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Coleridge as Philosopher of Missions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2018
Abstract
Coleridge directed his Aids to Reflection (1825, 1831) to young men preparing for Christian vocations, missionaries in particular, and planned, but did not write, a seventh supplementary essay, which may be reconstructed from Coleridge's œuvres, to correct what he thought was inadequate preparation. Missionaries are educators whose preparation must include scientific biblical criticism: Christianity evolves with culture generally. Anthropography is required in order to foster inter-cultural exchange, including insight into a tradition's metaphors. Missionaries engage in proselytism, insists Coleridge, in the strictly limited sense of conversion through the exemplary conduct of the missionary as a fully realized human being.
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References
1 Muirhead, John, Coleridge as Philosopher (The Muirhead Library of Philosophy; New York, NY: The Humanities Press, 1930) 16Google Scholar. I am obliged to the late Maurice S. Elliott for underscoring “Missionaries” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Aids to Reflection [AR] [ed. John Beer; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993] 6); Robert L. Fisher, Indo-European linguist for reading drafts; Noël Ramsey, student of metaphorical theology for checking references; Jamie S. Scott, cultural historian, Steve Mason, historian of Roman Judaea, and Christopher H. Ford, musician and health information technology strategist, for conversation; and the reviewers and editors for their inspiring counsel.
2 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (CL) (ed. Griggs, Earl Leslie; 6 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956–1971) 6:552Google Scholar.
3 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (CN) (ed. Coburn, Kathleen, Christensen, Morton, and Harding, Anthony John; 5 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957–2002) 4:5026, 5:5724Google Scholar.
4 AR 6.
5 CL 5:434 (7 May 1825); the seventh was added by 17 May 1825 (CL 5:459).
6 Stokes, Christopher, “Coleridge's Philosophy of Prayer: Responsibility, Parergon, and Catachresis,” JR 89 (2009) 541–563, at 541Google Scholar.
7 CN 4:4830.
8 Muirhead, Coleridge as Philosopher, 218.
9 Perkins, Mary Ann, Coleridge's Philosophy: The Logos as Unifying Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) xiiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Coburn, Kathleen, Inquiring Spirit (rev. ed.; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979) 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 CN 5:6450.
12 Jongeneel, Jan A. B., “Is Missiology an Academic Discipline?” Transformation 15 (1998) 27–32, at 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Three texts are Bosch, David J., Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission (American Society of Missiology Series 16; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991, 2011)Google Scholar; Terry, John Mark, ed., Missiology: An Introduction to the Foundations, History, and Strategies of World Missions (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2015)Google Scholar; Bevans, Stephen B. and Schroeder, Roger P., Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today (American Society of Missiology Series 30; Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004)Google Scholar: they find their “model” in Luke-Acts.
14 Andreas J. Köstenberger, “Mission in the Gospels” in Terry, Missiology 53–67, at 67.
15 Millard J. Erickson, “The State of the Unevangelized and Its Missionary Implications,” in Terry, Missiology 121–137, at 137.
16 CN 5:5962.
17 Bosch, Transforming Mission, 84.
18 Ibid., 350.
19 Ibid., 531.
20 Ibid., 4; Jongeneel, “Is Missiology an Academic Discipline?,” 29.
21 Warneck, Gustav, Modern Missions and Culture: Their Mutual Relations (trans. Thomas Smith; Edinburgh: James Gemmell, George IV Bridge, 1883) 118Google Scholar.
22 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, “Review of Thomas Clarkson's Abolition of the Slave-Trade” (1808), in Shorter Works and Fragments (SW&F) (ed. Jackson, H. J. and Jackson, J. R. de J.; 2 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995) 1Google Scholar:216–243, at 241. Note Coleridge's distinction: “Civilization is but the Matrix—cultivation being the Gem” (CN 4:5302, [italics in original]).
23 CN 5:5629 (italics in original).
24 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Coleridge Marginalia (CM) (ed. Whalley, George and Jackson, H. J.; 6 vols.; NJ: Princeton University Press,1980–2001)Google Scholar 6:246; “The Narratives of Travellers and Voyagers,” CN 5:6731 (italics in original).
