Before passing to the last and profoundest use of communication, I must not omit to mention that which is most obvious, but not most important,—­the giving of ordinary informations and instructions.  These always consist in a suggestion to another of new combinations of his notions, new societies in his mind.  Thus, if I say, Fire burns, I simply assert a connection between fire and burning,—­the notion of both these being assumed as existing in the mind of the person addressed.  Or if I say, God is just, I invite him to associate in his mind the sentiment of justice and the sense of the infinite and omnipotent.  Now in respect to matters of mere external form we usually confide in the representations of others, and picture to ourselves, so far as our existing perceptions enable us, the combinations they affirm,—­provided always these have a certain undefined conformity with our own experience.  But in respect to association, not of mere notions, but of spiritual elements in the soul,—­of truths evolved by the spiritual nature of man,—­the case is quite different Thus, if the fool who once said in his heart, “There is no God,” should now say openly, (of course by some disguising euphemism,) “God is an egotist,” I may indeed shape an opinion accordingly, and fall into great confusion in consequence; but my spiritual nature does not consent to this representation; no real association takes place within me between the sense of the divine and the conception of egotism.  Such opinion may have immense energy in history, but it has no efficiency in the eliciting and outbuilding of our personal being; these representations, however we may trust and base action upon them, serve us inwardly only to such degree as our spiritual nature can ally itself with them and find expression in them.  It is simply impossible for any man to associate the idea of divinity with the conception of selfishness; but he may associate the notion of Zeus or Allah or the like with that or any other conception of baseness, and out of the result may form a sort of crust over his spiritual intelligence, which shall either imprison it utterly, or force it to oblique and covert expression.  And of this last, by the way,—­and we may deeply rejoice over the fact,—­history is full.

Yet in this suggestion toward new societies in the soul, in this formal introduction to each other of kindred elements in the consciousness, there may be eminent service.  It is only formal, it does not make friendship, it leaves our spirits to their own action; but it may prepare the way for inward unities and communities whose blessedness neither speech nor silence can tell.

Finally, there is an effect of words profounder and more creative than any of these.  As a brand which burns powerfully may at last ignite even green wood, so divine faiths, alive and awake in one soul, may appeal to the mere elements, to mere possibilities, of such faiths in other souls, and at length evoke them by that appeal.  The process is slow; it requires a celestial heat and persistency in the moving spirit; it is one of the “all things” that are possible only with God:  but it occurs, and it is the most sacred and precious thing in history.