Even the
name of the Saviour uttered in her singing tone and with the expression
she then gave it, came nearer to them than when she spoke it. The very
brooding of the voice on a word, seems to hatch something of what is in
it. She often felt, however, as if some new, other kind of messengers
than she or such as she, must one day be sent them; for there seemed a
gulf between their thoughts and hers, such as neither they nor she could
pass.
In fact they _could not_ think the things she thought, and had no
vocabulary or phrases or imagery whereby to express their own thinkings.
God does not hurry such: have we enough of hope for them, or patience
with them? I suspect their teachers must arise among themselves. They
too must have an elect of their own kind, of like passions with
themselves, to lift them up, and perhaps shame those that cannot reach
them. Our teaching to them is no teaching at all; it does not reach
their ignorance; perhaps they require a teaching that to our ignorance
would seem no teaching at all, or even bad teaching. How many things are
there in the world in which the wisest of us can ill descry the hand of
God! Who not knowing could read the lily in its bulb, the great oak in
the pebble-like acorn? God's beginnings do not _look_ like his
endings, but they _are_ like; the oak _is_ in the acorn, though
we cannot see it.
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