have expounded and sought to lodge their principles in a logical system, the more they have diverged from the primitive sentiment.  If the sects would let logic alone and appeal only to the consciousness of men, there would be no very steep difference between them, and each would promote the good of the other.  But the moment we rest with the reason and the understanding there must be opposition and divergence, for they apprehend things by parts, and not by the mass; they deal with facts, and not with laws.

The fullest truth, as we have already hinted, never shapes itself into words on our lips.  What we can speak is generally only foam from the surface, with more or less sediment in it; while the pure current flows untouched beneath.  The deepest depths in a man have no tongue.  He is like the sea, which finds expression only on its shoals and rocks; the great heart of it has no voice, no utterance.

The religious creeds will never be reconciled by logic; the more emphatically they are expressed, the more they differ.  Ideas, in this respect, resemble the trees, which branch and diverge more and more widely as they proceed from the root and the germinal state.  Men are radically the same in their feelings and sentiments, but widely different in their logic.  Argument is reaction, and drives us farther and farther apart.

As the intellect expresses by detachment and contrast, it follows, that, the more emphatically an idea is expressed, the more it will be disencumbered of other ideas and stand relieved like a bust chiselled from a rock.  It is suggestive and prospective, and, by being detached itself, will relieve others and still others.  It makes a breach in the blank wall, and the whole is now pregnable.  New possibilities are opened, a new outlook into the universe.  Nothing, so to speak, has become something; one base metal has been transmuted into gold, and so given us a purchase on every other.  When one thought is spoken, all others become speakable.  After one atom was created, the universe would grow of its own accord.  The difficulty in writing is to utter the first thought, to break the heavy silence, to overcome the settled equilibrium, and disentangle one idea from the embarrassing many.  It is a struggle for life.  There is no place to begin at.  We are burdened with unuttered and unutterable truth, but cannot, for the life of us, grasp it.  It is a battle with Chaos.  We plant shaft after shaft, but to no purpose.  We get an idea half-defined, when it slips from us, and all is blank again in that direction.  We seem to be struggling with the force of gravity, and to come not so near conquering as to being conquered.  But at last, when we are driven almost to despair, and in a semi-passive state inwardly settling and composing ourselves, the thought comes.  How much is then revealed and becomes possible!  New facts and forces are commanded by it; much of our experience, that was before meaningless and unavailable,