His second sentence
records that he is a politician, and a faint reflection in the way
he pronounces THE TIMES reveals his party. In his next remarks I
see reflected a whole world of experiences. The books he has read,
the people he has met, the companions he keeps, the influences
that have played upon him and made him the man he is--these are
all registered there by a pen which lets nothing pass, and whose
writing can
Never be blotted out.
What I am reading in him meantime he is also reading in me; and
before the journey is over we could half write each other's lives.
Whether we like it or not, we live in glass houses. The mind, the
memory, the soul, is simply a vast chamber paneled with looking-glass.
And upon this miraculous arrangement and endowment depends the
capacity of mortal souls to "reflect the character of the Lord."
(2). But this is not all. If all these varied reflections
from our so-called secret life are patent to the world, how close
the writing, complete the record within the soul itself! For the
influences we meet are not simply held for a moment on the polished
surface and thrown off again into space. Each is retained where
first it fell, and stored up in the soul forever.
This law of assimilation
is the second, and by far the most impressive truth which underlies
the formula of sanctification--the truth that men are not only
mirrors, but that these mirrors, so far from being mere reflectors
of the fleeting things they see, transfer into their own inmost
substance, and hold in permanent preservation the things that they
reflect.
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