writings with respect and veneration, as writings from which no man might take away and to which no man might add. The Jews were ready to die for the sacred writings of their prophets, as the Christians were for theirs.

This claim of the ancient writers was sustained by later testimony. We have indeed the testimony of our Lord Himself, the trustworthiness of which no man will question. As a matter of fact He appeals to the Scripture of the Old Testament from the beginning of His ministry to the endand often in the emphatic words "It is written,” or “Have ye not read." That the Scriptures cannot be broken is for Him a fact irrevocably certain. His question is not what thinkest thou, but how readest thou. In reference to a commandment which Moses had given, His question is why transgress ye the commandments of God by your tradition? Ignorance of the Scripture He represents as leading to fatal error. According to Him if men have Moses and the prophets they have a more reliable testimony than they would have if one rose from the dead. It would be easy to find from the New Testament further utterances to the same purpose. Zacharias blesses God for raising up “a horn of salvation in the House of David as He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets which have been since the world began." Peter speaks of the Spirit of Christ which was in the prophets as testifying beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow; he says also that "the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."

When we come to the New Testament writers we find that they put forward the same claim for themselves which they had asserted on behalf of the ancient Prophets. There can be no doubt whatever as a matter of historic fact that the Apostle Paul, for example, claimed to have received direct revelations from heaven. He himself expressly declares that his entire knowledge of the truth was derived directly from a miraculous revelation, and from that alone. In one

remarkable place (1 Cor. ii. 6—16) he tells us that the wisdom of God, which he preached, had come to him from no human source. It was once a hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world unto our glory." He then says that though the deep things of this wisdom had been hidden from former ages, "God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit;" the possibility of the disclosure of such counsels of the Divine mind lying in the fact that "the Spirit searcheth all things, even the deep things of God." The wisdom was communicated to him in words which the Holy Ghost taught him, and that the Spirit's acquaintance with the deep things of God is as perfect and accurate as a man's acquaintance with the secrets of his own mind. "For who knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." That is to say, the great truths which formed the subject of the special gospel revelation are as much above the reach of man's ordinary powers to have discovered as the things belonging to man and his mental processes are beyond the powers of the inferior order of creatures. Words could hardly be stronger to express the reality of the Apostle's conviction that he had received a direct revelation from God. In the epistle to the Ephesians he tells us what was the subject matter of the revelation made to him and which had been hid from ages and generations till God's time came. The high truths which formed the wisdom of God in a mystery were the blessing of the Church with all spiritual blessings in Christ; God's choice of the Church in His eternal purpose to be holy and without blame in love; the great doctrine of redemption by Christ; the sealing of Christians by the Spirit; the purpose to bring them to an everlasting inheritance, to the praise of His glory; the quickening of the spiritually dead, and the whole plan of man's redemption and salvation by faith; the bearing of all these great truths on the calling of the Gentiles into the Church of Christ and

the presenting of the whole Church blameless to the Father through sanctification of the Spirit; and the free access and communion which the whole Church of the redeemed, without distinction of race or outward privilege, enjoys with the Father. These things were not known to men before; they were not even known to angels in all their range and majesty. "Now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places is made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God."

Elsewhere, also, the Apostle claims to have received direct revelation from heaven. It is not questioned that he wrote the epistle to the Galatians, and in that epistle he bases the whole authority of his message upon an express Divine commission. He claims to be an Apostle "not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father who raised Him from the dead." He distinctly certifies concerning the gospel he preached that it was not after man, for, says he, "I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it but by the revelation of Jesus Christ." So certain is he of this that if even an angel from heaven preached any other gospel than that he had preached he would say let "him be accursed." It is scarcely possible to express in stronger terms his solemn conviction that he had received a supernatural communication of the will of God. The argument in the case of the Gospels necessarily takes a somewhat different form, inasmuch as they are mainly testimony to fact, but it seems to me as plain as anything can well be that all the Apostles did profess to make divine communications to men, and did treat the reception or rejection of their message as obedience or disobedience to the authority of God. He that heard them heard God; he that heard them not heard not God.

If it be said that these men were sincere in their claim to supernatural guidance but mistaken, then we appeal to the character of the revelations they have conveyed to us. After all it is not a mere question of claim and testimony.

The case is so that every man is in a position to judge for himself. The book is here, and we can look at it for ourselves, and we can appeal to the wholly unique impression produced by the Bible itself upon every susceptible spirit, an impression from the influence of which even professed unbelievers have not always been able to withdraw themselves. There can be no doubt that we have here a book which stands alone and by itself in the history of the world. A divine fire burns in it. Yet this inspired revelation is not unnatural, though it be supernatural. We are not asked to believe that which is utterly repugnant to those moral instincts which we feel to be from God within us. It has been forcibly said that "in religion we start with the principle that man is made in the image of God: that his mind, in other words, is adapted to the reflection of the spiritual and eternal, no less than of the material and temporary constitution of things. From this point of view Revelation is at once relieved of that almost unnatural character which seems often associated with the idea of what is supernatural. It appears as only the clearer manifestation to men of the spiritual order of which they form a part, and to which their whole constitution is adapted. Revelation becomes probable not because the truths it makes known to us are so distant, but because they are so near; not because we are compelled to base our belief on bare authority, but because it is in such complete congruity with our conscience and our reason. The realities we seek after and feel for are not far from any one of us, and the moment a corner of the mysterious veil which shrouds them is lifted, we feel ourselves, not in a strange and unknown land, but in one of which we have dreamed long before. This is the essential characteristic of religious truth. The heart and mind of man and the will and wisdom of God are always in intimate though obscure communion." The men who

I Wace's Boyle Lecture for 1875, p. 263.

spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost felt that their message was from God, because it was not merely a revelation, but a righteous revelation. The appeal is based time after time upon larger and more eternal moral principles. They ask for faith, but not for a blind faith. They claim submission to authority, but to an authority which is in the first instance the voice of God within us.

nature.

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Yet while the truths of revelation harmonise with man's moral nature they are so high and pure, so unlike what the rest of literature can furnish, that they carry in their inmost structure the proof of their unearthly origin. The more they are looked at the more clearly shall we see a superhuman author behind the human writer. Take the conception of Divine Law as it is presented in the Bible with ever unfolding majesty, as authority, morality, truth of action, love and loyalty to conscience and to the ideal loveliness of human Take the conception of sin as the very opposite of all this as disobedience, as moral evil, as practical falsehood, -conduct which ignores our actual moral relations, as enmity towards God and ill-will towards men, and finally as a kind of anti-law, a tyrannous principle inwoven into our very flesh,-submission to which is death as inevitably as obedience to Divine Law is our true life. Then look at the Bible idea of holiness. Holiness in man is defined as the image of holiness in God, and God's holiness is regarded as consisting in His perfect wisdom, goodness, and righteousness, the immutable perfection of His moral character. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and in the teaching of the Bible we are brought face to face with this stupendous idea that man's moral perfection, a true spiritual perfection consists in likeness to Him. Then look at the place which love occupies in the Christian system, forming as it were the flower and crown of the theology of the Bible, this familiar word receiving there a significance and power nowhere else heard of. Look also at the biblical idea of faith-as a threefold energy, intellectual, emotional, voluntary-belief,

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