rising splendour of this revelation in men's hearts which is chasing away, as a phantom of the night, their belief in a hell of eternal and fruitless torment. So it is with our ideas of God's justice and holiness. These spiritual attributes, though coming as angel visitors to the lowly tent of our human consciousness, yet recede away into infinite depths of glory, and, while we know enough for gratitude and worship and practical guidance, we do not forget how partial is our knowledge, and how it may expand for ever as we gaze upwards towards the infinitude of God. Thus revelation is a continual process running through the world's history, a withdrawing of the veil from darkened souls; and, before we can respond to any outward appeal in regard to the truths of the Spirit, there must be a shining of God's light within the heart.

Nevertheless, revelation involves another and more stable element. There must be an outward stimulus to waken the dormant consciousness. It is so throughout the whole series of our ideas, which do not spring to life spontaneously and unprovoked, but only in answer to a suitable appeal coming from the world around us. We believe, for instance, in the infinity of time and space, though the infinite lies beyond all possible experience, and the belief must therefore arise through the nature of our own intelligence; and yet it would never claim our attention at all unless we had experience of events occurring in time and of objects existing in space. Or, again, we have an idea of beauty, and form to ourselves an inward standard of judgment by which we pronounce things beautiful or ugly; but if we had never seen anything beautiful, I suppose that the very notion

would not have dawned in our minds. And we know how the perception of beauty is capable of indefinite cultivation through familiarity with the noblest products of art. While in the majority of men this perception does not pass beyond a susceptibility to impressions coming from without, in a few it becomes intensified into an inward vision which beholds shapes of beauty thronging the imagination, and forcing their way from the ideal realm into material expression. These men of creative genius are revealers in art, exhibiting to the world a new dignity and power of conception and execution, which thousands can appreciate, though they alone could produce. In the domain of religion the same law prevails. We are susceptible of religious impression, and capable of entertaining religious ideas, but the impression and the ideas come, in the first instance, from the response of our nature to some external suggestion. The way in which God and our relations to him find that inward and immediate recognition which we call religion is far too varied to admit of any exact description, and in the endless play of nature and of human life we cannot tell what scene or what event may open the eye of faith or bow the soul in adoration. The silent majesty of the midnight sky, the tumultuous chant of the heaving ocean, the loveliness of a flower or the gentle tread of the exquisite snowflake, some unexpected deliverance from danger, the moan of the bereaved heart, the waiting hours of illness when the mind turns in upon itself-any of these may speak to us of God, and touch into life some devout sentiment. Still we may safely affirm that the great agency by which our hidden power is drawn forth, and we are led on towards

our true manhood, is the vivid manifestation in another of the faculties which are ready to spring into action in ourselves. A parent's love stirs the sleeping consciousness of love in the child's heart; and so begin the vision of higher possibilities and the tender sense of trustful dependence which ripen into religion. Whatever flows forth from a soul alive with the Spirit of God comes fraught with power to souls that vibrate with the same celestial thrill. We are perpetually receiving revelations from the words and deeds of others, and the world is full of divine voices for those whose inward ear is open to catch their deep undertone. The united worship and work of the Christian Church are founded upon this fact. Its appeal to the world is the appeal of faith to men who are capable of faith. When we meet in solemn assembly, aspiration passes from heart to heart, and in the richness and variety of the Church's collective life our narrower individual life puts forth new blossoms, and feels the promise of a sweeter perfume and more spotless purity. And he most moves us who, whatever may be his personal imperfections, speaks with the most direct simplicity from that communion which we own as the deepest fact in ourselves, and who is rapt into awed reverence before the revelation of the Spirit of God within him.

Who, then, has so fulfilled the conditions of a revealer as he to whom we look as the founder and head of our Christian Commonwealth? Much as we prize his teaching, yet the secret of his revealing power does not lie in the statements which he made about God, or the precepts which he laid down to govern human duty. Rather is it in the fact that he received and lived by

the Divine Spirit, and woke to animation men's dead consciousness of that Spirit by the persuasive might of his appeal, the appeal not only of his voice, but of a blameless and exalted life and a torturing death borne as the Son of God should bear. Yet to us he can give no revelation, unless the Father who sent him draw us to him. We may hear and understand not; and until the impress of his soul is laid upon our soul, until his love enters our hearts, and his faith rends the veil that hangs between us and God, he may have taught us, and we may have owned his authority, or professed some theory about his person and his work, but his revelation is still to come, we know only what eye has seen and ear has heard, and are in bondage to the letter. But where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty, for there is light; and the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God. Thus the inward and the outward work together. Beholding the beloved Son, Christians become conscious of their sonship. There is no revelation unless God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shines in our hearts, and yet he gives the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

I cannot desire any richer blessing on our worship here than that through it our lives may be radiant with that glory which never ceases to shine, though the world's darkness comprehends it not; and that through word and deed we may manifest that higher Spirit which we would make our guide and our strength, and so help one another to the love and peace and blessedness of an assured faith.

APPENDIX.

THE CONCLUDING CHAPTERS OF THE REV. CHARLES
BEARD'S LECTURES ON THE REFORMATION OF

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, IN ITS RELATION TO
MODERN THOUGHT AND KNOWLEDGE.

(HIBBERT LECTURES, 1883.)

I

The Development of Philosophical Method and Scientific Investigation.

HAVE now to speak of intellectual forces which have been at work since the Reformation, the characteristic of which is to approach the Bible and religion generally with à priori criteria of credibility, and to claim an absolute right of judging or moulding conceptions which are undoubtedly Biblical. The result of the higher criticism, as a whole, is to declare that the history, the structure, the religious constitution of the Bible, unfit it to stand in the relation to human faith in which the Reformers placed it. But the tendencies of thought which are now to occupy us take up an independent attitude of criticism to Biblical statements and ideas; and while they altogether reject some, demand that others shall be modified, as a condition of being recognized as certain constituents of knowledge. These may be classed under two heads, philosophical and scientific: the one being the result of modern ways of thinking, the other of a knowledge of nature which has become a permanent possession of the race. Here, again, I must call attention to the fact that these forces mutually act and re-act, and that the distinction between them cannot always be observed.

One important result of the Reformation was the dissolution of that union between Philosophy and Theology which had been effected by the Schoolmen. Up to the sixteenth century, there had been,