“I would recommend to you to read carefully, and pause as you read, and pray as you read for the teaching of the Spirit, the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians.  Read it first without any commentary, and read it as addressed to you, S——­ A——.  You will there find what may in part stagger your reason; you will find what far surpasses your comprehension; but yet read on, with conscious weakness, and ignorance, and absolute dependence on divine teaching.  When you have read it through, then take Brown’s or Henry’s exposition of it.

“A degree of mystery, my son, runs through the whole of God’s revealed word; but it is his, and to be received with reverence, and believed with confidence, because it is his.  It is to be searched with diligence, and compared; and, by God’s teaching and the assistance of his sent servants, the child of God becomes mighty in the Scriptures.  Let not mystery stagger you:  we are surrounded with mysteries; we ourselves are mysteries inexplicable:  nor let the doctrine of election stagger you; how small a part of God’s ways do we know, or can comprehend! rejoice that he has given you the heritage of his people—­leave the rest to him:  ’Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’

“Jesus took once a little child and set him in the midst of the people, and said, ’Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven,’ intimating with what simplicity and docility men ought to receive the gospel; and the following text also alludes to this:  ’Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’  There are many promises made to the diligent searchers after truth:  ‘Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord.’  ’The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will show them his covenant.’  Yet the highly enlightened Paul calls the gospel a mystery, and godliness a mystery; ’for now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face:  now I know in part; but then,’ in heaven, ’shall I know even as also I am known.’  Therefore, while you use all diligence, accompanied with prayer and the expositions of God’s faithful ministers, to understand every part of divine revelation, be neither surprised nor disheartened at the want of comprehension, far less attempt to reduce it to human reason, as many have done to their ruin.  The Scripture says, ’Vain man would be wise, though born like the wild ass’s colt.’  ‘The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.’

“I.  GRAHAM.”

Again we have the following merited strictures by one taught from above, on a passage in Pope’s Essay on Man.

“1798.

“‘Glows in the stars and blossoms in the trees.’