devotion to the FATHER OF THEIR BEING which is the express end and purpose of all Divine speech.
Let you and I then, my excellent Friend, be continually on our guard against plunging ourselves into such a pit of folly, of danger, and of delusion, and thus exposing ourselves to the terrible censure of having ears and yet not hearing. For this purpose, let us recollect, that the letter, or history of the WORD OF GOD, when separated from the spirit and life of the HOLY BOOK, is but like the table on which the TEN COMMANDMENTS were originally written, but is not the commandments themselves. To be content, then, with hearing the letter or history of revealed WISDOM, without paying any attention to its spirit and life, is like blotting the commandments from the table on which they are written, and being satisfied with a blank page, void alike of instruction and of edification.
In the hope that you will excuse the liberty I take in suggesting the above cautions, and in the devout prayer that you may profit by them, so as to open all your ears, both bodily, intellectual, and voluntary, to the VOICE of the ETERNAL MERCY, and thus hearing, not only sound, but sense and meaning,—and not only sense and meaning, but spirit and
