FullReads

Fifthly, as all words cover ideas, and many a word covers a choice of ideas, and very many ideas split into a variety of modifications, we shall, even after a fourth inspiration has qualified us for selecting the true reading, still be at a loss how, upon this right reading, to fix the right acceptation. So there, at that fifth stage, in rushes the total deluge of human theological controversies. One church, or one sect, insists upon one sense; another, and another, ‘to the end of time,’ insists upon a different sense. Babel is upon us; and, to get rid of Babel, we shall need a fifth inspiration. No. 5 is clamorously called for.[Footnote: One does not wish to be tedious; or, if one has a gift in that way, naturally one does not wish to bestow it all upon a perfect stranger, as ‘the reader’ usually is, but to reserve a part for the fireside, and the use of one’s most beloved friends; else I could torment the reader by a longer succession of numbers, and perhaps drive him to despair. But one more of the series, viz., No. 6, as a parting gage d’ amitie, he must positively permit me to drop into his pocket. Supposing, then, that No. 5 were surmounted, and that, supernaturally, you knew the value to a hair’s breadth, of every separate word (or, perhaps, composite phrase made up from a constellation of words)–ah, poor traveller in trackless forests, still you are lost again–for, oftentimes, and especially in St. Paul, the words may be known, their sense may be known, but their logical relation is still doubtful. The word X and the word Y are separately clear; but has Y the dependency of a consequence upon X, or no dependency at all? Is the clause which stands eleventh in the series a direct prolongation of that which stands tenth? or is the tenth wholly independent and insulated? or does it occupy the place of a parenthesis, so as to modify the ninth clause? People that have pracised composition as much, and with as vigilant an eye as myself, know also, by thousands of cases, how infinite is the disturbance caused in the logic of a thought by the mere position of a word as despicable as the word even. A mote, that is itself invisible, shall darken the august faculty of sight in a human eye–the heavens shall be hidden by a wretched atom that dares not show itself–and the station of a syllable shall cloud the judgment of a council. Nay, even an ambiguous emphasis falling to the right-hand word, or the left-hand word, shall confound a system.] But we all know, each knows by his own experience, that No. 5 is not forthcoming; and, in the absence of that, what avail for us the others? ‘Man overboard!’ is the cry upon deck; but what avails it for the poor drowning creature that a rope being thrown to him is thoroughly secured at one end to the ship, if the other end floats wide of his grasp? We are in prison: we descend from our prison-roof, that seems high as the clouds, by knotting together all the prison bed-clothes, and all the aids from friends outside. But all is too short: after swarming down the line, in middle air, we find ourselves hanging: sixty feet of line are still wanting. To reascend–that is impossible: to drop boldly–alas! that is to die.

Meantime, what need of this eternal machinery, that eternally is breaking like ropes of sand? Or of this earth resting on an elephant, that rests on a tortoise, that, when all is done, must still consent to rest on the common atmosphere of God? These chains of inspiration are needless. The great ideas of the Bible protect themselves. The heavenly truths, by their own imperishableness, defeat the mortality of languages with which for a moment they are associated. Is the lightning enfeebled or dimmed, because for thousands of years it has blended with the tarnish of earth and the steams of earthly graves? Or light, which so long has travelled in the chambers of our sickly air, and searched the haunts of impurity–is that less pure than it was in the first chapter of Genesis? Or that more holy light of truth–the truth, suppose, written from his creation upon the tablets of man’s heart–which truth never was imprisoned in any Hebrew or Greek, but has ranged for ever through courts and camps, deserts and cities, the original lesson of justice to man and piety to God–has that become tainted by intercourse with flesh? or has it become hard to decipher, because the very heart, that human heart where it is inscribed, is so often blotted with falsehoods? You are aware, perhaps, reader, that in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Asia Minor (and, indeed, elsewhere), through the very middle of the salt-sea billows, rise up, in shining columns, fountains of fresh water.[Footnote: See Mr. Yates’s ‘Annotations upon Fellowes’s Researches in Anatolia,’ as one authority for this singular phenomenon.] In the desert of the sea are found Arabian fountains of Ishmael and Isaac! Are these fountains poisoned for the poor victim of fever, because they have to travel through a contagion of waters not potable? Oh, no! They bound upwards like arrows, cleaving the seas above with as much projectile force as the glittering water-works of Versailles cleave the air, and rising as sweet to the lip as ever mountain torrent that comforted the hunted deer.