ages (p. 106). Vinet states wisely that both man and woman progress together, and conversely what degrades the one degrades the other. Vinet also well says that Protestantism develops (p. 107) a sense of human responsibility to God and to our fellow-man. This is a thoughtful and most useful lecture at this time when changes of startling rapidity come upon us; we do well to consider our ways, and carefully choose the right and reject the wrong, and we warmly thank Professor Roget for his wisely planned and instructive paper. Mr. THEODORE ROBERTS wrote: Many of us have hardly realized, that side by side with a French literature which had rejected the purifying and liberalizing influence of the Bible, and was rushing into a blank atheism, Protestant Switzerland kept alive a true flame of moral discernment. The poverty of strictly French literature on its religious side serves to show what we English and our German cousins owe to the Bible. We learn from Professor Roget's paper what France might have been in her literature, had she not put aside the Protestant Spirit with its Bible. It also warns us what English literature may become if our youth should cease to be brought up on the Bible. On the one hand the politician would keep it out to propitiate the Papist and the blind sectarian, while the so-called "modern" teacher would sap its moral power by resolving it into myth. Having regard to certain words of criticism expressed in reference to the Latin mind, the CHAIRMAN observed that, were Professor Roget present, he would doubtless direct attention to the fact that his subject was not Latin Christian Culture, but Latin Culture; and this is made evident by the manner in which he brings in Racine and Rousseau with other non-Christian writers, and shows to what an extent, in their work, they were led to occupy a point of view largely in harmony with Christian ethics. 686TH ORDINARY GENERAL MEETING, HELD IN COMMITTEE ROOM B, THE CENTRAL HALL, SIR GEORGE KING, M.A. (HON. TREASURER), IN THE CHAIR. The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read, confirmed and signed, and the following Elections were announced :—As Associates: George Phare, Esq., the Rev. Lewis Foster, and John Ashworth, Esq. The CHAIRMAN then called on the Rev. Canon V. F. Storr, M.A., to read his paper on Revelation." 66 By the Rev. Canon V. F. STORR, M.A., Canon of Westminster. HE religious history of mankind is proof that the vast majority of men have always believed in the possibility of revelation, for the story of religion cannot be reduced to the story of man's search for God. It is true that man has been searching for God since the earliest ages, but it is also true that he has been convinced that his search has been met by an answering movement on the part of God. The medicine-man, the priest, the wizard, the oracle, witness to a belief that it is possible for man through the appropriate means to come into active relationship with the mysterious power behind phenomena which we call God; and that God makes a disclosure of Himself and His purposes in greater or less degree, though that disclosure may vary considerably in its methods. We are to discuss therefore something which is of world-wide import. I Revelation sends us back at once to the Revealer; and before we can profitably discuss the problems connected with revelation, we must spend a few moments in thinking about the nature of God. We must banish at once from our minds any thought of arbitrary action on God's part. All the Divine activities must flow from the Divine character and be an expression of God's essential nature. Hence, if He reveals Himself to men, it must be because it is His nature so to do, and because to reveal Himself is part of His purpose for the world. Can we now reasonably infer anything as to the nature of God as a selfrevealing Being from a study of His works, among which must be included man? Evolutionary science unfolds for us a story of development in which, by the very constitution of our minds, we cannot help seeing purpose. The history of this planet is the history of a succession of changes, which are not mere changes, but changes directed to an end. Stage succeeds stage in orderly evolution, and each stage prepares the way for the next. Nor is this all. In the process of development there is the constant emergence of what is new. New kinds appear, richer in quality, which cannot be explained by what went before them, but call for their own principles of interpretation. Thus, life cannot be explained. in terms of non-living matter, nor can consciousness be reduced to movements of particles in the brain. The whole development viewed broadly, and with due regard paid to the fact of retrogressions, has converged on the production of man. Personality is the goal of the process. To make man seems to be the purpose of evolution, a purpose only as yet partially realized, for man has surely not reached the full measure of his growth, even on this planet! Now, if we are prepared to grant the existence of God, we must view this evolutionary process as a revelation of Himself. The term "revelation" is, of course, being used here in a wide meaning; but it is the right term to use, because God does disclose Himself to us, at any rate in part, through creation. To create is to reveal. It is so with ourselves. The picture reveals the artist; the