whole Bible has thus lost its message for the common run of
hearers; it has become mere words of course; and the parson may
bawl himself scarlet and beat the pulpit like a thing possessed,
but his hearers will continue to nod; they are strangely at peace,
they know all he has to say; ring the old bell as you choose, it is
still the old bell and it cannot startle their composure. And so
with this byword about the letter and the spirit. It is quite
true, no doubt; but it has no meaning in the world to any man of
us. Alas! it has just this meaning, and neither more nor less:
that while the spirit is true, the letter is eternally false.

The shadow of a great oak lies abroad upon the ground at noon,
perfect, clear, and stable like the earth. But let a man set
himself to mark out the boundary with cords and pegs, and were he
never so nimble and never so exact, what with the multiplicity of
the leaves and the progression of the shadow as it flees before the
travelling sun, long ere he has made the circuit the whole figure
will have changed. Life may be compared, not to a single tree, but
to a great and complicated forest; circumstance is more swiftly
changing than a shadow, language much more inexact than the tools
of a surveyor; from day to day the trees fall and are renewed; the
very essences are fleeting as we look; and the whole world of
leaves is swinging tempest-tossed among the winds of time. Look
now for your shadows. O man of formulae, is this a place for you?
Have you fitted the spirit to a single case? Alas, in the cycle of
the ages when shall such another be proposed for the judgment of
man? Now when the sun shines and the winds blow, the wood is
filled with an innumerable multitude of shadows, tumultuously
tossed and changing; and at every gust the whole carpet leaps and
becomes new. Can you or your heart say more?