5–11 January 1835

Bitter cold days, yet I read of that inward fervor which ran as fire from heart to heart through England in George Fox's time. How precisely parallel are the biographies of religious enthusiasts — Swedenborg, Guyon,Fox, Luther, and perhaps Boehmen. Each owes all to the dis- covery that God must be sought within, not without. That is the discovery of Jesus. Each perceives the worthlessness of all instruction, and the infinity of wisdom that issues from medita- tion. Each perceives the nullity of all conditions but one, innocence ; the absolute submission which attends it. All becomes simple, plain in word and act. Swedenborg and the Quakers have much to say of a new name that shall be given in heaven.

There is an elevation of thought from which things venerable become less, because we are in the presence of their Source. When we catch one clear glimpse of the moral harmonies which accomplish themselves throughout the everlast- ing Now and throughout the omnipresent Here, how impertinent seem the controversies of the- ologians. God is before us, and they are wran- gling about dead gods. What matters it whether the inspiration was plenary or secondary ; whether this or that was intended by the prophet ; whether Jesus worked a miracle or no ; if we have access inwardly to the almighty and all-wise One In- spirer of all prophecy, container of all Truth and Sole Cause of Causes ? All the Godhead that was in either of those ages, in either of those men, was the perception of these resplendent laws which, at this very moment, draw me, at the same time that they outrun and overwhelm my faculties. The Teacher that I look for and await shall enunciate with more precision and uni- versality, with piercing poetic insight those beau- tiful yet severe compensations that give to moral nature an aspect of mathematical science. He will not occupy himself in laboriously reani- mating a historical religion, but in bringing men to God by showing them that he is, not was, and speaks, not spoke.

The only true economy of time is to rely without interval on your own judgment. Keep the eye and ear open to all impressions, but deepen no impression by effort, but take the opinion of the Genius within, what ought to be retained by you, and what rejected by you. Keep, that is, the upright position. Resign yourself to your thoughts, and then every ob- ject will make that mark, that modification of your character which it ought. This were better advice to a traveller than Sir Henry Wotton's, "// visosciolto, i pensieri stretti." ' All your time will be lived ; the journey, the dinner, the wait- ing, will not need to be subtracted.