original, than directly by the most absolutely correct impression
which human language could convey. Even the most perfect human
speech, as has been often pointed out, is a very gross and imperfect
vehicle of thought. I remember once hearing him say that it was not
till he was nearly thirty that he discovered "what thick and sticky
fluids were air and water," how crass and dull in comparison with
other more subtle fluids; he added that speech had no less deceived
him, seeming, as it did, to be such a perfect messenger of thought,
and being after all nothing but a shuffler and a loiterer.

With most men the Gospels are true in spite of their discrepancies
and inconsistencies; with him Christianity, as distinguished from a
bare belief in the objectively historical character of each part of
the Gospels, was true because of these very discrepancies; as his
conceptions of the Divine manner of working became wider, the very
forces which had at one time shaken his faith to its foundations
established it anew upon a firmer and broader base. He was gradually
led to feel that the ideal presented by the life and death of our
Saviour could never have been accepted by Jews at all, if its whole
purport had been made intelligible during the Redeemer's life-time;
that in order to insure its acceptance by a nucleus of followers it
must have been endowed with a more local aspect than it was intended
afterwards to wear; yet that, for the sake of its subsequent
universal value, the destruction of that local complexion was
indispensable; that the corruptions inseparable from viva voce
communication and imperfect education were the means adopted by the
Creator to blur the details of the ideal, and give it that breadth
which could not be otherwise obtainable--and that thus the value of
the ideal was indefinitely enhanced, and DESIGNEDLY ENHANCED, alike
by the waste of time and by its incrustations; that all ideals gain