Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: terable; but the particular quality depends upon the subject. (5.) Upon this rule of composition, the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures rests; for while in the letter they appear to resemble any other composition, in the spirit they contain within them the infinite wisdom of the most high God. In our next chapter we shall proceed to the application of the rules laid down. CHAPTER VI. We now proceed to apply the rules already laid down, to the understanding of the Holy Word; and as our work is but introductory to the study of analogies, we shall select such illustrations as are the easiest of comprehension, intending, at a future period, to illustrate the more complex. As an object that the senses is most familiar with, we choose the clouds, which signify the literal sense of the Holy Word. (1.) The clouds veil and diversify the light of the sun, studding the atmosphere with a thousand beautiful forms. (2.) They are the sources of rain, which refreshes the earth, causing it to bring forth in due season. (3 ) They are the reservoirs of storms and tempests, which, though desolating in their particular effects, serve to puri- fv the atmosphere. (4.) Though fulfilling these numerous offices, they are derived from the earth itself, being attracted thence through the influence of the sun. In all these particulars they correspond to the literal sense of the Word of God; for (I.) as the clouds temper and veil the solar rays, so that glory and wisdom, which is too bright for human comprehension, is tempered and rendered available to the human mind, by being concealed beneath the letter of the Word of God, and while it thus tempers the divine glory, it sets it forth in a thousand graceful forms of natural wisdom and of natural truth. (2.) From the letter of the Word, those n…