_ that there is a
God the rewarder of them that seek Him) are first brought home to man,
it is certain that if he does not receive them embedded in history or
parable, in spoken or enacted symbolism, he will soon fix and record
them in some such language for himself. Christ recognized the necessity
of speaking to the multitude in parables, not attempting to precise or
define the indefinable; but contenting Himself with: "The Kingdom of
Heaven is _like_," &c. "I am content," says Sir Thomas Browne, "to
understand a mystery without a rigid definition, in an easie and
Platonick description," and it is only through such easie and Platonick
descriptions that spiritual truth can slowly be filtered into the
popular mind. Still when we consider how prone all metaphors are to be
pressed inexactly, either too far, or else not far enough, how abundant
a source they are of misapprehension, owing to the curiosity that will
not be content to have the gold in the ore, but must needs vainly strive
to refine it out, we can well understand how mythology tends to corrupt
and debase religion if it be not continually watched and weeded; and
how, being, from the nature of the case, ever to the front, ever on
men's lips and mingling with their lives, it should seem to the outsider
to be not the imperfect garment of religion, but a substitute for it.
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