25 AR 311.
26 CM 6:300; “The sad results of religious Dogmatism, superstitious or enthusiastic, on the peace, & happiness and progression of Families and of Nations” (CN 4:4931 [italics in original]).
27 “The commencement of the Annals and Philosophy of Superstition, for the completion of which I am waiting only for a very curious folio” (SW&F 2:916).
28 Here are characterizations of superstition: “the prostration of the Mind before an unanalyzed Anomaly” (SW&F 1:126); “assertion of appearances derived from sense” (CM 3:216 n. 441); “External objects naturally produce sensation; but here sensation, as it were, produces the object” (Table Talk [TT] [ed. Carl Woodring; 2 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1990] 1:55); “Are not the Images clearly the Products of Sensations explained by the Fancy as in ordinary Dreams?” (CN 4:4908); and, “Thus the assigning of the name character and being of the Soul to a phantom or shape visually abstracted from the Body, under the name of Ghost, Spirit or Apparition, is a Superstition” (SW&F 2:903–4).
29 The worship of a cow is not necessarily a “contravention of the first commandment,” for there are “positive and negative forces in the science of superstition” (SW&F 2:1261).
30 The Friend (F) (ed. Barbara Rooke; 2 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969) 1:47. Superstition is implied in Logic (ed. J. R. de J. Jackson; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981): “This is the happy delirium, the healthful fever, of the physical, moral, and intellectual being, Nature's kind and providential gift to childhood” (8); “healthy fancy” (CN 4:4766); “A lovely Child contemplates his form in the Mirror & believes it another” (CN 4:5280).
31 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, On the Constitution of the Church and State (C&S) (ed. Colmer, John; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976) 144Google Scholar and n. 7.
32 AR, 36; on fancy and superstition: “When the Invisible is sought for by means of the Fancy to the World without, and the Awe <is> is transferred to imaginary Powers . . . or to sensible objects . . . the Man becomes a Phantast in the one case and superstitious in the other” (AR 104–105 n. 9 [italics in original]).
33 F 1:279–280; “the language of a tender superstition is the voice of nature itself” (F 1:546), see Wystan Hugh Auden, from “Moon Landing”: “Irreverence / is a greater oaf than Superstition” (https://allpoetry.com/Moon-Landing); CL 5:94–95. The persecution of the Covenanters made them look for hope “by supernatural channels, and in interferences unsanctioned by Reason” (CN 4:5035): “unsanctioned by Reason” implies superstition; Covenanters are called “Fanatics” in CN 4:5039. On “stove-like Heat” (for Saint Teresa) vs. “idea” see CN 5:6121.
34 CN 5:6851; “Clearly, though, even superstitious worship can be read as worship misdirected towards the outward appearance rather than the ideal meaning” (6851 n).
35 CL 5:37 (italics in original); “indiscriminate Bibliolatry” (SW&F 2:1142; 1165). Negatively, superstition is “baleful” (CM 1:330); “remorseless” (CM 1:517); “debasing and demoralizing” (CM 5:135); diseased: “shaking Palsy” (CM 5:188); “A Disease” (SW&F 1:434). Coleridge fell into “Self-centering Superstitions” when he practiced “Sortes Biblicæ” (CN 4:5419 and n). An alimentary metaphor: the exorcisms of the Synoptic gospels (none in John) are superstitious explanations of demons causing disease: “No! there can but one rational solution of these & similar passages—that we have the fact at third or fourth hand, without with the modifications & excrementitious adherences acquired during it's passage thro’ the intestinal canal of vulgar Superstitions” (CN 5:5561).
