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42 A CLOUD OF WITNESSES. PREPARATION FOR THEIR RECEPTION.

"But after all, it is not the testimony of fact and experience uniting their evidence with that of our author's interpretation of prophecy; neither is it the brightness and power of divine truth discoverable in such interpretation; nor yet the consistency, the harmony, the clearness, the edifying tendency of every page of his Theological Writings, which will of themselves lead to conviction, and beget a full persuasion of the author's faithful testimony in your minds or in the minds of others. To produce this happy effect, it is necessary that the reader's understanding be previously prepared, by a meet disposition^ for the reception of truth; without which preparation the truth itself, let it be ever so much confirmed, must needs appear untrue, and the more so in proportion to the unprepared state of the mind and temper, agreeable to the declaration of the truth ITSELF, * He who doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved^

" If this consideration is permitted to have its due influence, it will doubtless lead you, and every reader of the writings in question, to attend well to the spirit and disposition in which you read, from a prudent and profitable suspicion that something may be wrong in the state of the person's mind who reads, as well

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