My dear friend,

In my last Letter I said that in the Bible there is more that FINDS
me than I have experienced in all other books put together; that the
words of the Bible find me at greater depths of my being; and that
whatever finds me brings with it an irresistible evidence of its
having proceeded from the Holy Spirit. But the doctrine in question
requires me to believe that not only what finds me, but that all that
exists in the sacred volume, and which I am bound to find therein,
was--not alone inspired by, that is composed by, men under the
actuating influence of the Holy Spirit, but likewise--dictated by an
Infallible Intelligence; that the writers, each and all, were
divinely informed as well as inspired. Now here all evasion, all
excuse, is cut off. An infallible intelligence extends to all
things, physical no less than spiritual. It may convey the truth in
any one of the three possible languages--that of sense, as objects
appear to the beholder on this earth; or that of science, which
supposes the beholder placed in the centre; or that of philosophy,
which resolves both into a supersensual reality. But whichever be
chosen--and it is obvious that the incompatibility exists only
between the first and second, both of them being indifferent and of
equal value to the third--it must be employed consistently; for an
infallible intelligence must intend to be intelligible, and not to
deceive. And, moreover, whichever of these three languages be
chosen, it must be translatable into truth. For this is the very
essence of the doctrine, that one and the same intelligence is
speaking in the unity of a person; which unity is no more broken by
the diversity of the pipes through which it makes itself audible,
than is a tune by the different instruments on which it is played by