Given as the Charge at the installation of Rev. E.E. Hale in 1856, this call to ministers (and all church workers) struck me this morning. Thomas Treadwell Stone makes an impassioned plea for all to live by the spirit:"The first condition of effectual announcement of the vision is this, that we do truly see it...Let us never reject the spirit of God because fanaticism has distorted it; or personal feeling or thought has assumed the name; because zeal has hardened into bigotry; wrath supplanted enthusiasm; or nonsense or worse has obtruded itself as inspiration. Rather let us presume that what has been so corrupted must in its purity be best, and keep our souls always open to the access of angels. The east is not exhausted by the first line of light which runs through the night; the eye waits for awhile and the sky reddens with the spreading dawn. ..
The scriptures and the prophets have not closed the avenues of the soul to God,-they have helped rather to open them; let us enter into them and walk over them and rejoice in the Presence that meets us there and blesses us with truth and peace.
Let me commend to you...the perpetual seeking of this inward and growing insight."
Blessings
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