"Mount up the heights of wisdom.
And crush each error low;
Keep back no words of knowledge
That human hearts should know."
The design of "the Shepherd" is to show how sacred things are degraded, vulgarized and rendered absurd, when persons who are utterly incompetent to teach the commonest things take upon themselves to expound such mysteries, and how, in making cant phrases of divine words, these persons miss the spirit in which they had their origin.
"The letter fails, and systems fall,
And every symbol wanes;
The Spirit over-brooding all,
Eternal love, remains."
