HOW IT REVEALS TRUTH. 111 the Christian consciousness. This spirit is disclosed, not only through the records of his acts and teaching in the Gospels, but also through the teaching of his disciples and the character of the early Church. As we proceed, we shall come upon traces of the same commanding spirit, of the same general type of life and doctrine, pervading the earliest documents. I say this in full view of the differences and developments which critics have, in recent times, been fond of pointing out in the several writers of the New Testament. These writers were undoubtedly men of diverse temperament and spiritual gift; but all alike express their unbounded reverence for Christ himself, and in their varying moods and tendencies we see only different phases of the same spirit.1 The pictures are indeed manifold; yet they blend into one harmonious impression, which, without this manifoldness, would be deficient in fulness and perfection. The spirit of life in Christ Jesus thus revealed, and received into ourselves, becomes within us the spiritual judge of moral and 1 It is impossible to work out this view in the present Lectures; but the reader will at least find some hints and illustrations on the following pages. religious truth, discerning what is compatible, and what incompatible, with itself. Secondly, the New Testament goes beyond this, and presents, ready formed, numerous doctrines which are either the expression or the interpretation of the Christian spirit. Its nearest and most essential truths were inevitably the first to disclose themselves in thought, and to become the subjects of conversation and of teaching; while more remote and speculative ideas did not emerge till the original fervour cooled, and intellectual gained the precedence over spiritual interest. As examples of immediate expressions of the spirit of Christ, we may take such sayings as these:— "Blessed are the merciful;" "Every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to the judgment;" "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven;" "There is one God and Father of all;" "God is love;" "He that hateth his brother walketh in darkness." Such statements as these were vivid truths in the days when Christianity was young; and however they have been obscured or forgotten in later times, HOW IT REVEALS TRUTH. 113 they still shine with a pure radiance, and bear witness to their own truth in every Christian heart. Doctrines which give an interpretation of the inward life do not possess the same unerring authentication as the primary truths. Some, however, lay so close to the religious experience that they came with all the force of a primary conviction, such as these:-"Except a man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of God;" "I am the vine; ye are the branches,"statements which gain in the clearness and fulness of their meaning through their figurative setting. Others were revealed distinctly to some, but not to all; for instance, that the Gentiles were fellow-heirs with the Jews, and partakers of the promise,-a truth which was as clear as daylight to Paul, but required argument and discussion to bring it home to those who could not see so far into the meaning of the new life. Others, again, were more purely inferential, and therefore mixed up to a greater extent with current modes of belief, such as the doctrine that Jesus was the Christ, who fulfilled the promises to Israel,—a doctrine which commends itself when spiritually interpreted, and serves to embody the truth that Christianity did not break, but consummated, the religious develop I ment of Judaism; but it required explanation, and could only be established by a comparison between the old and the new, and by scriptural and historical evidence. But we find also in the New Testament another class of doctrines, which are not the expression or interpretation of the Christian consciousness, but the result of local and temporary conditions of belief. For instance, the belief just alluded to, that Jesus was the Messiah, naturally carried with it an acceptance of those elements in the old belief which were not contradicted by Christian experience. The fact of the crucifixion made an impassable gulf between the old and the new views, and must have altered to the very core the conception of the Messiah's work; but the expectations of his earthly glory could not immediately disappear, and hence arose the doctrine that Jesus was to return in person, and establish his kingdom in the world, and this before the first generation of disciples had passed away. It is obvious that a belief of this kind could not grow out of the new life with God; indeed, now that we know it to have been erroneous, I think we can see that it is inconsistent with the finer elements of Christian thought, though this was HOW IT REVEALS TRUTH. 115 not so obviously the case as to be immediately perceived by those whose minds had been early imbued with the Messianic notions of the time. We are thus furnished with a criterion by which we can "try the spirits whether they be of God," a criterion which, though in us, is not of us, and is therefore not wholly subjective. Of course this criterion does not transfer to ourselves the infallibility which we have denied to the Bible; for we suffer both from the limitation of the spirit and the imperfection of our intelligence. Still it is for each man the ground of settled faith, and a principle by which, if he will trust it, he can distinguish doctrines, and separate the permanent from the transient-the spiritual verities which shine by their own light, from the shadows which are cast by the fleeting forms of partial thought and knowledge. From the New Testament we must turn for a moment to the Old. The Christian Church was sounder in its interpretation of spiritual facts than Marcion, when it insisted on accepting the ancient Scriptures, and recognized one God as operative through all the ages. Nevertheless, the great heretic had something to say for himself; and a theory of |