36 CN 5:5496.
37 CM 4:307.
38 Goldman, Ronald, Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964) 233Google Scholar.
39 CL 5: 95.
40 SW&F 1:902.
41 CN has no subject index—“superstition”: CN 1 [1794–1804] 243, 312, 1541,1637; CN 2 [1804–1808] 2045, 2048, 2060, 2355, 2561, 2830; CN 3 [1808–1819] 3473, 3505, 3808, 3824, 3830, 3847, 3868, 4015 (“The account given by Stavorinus of the Chinese Xylomancer at Batavia may serve for the model for all the Children of Superstition, from the African Fetisch-worshipper or Oboe-wichtch to the Purchaser of Dr Solomon's Balm of Gilead, or King George's State-Lottery Ticket”), 4210, 4308, 4378, 4491 (“Superstition the Giant Shadow of Humanity with its back to the setting Sun of true Religion”), 4497; CN 4 [1819–1826] 4766, 4788, 4806, 4858, 4931, 4984, 4985, 5057, 5058, 5076–5079, 5081, 5215, 5123, 5187, 5204, 5215, 5276, 5300, 5315, 5319, 5323, 5334, 5398, 5454; CN 5 [1827–1834] 5556, 5596, 5606, 5680, 5801, 5836, 5844, 5848, 5872, 5927, 5932, 6029, 6087, 6121, 6185, 6253, 6279, 6337, 6394, 6396, 6474, 6615, 6661, 6666, 6735, 6737, 6778, 6781.
42 Coleridge desynonymizes “education” and “instruction” (CN 5:6739).
43 CM 1:304–305. Coleridge agrees with Carey on the need for conversion at home: “and the face of most Christian countries presents a dreadful scene of ignorance, hypocrisy, and profligacy” (William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens . . ., 1792) 65–66, http://www.wmcarey.edu/carey/enquiry/anenquiry.pdf).
44 CN 5:5907 (italics in original).
45 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria (ed. Engell, James and Bate, W. Jackson; 2 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar 1:252 (italics in original) and n. 1; “& then reflecting, as it were, on his own reflections . . . would not the knowledge thus acquired & communicated be a most valuable assistance to every man, who felt it his wish & believed it his duty, to attempt the fulfillment of the heaven-descended Precept, Know thyself—?” (CN 4:4931).
46 CL 5:455.
47 CN 5:5845.
48 CL 5:434–436.
49 CL 5:459.
50 AR 388; CL 5:434; and SW& F 2:1111–71.
51 CL 6:965 (italics in original).
52 “Review of Thomas Clarkson's Abolition of the Slave-Trade” (1808) in SW&F 1:241. Coleridge reverses William Carey's “Would not the spread of the gospel be the most effectual means of their civilization?” (Enquiry 70).
53 F 1:493–494.
54 CL 6:1048–50; 1048–1049 n. 1: Griggs's note is based on John Leifchild's Memoir of the Late Joseph Hughes, A.M. One of the Secretaries of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London: Thomas Ward, 1835).
55 CL 5:300 (italics in original). Leifchild writes: “His known habits of correctness and refinement caused many authors to commit their manuscripts to him for revision” (Memoir 388). Coleridge requested Hughes: “if you should have at any time half an hour's leisure” to look for anything objectionable in content or style in Friend and Lay Sermons (CL 6:1049).
56 CL 6:1056; CN 5:6472 (italics in original). He dismissed Edward Irving's idea of a “Missionary College”: persons who have the call to be missionaries cannot be supervised (CM 3:8).
57 CL 6:790: “on our former Thursday Evening Conver- or to mint a more appropriate term, Oneversazioni” (italics in original).
58 CL 6:552.
59 CN 5:5989 (italics in original).
60 CM 3:732 (italics in original).
61 CN 5:6371.
62 CN 5:6139: “Is it not permitted to suppose, as a probable hypothesis, that in the earliest times there was a Society of enlightened Men, a Sacred Brotherhood/Sethians, Astronomonic Kings, ‘Sons of God’—whose Missionaries were 
?” (italics in original). Rather than the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), Coleridge wishes for “A British and Foreign Human Society of Science and Literature—whose Duty it would be to watch over, record, and make known Works and Discoveries, wherever published, and as soon as published—to maint form a center of Correspondence with for the Men of Genius & Science in all countries & . . .” (CN 5:6579)—a global “clerisy” engaged in dialogue.
