"Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not found them all, lords and commons, nor ever shall do, till her master’s second coming; he shall bring every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection."
John Milton, Areopagitica.
Long quote is long. But Milton gives such a beautiful image of Truth, split into a thousand pieces and scattered all over the earth. God is the only one who knows the whole truth. As human beings, we can only strive to learn more, and so we have to keep our minds open.
