He then fell in with one who was a
pure Deist, and was shorn of every shred of dogma which he had ever held,
except a belief in the personality and providence of the Creator.
On reviewing his letters written to me about this time, I am painfully
struck with the manner in which they show that all these pitiable
vagaries were to be traced to a single cause--a cause which still exists
to the misleading of hundreds of thousands, and which, I fear, seems
likely to continue in full force for many a year to come--I mean, to a
false system of training which teaches people to regard Christianity as a
thing one and indivisible, to be accepted entirely in the strictest
reading of the letter, or to be rejected as absolutely untrue. The fact
is, that all permanent truth is as one of those coal measures, a seam of
which lies near the surface, and even crops up above the ground, but
which is generally of an inferior quality and soon worked out; beneath it
there comes a labour of sand and clay, and then at last the true seam of
precious quality, and in virtually inexhaustible supply. The truth which
is on the surface is rarely the whole truth. It is seldom until this has
been worked out and done with--as in the case of the apparent flatness of
the earth--that unchangeable truth is discovered. It is the glory of the
Lord to conceal a matter: it is the glory of the king to find it out.
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