63 CN 4:4761.
64 CN 5:5703.
65 Carey, An Enquiry, 7. See Köstenberger, “Mission in the Gospels” in Terry, Missiology, n. 14.
66 CN 3:3505.
67 CN 5:6241: “O the difference, the unspeakable difference, between an historico-critical intellective Study of the Old Testament, and the praying of the same” (italics in original).
68 CN 4:5078; CN 5:6033 (italics in original).
69 CN 5:5558; “could I affix . . . the asterisk of spuriousness to the last Ch., or the latter Half of the last Chapter of St Mark” (CN 4:5372); “The last twelve verses of Mark's Gospel by on internal & external evidence are by all the later School of Biblical Criticism asterisked as spurious” (CM 3:3); “The last 12 verses of Mark the translator gives up, and with good reason, as spurious” (CM 4:474).
70 CN 3:3903.
71 Mason, Steve and Robinson, Tom, Early Christian Reader (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004) 3Google Scholar; Coleridge: “The 3 first Gospels . . . and the Epistles have all the appearance of occasional Writings, presupposing a previous communication of the Scheme, and the constituent Articles of faith, that formed it's exposition.—But when we turn to ecclesiastical History, we find nothing to confirm this so natural presumption” (CN 5:5997).
72 CM 1:528 (italics in original).
73 CN 4:5206.
74 CM 4:474.
75 Matt 10:5 KJV. John 4:40: Jesus stays two days in Samaria.
76 CM 3:308–309, and nn. 9–10 on Coleridge and missionary societies.
77 CN 5:5845 (italics in original).
78 AR 35. See AR 311 for “the sudden conversions,” which Coleridge likens to “contagious Fever-boils.” Jane Austen: “We do not much like Mr Cooper's new Sermons;—they are fuller of Regeneration & Conversion than ever—with the addition of his zeal in the cause of the Bible Society” (Jane Austen's Letters, [ed. Deirdre Le Faye; 4th ed.; Oxford University Press, 2011] 336); “Your cousin Edmund moves slowly, detained, perchance, by parish duties. There may be some old woman at Thornton Lacey to be converted” (Mansfield Park [New York: Penguin Classics, 2011] 366).
79 CN 5: 6073 (italics in original). See Evans, Murray J., Sublime Coleridge: The Opus Maximum (Nineteenth Century Lives and Letters; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a discussion of “psycho-spiritual development” (81).
80 Newman, Jay, Foundations of Religious Tolerance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982) 110Google Scholar. Coleridge applauds the Mystics’ tolerance: “We have what the Many have not—God grant that their day may come—for our hearts yearn toward them” (CN 4: 4915).
81 Newman, Foundations 8 (italics in original).
82 CN 5:6505; “utter failure of the Japanese, Chinese, and Indian Missions” (CM 3:309–10) (italics in original).
83 CN 4:5254. Kathleen Coburn notes: “The earliest (16th-century) use had to do with describing the human body. In Coleridge's sense the OED records the first occurrence in 1834, the study of ‘the geographical distribution of the races of mankind, and their local variations; ethnography.’” The OED has recently added, in response to this writer's submission, that Coleridge's use is now the earliest: “1825 S. T. Coleridge Notebks. (2002) IV. 5254 Anthropography: or a Description of the different Races, and Varieties of Men, the effects of Climate, and Civilization . . . .” http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/view/Entry/8426?redirectedFrom=anthropography#eid. In CN 5:5489 Coleridge says that anthropology is one of three bases of religion: “N.B. In my System—. . . Antecedent Grounds and Conditions of Religion.”
