surmount it! He is
compromised, coerced, by the elements of language; but what of that? It
is an element of man's creating. And just as in descending on man by His
answers God is defeated or distorted many times by the foul atmosphere
in which man has thrown himself, so in descending upon the mind (unless
by dreams, or some language that he may have kept pure), God is thwarted
and controlled by the imperfections of human language. And, apart from
the ideas, I myself could imitate the Scriptural language--I know its
secret, its principle of movement which lies chiefly in high
abstractions--far better than is done in most parts of the Apocrypha.

The power lies in the spirit--the animating principle; and verily such a
power seems to exist. And the fact derived from the holiness, the
restraints even upon the Almighty's power through His own holiness,
goodness, and wisdom, are so vast that, instead of the unlimited power
which hypocritical glorifiers ascribe to Him by way of lip-honour, in
reaching man _ex-abundantibus_ in so transcendent a way that mere excess
of means would have perplexed a human choice, on the contrary, I am
persuaded that besides the gulf of 1,500 years so as to hold on, so as
to hold hard, and to effect the translation of His will unaltered,
uncorrupted, through the violent assaults of idolatries all round, and
the perverse, headstrong weakness of a naturally unbelieving people,[35]
down to the time of Christ from the time of Moses--there was the labour
hardly to be effected; and why? I have always been astonished at men
treating such a case as a simple _original_ problem as to God. But far
otherwise. It was a problem secondary to a change effected by man. His
rays, His sun, still descended as ever; but when they came near to the
foul atmosphere of man, no ray could pierce unstained, unrefracted, or
even untwisted. It was distorted so as to make it hardly within the
limits of human capacity (observe, the difficulty was in the human power
to receive, to sustain, to comprehend--not in the Divine power to
radiate, to receive what was directed to it). Often I have reflected on
the tremendous gulf of separation placed between man, by his own act,
and all the Divine blessings which could visit him. (This is illustrated
by prayer; for, while we think it odd that so many prayers of good men
for legitimate objects of prayer should seem to be unanswered, we
nevertheless act as to our prayers in a kind of unconsc