It is no uncommon thing in the natural world for an effect to be the cause of another effect, and the last effect to be similar to its cause. A person with a hammer strikes the first link. In each of these effects, so far as they become causes, there is something similar to the first cause. Now it is much more obvious that, in the world of mind or thought, this similarity exists to a much greater degree than in the world of matter. The reason is, men cannot think but by words or signs.
Words are but embodied thought, the external images or representatives of ideas.
Now, as men think by means of symbols or terms, and cannot think without them, it must be obvious that speaking the same things and hearing the same things, though it might be alleged as the effect of thinking the same things, is more likely to become the cause of thinking the same things than any natural or mechanical effect can become the cause of a similar effect. On this view of the matter, I would base something of great consequence to the religious world. Perhaps I might find something in it of more real importance to all christians of every name, than all the fabled powers of the philosopher's stone, had they been real. Perhaps in this one view might be found the only practicable and alone sufficient means of reconciling all the christian world, and of destroying all partyism and party feelings, with all their retinue and train of evils which have been more fatal to christian light and liberty than were all the evils which fell upon human bodies from the opening of Pandora's box, to the animal enjoyments of this world. Never, indeed, while we add to, or subtract from the words which the Holy Spirit teaches.