found, and will find to the end of time, a word said to their inmost
hearts, and more, a word said for those hearts to the living God of
heaven, by the vast humanity of David, the man after God's own
heart; the most thoroughly human figure, as it seems to me, which
had appeared upon the earth before the coming of that perfect Son of
man, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

It may be said, David's belief is no more than the common belief of
fanatics. They have in all ages fancied themselves under the
special protection of Deity, the object of special communications
from above.

Doubtless they have; and evil conclusions have they drawn therefrom,
in every age. But the existence of a counterfeit is no argument
against the existence of the reality; rather it is an argument for
the existence of the reality. In this case it is impossible to
conceive how the idea of communion with an unseen being ever entered
the human mind at all, unless it had been put there originally by
fact and experience. Man would never have even dreamed of a living
God, had not that living God been a reality, who did not leave the
creature to find his Creator, but stooped from heaven, at the very
beginning of our race, to find his creature.

And a reality you will surely find it--that living and practical
communication between your souls, and that Father in heaven who
created them. It will not be real, but morbid, even imaginary, just
in proportion as your souls are tainted with self-conceit, ambition,
self-will, malice, passion, or any wilful vice; especially with the
vice of bigotry, which settles beforehand for God what he shall
teach the soul, and in what manner he shall teach it, and turns a