THE BIBLE AND OTHER RELIGIOUS LITERATURE. 101 life, because the peace of ancient prophets and martyrs has entered their souls, and breathed upon their passions a holy calm! Such are a few illustrations of the experience which compels Christians to attach such high value to the Bible. It may be said that such experiences are no isolated phenomena, but have their analogies in connection with all religious literature; and I am far from denying that this is the case, or even that to certain individuals some modern writing speaks with greater power and authority than anything in the Bible. But it remains to be seen whether such writings will wear, whether they will last through the centuries, and spread over many lands, and be cherished among rich and poor, learned and unlearned, as a source of life and healing. There are a few works, such as the Confessions of Augustine, the Imitatio, and the Pilgrim's Progress, which have stood the test of permanence and wide diffusion; but all these bear witness to the Bible, and are only fruitful branches of that vine, the roots of which go down into Hebrew prophecy, and the teaching of Christ and his Apostles. We cannot reverse the facts of history, and glorify the works of Emerson or Carlyle with the blood of martyrs, the faithfulness of confessors, the victorious purity of unnumbered saints, and the hallelujahs of ten thousand churches. And strange as it may appear to those who are under the influence of reaction, it is simply the fact that on the Christian soul, in its anguish of sorrow or of sin, words of the Bible drop as with the power of God; and it listens entranced, as though the heavens were opened, and the Father's voice spoke to the very trial of the moment. How is this? In order to answer this question, to reconcile the two positions, the critical and the religious, and to see how the Bible, without being infallible, is nevertheless a source of truth of primary value, we must consider what may be called the Christian philosophy of the subject. Paul, whom we do not class among philosophers, because his penetrating and suggestive thoughts are the immediate utterance of the spirit within him, rather than the result of prolonged investigation and reasoning, has given in a few words the solution of our difficulty. "What man," he asks, "knoweth the things of man but the spirit of man which is in him? So also the things of God knoweth none but the Spirit NEED OF THE SPIRIT. 103 of God. Now we received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God, that we may know the things that were graciously given to us by God."1 The hidden workings of the human mind can be revealed to us only in our own consciousness. Take away our imagination, and for us the oracles of poetry must be for ever silent. Destroy our sense of humour, and the laughter of our neighbours will cease to exhilarate us. Banish from us anger and pity, avarice and generosity, and the contrariety of men's actions towards one another, now inflicting injury, and now assuaging pain, will be a puzzle without a key. And in the same way, how can we know transcendent holiness, justice and love, if these things have never visited our consciousness? Speak of them to a man who has never risen out of his selfishness and impurity, and he will not understand you. Place him in the society of angels, and he will find himself a foreigner, listening to a strange tongue. But let them come to us, as come they do, we know not how-let them enter the domain of consciousness-and they stand revealed as of heavenly lineage, expressions of that eternal life which alone, even upon earth, abides amid the schemes 1 1 Cor. ii. 11 sq. and struggles of successive generations, through the rise and fall of empires, and the pride and decay of - philosophies and religions, the spirit, not of the world, but of God. When once this life takes possession of us; when we find ourselves loving where once we hated; when we honour all men, instead of cherishing contempt towards our supposed inferiors; when our hearts melt with pity towards the degraded and repulsive outcast; when the war of passion yields to an unaccustomed peace, and the clamorous demands of self no longer trouble us; when in every quiet moment the soul flies to God as to its home, and prayer is the most spontaneous language that breaks from the lips, then we ask for no proofs; the witness is in ourselves, and the spirit which has been given us tells us of the Giver. And if we cannot always live at this height, if sometimes clouds must gather around us, still the revelation once made remains with us, and it is impossible to doubt that the life which we then beheld is the divinest thing that ever rose in our consciousness. This highest form of interior life is, for Christians, the spirit of Christ, or "the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." It does not concern us at present how much THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS. 105 or how little of this spirit has been manifested elsewhere. God reveals himself in many ways, and sends some portion of light to every man born into the world. He has been leading on our race through all the ages by the attraction of spiritual ideals, and his formative thought has been slowly shaping a spiritual cosmos out of the chaos of our void and formless capabilities. But for Christians it is in Christ that these ideal relations of the soul with God, which philosophers and devotees have so often felt after with imperfect touch, have received their true expression; and it is in fellowship of the spirit with him that they have become aware of that life of sonship which is thenceforward the goal of all their hope and striving. This inward and experiential knowledge of the spirit of life in Christ is sometimes described in theology as the Christian consciousness. Now this life contains certain implicit truths as its logical justification. To draw out these truths, and state them in precise form, requires an intellectual process, and is the work of the theologian. Some, through the very confidence of their faith, may be content with a vague and crude system of doctrine; and a few, in whom the ethical nature is predominant, |