84 CN 3:4109 (italics in original).
85 CM 3:21.
86 John 6:63 KJV.
87 CN 5:6785 (italics in original). CN 4:5421 (mistaking metaphors for “a component part of the truth itself”). Coleridge objected to Joseph Hughes's writing that salvation involved the suffering of a righteous person (CM 2:1187). Coleridge uses “redemption” non-metaphorically: “The Unitarian and the Calvinist equally strive to evacuate the Spiritual Mystery of our Redemption” (CN 5:6595; 6546); redemption may be the mesothesis between the Idea of the Trinity and the Fact of the Incarnation (CN 5:6762). See Hedley, Douglas, Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion: “Aids to Reflection” and the Mirror of the Spirit (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapter 5 “The great instauration: reflection as the renewal of the soul,” 229–265, where Hedley discusses a parallel (CN 5:6785) to AR 237.
88 CN 5:6653 (italics in original). Many individuals, independently, may hold “the same truths, yet expressed in the greatest variety of terms and symbols, according to the presence or absence of a learned education, to the different climates, different positive Religions”: a global perspective (CM 4:258 [italics in original]).
89 CN 5:6550; 6743: “the successive calling into act of all the intellectual powers.”
90 Denny, Frederick M., “Islam and the Muslim Community,” in Religious Traditions of the World: A Journey through Africa, Mesoamerica, North America, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, China, and Japan (ed. Earhart, H. Byron; HarperSanFrancisco/HarperCollins, 1993) 613Google Scholar.
91 CN 4:4794 (italics in original). Coleridge regards John as superior to Paul: “One momentous point of superiority in John is his clear insight into the identity of the Word and the universal Light, or the substantiality and personëity of Reason” (CN 5:5976).
92 Coleridge says that “the great redemptive Process” is “the history of life which begins in its detachment from Nature and is to end in its union with God” (CM 3:919). Note that “final restoration” (
) occurs in Acts 3:21, but “Luke-Acts lacks, and actively discourages, the sense of Jesus’ imminent return” (Mason and Robinson 468). CN 5:5780: “the illumination of the Apostles . . . was gradual and progressive” as shown by their first holding a “mistaken Notion of our Lord's all but immediate Return personally.”
93 CM 5:177 (italics in original).
94 Lectures 1818–1819: On the History of Philosophy (Lect 1818–1819) (ed. J. R. de J. Jackson; 2 vols.; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) 1:131. Coleridge comments: “all Europe has been the Dupe of Dupes in this respect” for thinking that the Brahmanical texts are equivalent to the Old Testament in its “noble conceptions of God” (CM 3:659): dated ca. 1816 (657).
95 Lect 1818–1819 1:132; Opus Maximum (OM) (ed. Thomas McFarland; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002) 276–285.
96 Owen Barfield in Lect 1818–1819 2:884.
97 CN 4:5442, September 1826; “to deem myself ignorant of a man's understanding, (or conceptions) till I fully understand his ignorance” (CN 3:4248, 1815).
98 CL 5:372 (italics in the original). In a discussion of poetry (CN 4:5433): “Children hyperbolize.”
99 CN 4:4832, 1821, and nn. The last verse is based on John 14:9.
100 CL 5:1449, 8 May 1825.
101 CM 3:59 (1828) parallels CN 5:5868: “The Brahmanic Trinity of the Productive Generative, Destructive, and Regenerative” (May 1828).
102 OM 283. Coleridge has Charles Wilkins's The Bhagavat-Geeta or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon (1785) in mind. McFarland gives the date 1822–1823 (214).
103 Harries, Natalie Tai, “‘The One Life Within Us and Abroad’: Coleridge and Hinduism” in Coleridge, Romanticism and the Orient: Cultural Negotiations (ed. Vallins, David, Oishi, Kaz, and Perry, Seamus; London: Bloomsbury, 2013) 131–144Google Scholar, and Natale, Antonella Riem, The One Life: Coleridge and Hinduism (New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2005)Google Scholar, “Coleridge's Rejection” 74–77, who conclude that Coleridge rejected Hinduism finally. The marginalia on Dubois may date to 1828 (CM 2:339).
