Notes On The Parables Of Our Lord

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: all the fulness of its perfections. So that of the truths of God in the language of men, (which language of course includes man's acts as well as his words,) of these sons of heaven married to the daughters of earth, it may truly be said, " we have this treasure in earthen vessels." And it must only be looked for, that somewhere or other the earthen vessel will appear, that the imperfection which cleaves to our forms of utterance, to men's words and to their works, will make itself felt either in the misapprehensions of those to whom the language is addressed (as at John iii. 11), or by the language itself, though the best that human speech could supply, by the men themselves, though the noblest, it may be, of their age and nation,—yet failing to set forth the divine truth in all its fulness and completeness. No doubt it was a feeling, working more or less consciously, of the dangers and drawbacks that attend all our means of communication—a desire, also, to see eye to eye, or, as St . Paul terms it, face to face,t (1 Cor. .Kiii, 12,) which caused the mystics to press with such earnestness and frequency, that we should seek to abstract ourselves from all It is now rather fitpavs, ty alviyfiari, Hi ta,Airrpov, (1 Cor. xiii.9,12,) iropoi/uW, (John xvi. 25.) Cf. Bernabd, In Cant., Serm. 31. 8. A Persian mystical poet has caught this truth, which he has finely expressed. (See Tholuck's Bluthcnsamm. aus d. Mbrgenl. Mystik, p. 215.) Die Sinnenwelt ein Schatten ist der Geistwelt, Herab von dieser jener Nahrungsmilch quellt. Gefuhle sind gefangene Monarchen, Die in der Worte Kerker sich verbargen. Tritt das Unendliche in's Herz des Weisen, Mass flugs hinab er zum Yerstaode reisen. Der muss die Schattenbilder ihm gewahren, Damit er konn' Unendliches erklaren; Doch nimmer ist das...