word, the spirit of
obedience shall set them free.

The babes must beware lest the wise and prudent come between them and
the Father. They must yield no claim to authority over their belief,
made by man or community, by church any more than by synagogue. That
alone is for them to believe which the Lord reveals to their souls as
true; that alone is it possible for them to believe with what he counts
belief. The divine object for which teacher or church exists, is the
persuasion of the individual heart to come to Jesus, the spirit, to be
taught what he alone can teach.

Terribly has his gospel suffered in the mouths of the wise and prudent:
how would it be faring now, had its first messages been committed to
persons of repute, instead of those simple fishermen? It would be
nowhere, or, if anywhere, unrecognizable. From the first we should have
had a system founded on a human interpretation of the divine gospel,
instead of the gospel itself, which would have disappeared. As it is, we
have had one dull miserable human system after another usurping its
place; but, thank God, the gospel remains! The little child, heedless
of his trailing cloud of glory, and looking about him aghast in an
unknown world, may yet see and run to the arms open to the children. How
often has not some symbol employed in the New Testament been forced into
the service of argument for one or another contemptible scheme of
redemption, which were no redemption; while the truth for the sake of
which the symbol was used, the thing meant to be conveyed by it, has
lain unregarded beside the heap of rubbish! Had the wise and prudent
been the confidants of God, I repeat, the letter would at once have
usurped the place of the spirit; the ministering slave would have been
set over the household; a system of religion, with its rickety,
malodorous plan of salvation, would not only have at once been p