104 CN 5:6615, June 1831.
105 CM 6:146.
106 Barth, J. Robert, Coleridge and Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969) 20, 85–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
107 CM 2:916.
108 CN 5:5706: “harsh conditions” remains undocumented (italics in original).
109 CN 5:6412.
110 CN 5:5524.
111 SW&F 2:1148 (italics in original).
112 CN 4:5075.
113 CN 4:5243 (italics in original).
114 CN 4:5075 (italics in original).
115 John 1:1, 14 KJV.
116 Luke 1:34–35 KJV. Only Matthew (1:23) uses Isaiah 7:14 to support “virgin.”
117 John 2:1, 3; 6:42; 19:25 KJV.
118 CN 4:5240.
119 Samples of Coleridge's sesquipedalian invective against the BFBS's position are: “Deisidaemoniac Bible-and-all-other-goody-and-inquisitional Society-mongers” (CN 4:4938: on the abolition of slavery); “Hagiopneumatic Dictationists, the ipsa verba S.S. Commentators” (CN 5:6384); “needless & impossible deifications of a Book” (CM 2:39) (italics in original); and John Milton's “ultra-protestant Solibibliofidianism” (CN 5: 5861).
120 CM 2:37–38 (italics in original). On verbal inspiration see Anthony John Harding, Coleridge and the Inspired Word (rpt. 2003; McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas; Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1985) 82–94, especially the reference to Essays and Reviews: “The great mass of the public continued in virtual ignorance of the whole question until the publication in 1860 of Essays and Reviews, which created a storm in the English churches that might well have been avoided if Coleridge's approach had at least been discussed and propagated more widely” (90). Benjamin Jowett's “On the Interpretation of Scripture” is particularly germane.
121 CL 5:970 (italics in the original) (3 November 1833): Joseph Green gave it to him that December: “the now interleaved Copy of the Bible (my friend's gift)” (CN 5:6844); Barbeau, Jeffrey W., Coleridge, the Bible, and Religion (Nineteenth-Century Major Lives and Letters; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
122 Howsam, Leslie, Cheap Bibles: Nineteenth-Century Publishing and the British and Foreign Bible Society (Cambridge Studies in Publishing and Printing History; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991) 129Google Scholar.
123 Haeger, J. H., “Coleridge's Speculations on Race,” SiR 13 (1974) 333–57Google Scholar; SW&F, the texts are indexed under “1828.”
124 CM 1:539–541.
125 CN 5:6146, November 1829; in January 1824 it was “inconceivable” that rain was the “principal cause” (italics in original) of a five-mile depth of water (CN 4:5104); re-populating the earth could not have been invented, so it is historical, says Coleridge (CN 5:6619, June–August 1831).
126 CM 1:541.
127 CL 5:372.
128 See note 22.
129 Schmidt-Leukel, Perry, “Buddhist-Muslim Dialogue. Observations and Suggestions from a Christian Perspective,” The Muslim World 100 (2010) 349–363CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 360.
130 TT 1:386, 8 June 1833. Contrast his outrage in July: “rapacious, needy, dishonest, and cruel Attorneys, Managers, and Overseers” (CN 5:6714) (italics in original).
131 In 1831: “Slavery—i.e. the perversion of a Person into a Thing—is contrary to the Spirit of Christianity <(say I)>—& therefore it is the duty of Christians to labor (as far as it is in their power & lies within the sphere of their immediate duties) for its ultimate removal from the Christian World—/” (CM 6:29); an “Act of Parliament” would be a means “contrary” to that end, says Coleridge.
132 CN 5:5521 (italics in the original). “When the Ideas rise up within me, as independent Growths of my Spirit, and I then turn to the Epistles of Paul & John and to the Gospel of the latter, . . . the<se> . . . seem a Looking-glass to me in which I recognize the [?indirectly] same truths of as reflected Images of my Ideas—and when I begin with meditative Reading of those divine Writings, then they become the Objective completing and guaranteeing the reality of the subjective Truths in myself” (CN 5:5624 August 1827): “guaranteeing . . . in myself” guards against superstition. See also CM 3:20: “contemplating the Synopsis of the whole faith in Christ in the Mirror of the Idea.”