I think the ocean telegraph-wire ought to be laid and will be
laid, but I don't know that you have any right to ask me to go and lay
it. But, for that matter, I have heard a good deal of Scripture
depolarized in and out of the pulpit. I heard the Rev. Mr. F. once
depolarize the story of the Prodigal Son in Park-Street Church. Many
years afterwards, I heard him repeat the same or a similar depolarized
version in Rome, New York. I heard an admirable depolarization of the
story of the young man who "had great possessions" from the Rev. Mr. H.
in another pulpit, and felt that I had never half understood it before.
All paraphrases are more or less perfect depolarizations. But I tell you
this: the faith of our Christian community is not robust enough to bear
the turning of our most sacred language into its depolarized equivalents.
You have only to look back to Dr. Channing's famous Baltimore discourse
and remember the shrieks of blasphemy with which it was greeted, to
satisfy yourself on this point. Time, time only, can gradually wean us
from our Epeolatry, or word-worship, by spiritualizing our ideas of the
thing signified.
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