’My pleasure would be, if with you, in talking over such little insight as I may have received into the wondrous harmony and symmetry of the whole Bible, by tolerably close examination of the text of the Greek, and to some extent of the Hebrew.  The way in which a peculiar word brings a whole passage or argument en rapport with a train of historical associations or previous statements is wonderful; e.g., the verb of which Moses is formed occurs only in Exodus ii. 10, 2 Samuel xxii. 17, Psalm xviii. 16.  See how the magnificent description of the Passage of the Red Sea in Psalm xviii. is connected with Moses by this one word.  These undesigned coincidences, and (surely) proofs of inspiration are innumerable.

’I do delight in it:  only I want more help, far more.  We have great advantages in this generation.  Dear Uncle James had no Commentary, one might almost say, on Old Testament or New Testament.  Ellicott, Wordsworth, and Alford on the New Testament were not in existence; and the Germans, used with discrimination, are great helps.  An orthodox Lutheran, one Delitzsch (of whom Liddon wrote that Dr. Pusey thinks highly of his Hebrew scholarship), helps me much in Isaiah.  He has sucked all the best part out of Vitringa’s enormous book, and added much minute, and I am told correct criticism.  And how grand it is!  This morning—­it is now 6.15 A.M.—­I have been reading part of that wonderful chapter xxvi.

’It strikes me that the way to teach a class or a congregation is to bring out the doctrine from the very words of Scripture carefully, critically examined and explained.  Only think, Sophy, of the vague desultory way in which we all, more or less, read; and we have accepted a phraseology without enquiring to a great extent, and use words to which we attach no definite meaning.  Few in the congregation could draw out in clear words what they mean when they talk of faith, justification, regeneration, conversion, &c. &c.  All language denoting ideas and thoughts is transferred to the region of the mind from denoting at first only external objects and sensations.  This is in accordance with the mystery of all, the union of mind and matter—­which no pagan philosopher could comprehend—­the extreme difficulty of solving which caused Dualism and Asceticism on the one hand, and neglect of all bodily discipline on the other.  Mind and matter must be antagonistic, the work of different beings:  man must get rid of his material part to arrive at his true end and perfection.

’So some said, “Mortify, worry the body, which is essentially and inherently evil.”  “No,” said others, “the sins of the body don’t hurt the mind; the two things are distinct, don’t react on one another.” (St. Paul deals with all this in the Colossians.) The Incarnation is the solution or the culmination of the mystery.

’What a prose! but I meant, that people so often use words as if the use of a word was equivalent to the knowledge of the thought which, in the mind of an accurate thinker, accompanies the utterance of the word.