Sacred Scriptures, since there is every reason to believe, that not one of them can gain admission into the mind and life of man, until by serious thought and serious purpose it has been well digested, through the combined effects of absorption and secretion.
Do you ask what this absorption and secretion mean, when applied to the other and more general precepts of GOD’S MOST HOLY WORD? I wish to answer, that by absorption and secretion, as thus applied, is to be understood the separation between the genuine sense of every precept and its apparent sense; in other words, between the spiritual sense and the literal sense, that so the Divine spirit and life of every precept may be elevated into the understanding and will, and at the same time, the appearances presented in the letter, or history, may be separated. As for example, JESUS CHRIST declares, “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple;” [Luke xiv. 33.]; in which words there is contained a double sense, viz. a genuine and an apparent one; the genuine sense teaching, that the words do not apply to man’s natural property, such as houses, lands, &c. but to his spiritual property,—that is to say, to his spiritual powers, talents, &c.; whilst the apparent sense teaches, that in the same words is included and expressed the necessity of man’s divesting himself of all natural property, as a
