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266 LETTERS.
SrockHoim, 18th October, 1864.
God’s gifts to us, and His ways with us, are various.
Me He has led, by the unconquerable longing and desire
of thought, to coherence and harmony ; to an insight into
His manifestation in Christ, and its all-explaining light.
Through doubt and through struggles He has led me to
certainty and peace, and from one light on to another.
That, while striving to find the precious pearl, of which
our Saviour speaks, much of its shell, which to many is
identical with the pearl itself, should have assumed another
signification than strict orthodoxy admits —and that many
of the dogmas of the Church should have taken another
meaning than the strictly literal one —this I could not
help. Without it I should not have discovered the treas-
ure, the pearl —the word of eternal life in Christ; nor
should I, without it, in the midst of the conflict which is
now going on in the world, and which is carried on in
newspapers and in innumerable periodicals, against the
more profound Christianity and its most substantial and
consolatory doctrines, have felt so happy, so confident, so
certain, that out of the ruins of the antiquated Church, a
new one, more real in spirit and in truth, shall arise ; when
also I shall be prepared to bear witness in her favor, and
show that the most profound Christianity is the highest
reason, yes, is the most undeviable right of reason as well
as of sense and of conscience. Man, nowadays, is not
helped with devout confessions, unless these, at the same
time, contain light for the thinking spirit.
The religious fermentation of the present day is nothing
else than the struggle of reason and thought to penetrate
to God. When they have arrived there, they shall worship
aud sing praises to the Lord, and then the first conmand-
ment shall be fulfilled, that which tells man: “Thou shalt
love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy
soul and with all thy mind,” that is, with all thy power.
My remaining days shall be devoted to praising the Lord
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