book reveals the author's mind. In the popular mind God's creative activity is usually construed as the power of making something out of nothing. But the important fact about creation is that it is the mode of the Divine self-expression or self-revelation. The evolutionary view of the world has forced me to think of God as essentially a Being whose nature it is to reveal Himself in ascending degree. A stone tells you something about God; a flower tells you more; man, moral and spiritual, tells you yet more; and as a Christian, I add that the Perfect Person, Jesus Christ, crowns and completes all the earlier and less perfect revelations. It is the ascending scale in Nature which is the important point, because if it be true (and it is true) that a development should be judged by its end, not by its beginning, by what it becomes, not by what it began with, then in order to discover the meaning of our planet's evolution you must look at man, the goal and end of the whole process. And when you look at man, what do you find? In man at his best (and it is by his best that he is to be judged) you find a spiritual being, haunted by ideals, with a measure of free creative power, with a sense of God and a desire to know God. He is a growing being, whose "reach exceeds his grasp "; his achievements never keep pace with his possibilities. In character and knowledge you feel that there are higher levels which he is capable of reaching. Now if in the purpose of God the long process of evolution has resulted in the production of such a being, it is a fair inference that the Power behind the process is interested in persons. Having made them, having given them this desire for God, this reaching out after a beyond, will not God want to reveal Himself to them, according to their capacity at any stage to grasp such a revelation? To bring man upon the scene, and then to deny him all knowledge of what he wants most to know, seems to me to be procedure which amounts almost to irrationality. The nature of God then, as inferred from the structure and history of this earth, leads me to believe that He will reveal Himself to man. I am assuming, of course, that religion is not to be explained away as merely a man-made thing. The battle is raging to-day between the psychology which would treat religion as simply a product of deep-seated tendencies and instincts, coming down from a long past, within the man himself, and having no objective reference; and the theism which grounds religion in objective reality, and sees in it the product of two factors-man's search for God, and God's touch upon the human soul. Once grant the existence of a Supreme will and mind behind the visible scene, and revelation takes its place as the natural unfolding of God to men who, in some degree, share His nature. The Christian conception of God as Love emphasizes the truth that it is God's nature to reveal Himself, because love is an energy which flows out in blessing upon others. Human love proves itself to be love only by giving of itself to others. That is the law of its life-that it cannot keep itself within a self-contained circle, but must overflow in ever-widening activities. Love is essentially a self-revealing power. Let us go on now to consider our subject more in detail. The first point for discussion is the nature of the difference between revelation in its wider meaning and revelation in the narrower meaning, which we more usually attach to the word. In its larger significance, revelation covers all the divine activities in Nature and history; they are all a manifestation of God and His purposes. In its narrower significance, revelation relates to what we believe to have been a special activity of God in relation to the Hebrew race, and in relation to the coming of Jesus Christ. These two views of revelation correspond to the old distinction between natural and revealed religion. Natural religion, so it was once taught, included all those truths about God which man, by the unaided use of his reason, could discover through a study of Nature and his own constitution. By this road he reached (I am stating it roughly) the conception of a Creator and Ruler and Designer of the Universe, who possessed moral character, and was interested in the moral development of man. But can we to-day press the antithesis between natural and revealed religion so rigidly as it was once pressed? I do not think that we can, and for the following reasons:-In the first place, man can discover nothing which God does not choose to reveal; hence, even natural religion is really a revelation. Secondly, when this contrast between natural and revealed religion was in the ascendant, the study of comparative religion had hardly begun. Since then comparative religion has grown to be an important science. A vast mass of material is to hand about the various religions of the world, and a study of this shows that it is extremely difficult to maintain that there is a body of beliefs which can be called natural religion. If you take the beliefs which are common to all religions, you will find they are very few. I am, therefore, of opinion that we must get rid of the distinction between natural and revealed religion as it was once set forth, and adopt a different method of approaching the subject. We shall be on a more fruitful line of inquiry if we keep in mind the |