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[78] ramble into classic lands; but this “Progress of Religious Ideas” was a real pilgrimage of penance, with peas in my shoes, walking over rubble-stones most of the way. You have no idea of the labor! It was greatly increased by my distance from libraries, nearly all the time, which rendered copious extracts necessary. How absurdly the Old Testament is treated by Christians! used for all convenient purposes, neglected whenever it is inconvenient! Moses is good authority for holding slaves, but not for the healthy practice of abstaining from the use of pork. . . . Most devoutly do I believe in the pervasive and ever-guiding Spirit of God ; but I do not believe it was ever shut up within the covers of any book, or that it ever can be. Portions of it, or rather breathing of it, are in many books. The words of Christ seem to me full of it, as no other words are. But if we want truth, we must listen to the voice of God in the silence of our own souls as he did.

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