down to the level of our comprehension; human relations, especially that of father to son were made use of to illustrate divine relations. But we are sure that nothing merely human can offer an adequate or complete analogy to the divine; and consequently when we are told that there are a Father, and a Son, and a Holy Spirit who from all eternity have been together, and have exercised special functions in the creation, preservation, and salvation of the material and moral universe, we are to think, not that we know the absolute and complete truth, but that the truth has been presented to us in such a form that we can understand as much of it as is needful for us at present. The wonderful mysteries of the invisible kingdom have been clothed in forms suited as far as possible to our human comprehensions; but we see through a glass darkly,' and we must not delude ourselves with the belief either that we understand them now or ever will understand them thoroughly. However, enough has been revealed regarding the wonderful love of the divine Being, and the ways of His working in the universe, and especially the great work of the Son and Spirit in effecting human salvation, to inspire us with confidence in the Saviour and fill our minds with wonder, love and praise."*

The Use of Scripture Difficulties." Every thing here seems to be fitted up to make the world a scene of discipline and moral education. A genuine message, then, from the Author of nature might be expected to conform to the disciplinary purport of the present system of things. Precisely such a revelation we find the Bible as a whole to be. It is fitted wisely to the purpose of forming character. It is a revelation clear enough to render faith possible, and obscure enough to render unbelief possible. It affords thus a trial or test of character. It searches the heart. Too bright as well as too dark a revelation might defeat the very end of Revelation. It would bring the educational

*What to Believe, pp. 194-196.

and probationary period of life to a close; it would bring on the day of judgment. The very difficulties and limitations of Revelation are adapted, also, to the conditions of moral growth. It requires, and it repays, toil. It tasks, and tries, and puzzles, and strengthens faith. To him that overcometh' is the promise of the crown of life."*

Spiritual Knowledge." What underlies the very conception of revelation," says Bishop Temple, "is the doctrine that all progress in higher spiritual knowledge is bound up with conscious communion with God. Now it is an experience common to all believers that in that communion is to be found not only all strength but all enlightenment also. The believer knows that he learns spiritual truth in proportion as he refers his life to God's judgment, prays to God for clearer vision of what is duty and what is right faith, and makes it his one great aim to do God's will. He uses all the faculties that God has given him to understand the great divine law; but he perpetually looks to God for instruction, and whatever else may be said of that instruction his experience tells him that his advance in spiritual knowledge is in proportion to his nearness in thought and feeling to God Himself. That the progress of the human race in spiritual knowledge, unlike progress in scientific knowledge, should be due not to thinkers intellectually gifted, but to Prophets and Apostles inspired by God, thus exactly corresponds with what the spiritually-minded man finds within his own soul. And so too does it correspond with what he sees in others. Often and often the unlearned and untrained by sheer goodness of life attain to wonderful perception of spiritual truth, and the holiness of the unlettered peasant reveals to his conscience the law of right conduct in circumstances which perplex the disciplined and well informed. As the human race has learnt the highest spiritual truth by direct communication from God, so too on communion with God far more.

*Old Faiths in New Light..

than on intellectual power, depends the progress of spiritual knowledge in every human soul."*

NOTE. An attempt is made in the preceding paper to answer some common Scripture difficulties by quotations from good writers. Space has permitted only a few to be noticed. The reader is referred to the books themselves for replies to other objections.

IX. THE BIBLE ADAPTED TO MAN'S NEEDS.

There is a higher class of Christian evidences which may be called internal or spirtual. They are composed of all those proofs of Christianity, and of the Divine glory of the gospel, which reveal themselves to the sincere Christian, when once he has submitted his heart and conscience to the transforming power of these messages of God. It is, of all kinds of evidence, the highest, surest, and most complete, but the least capable of direct communication to others. To the unbeliever it must continue merely a matter of testimony, not of personal apprehension and experience. Yet still it admits of being so far explained as to prove that it is no mere enthusiastic conceit or fancy, but based on the deepest wants of the human heart, and the fullest harmony of the awakened conscience and purified reason. It thus becomes an evidence higher, and not lower in kind, than what is commonly termed scientific demonstration. It may be considered in four different aspects, as it relates chiefly to the individual conscience, to Christian society, to the inspired Scriptures, and to God himself, the source and fountain of all true revelation. The first of these constitutes the experimental evidence of Christianity, or proof of the gospel which results from its felt agreement with the character, the wants, and the experience of each individual heart that submits to its power.

I. This experimental evidence consists, first of all, in the agreement which the awakened sinner finds *Bampton Lectures, pp. 151, 152.

between what he feels within himself, and what the Bible declares him to be. The gospel proclaims the universal corruption of man's nature. It tells that there is none righteous, no, not one; that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; that men are alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them; that from within, out of the heart of man, proceed all manner of evil thoughts; and that when tried by the only true standard, the Divine law, every mouth must be stopped, and all the world be found guilty before God. It reveals not merely isolated acts of transgression, but a deep and inveterate habit of ungodliness pervading the soul of man, so that it needs an entire renewal, a changé described as a new birth and a new creation, before it can really delight in God, and in his holy commandments. Now by these statements the word of God is liable to be confronted by the individual experience of every human being. Each one may look within, and make the comparison. If he finds, on close search, that he does naturally delight in submitting his own will to the will of his Maker; that no selfishness and pride have place in his bosom ; but that his meat and drink, his joy and pleasure, is to do the will of God, then he will have found a short and effectual means of discrediting the truth and divinity of the gospel, But if, on the other hand, he finds that the description of man's heart, in the Bible, answers perfectly to his own state, and every attempt at closer selfexamination only discovers to him a more vivid agreement between its faithful warnings and his own inward experience, there is here a sure proof of Christianity, deeper and more powerful than all the laborious arguments of human learning-a seal upon the message which marks it plainly to the innermost conscience as a message from the living God.

The exact nature of that charge which the gospel brings against the heart of man, has been well stated in these words: “It is not that all are destitute of benevolence, or justice, or truth, for this were experi

mentally untrue; but it is that all by nature are destitute of piety. It is not that the morality between man and man is extinct, but it is that the morality which connects earth with heaven has been broken asunder, and the world is now disjoined from that God with whom it stood, at one time, in high and heavenly relationship. One might imagine the gravitation of our planet to the sun to be suspended, and that it wandered on a strange excursion over the fields of immensity, yet still it may bear along with it the laws and processes which now obtain within the limits of the lower world. It might retain, even in the darkness of its wayward course, its chemistry and its magnetism, the adhesion of its parts, and the attraction which binds, the sea, and atmosphere, and all that is round it, to its own surface. And so, in the moral economy, there may be the disruption of our species from their God, and the world they inhabit may have become an outcast from the region of the celestial ethics. The great family of mankind may have wandered from Him who is their Head. There may still be the reciprocal play, even throughout this alienated planet of ours, of good affections and tender sympathies, and many amiable and neighbourlike regards. There is an earthborn virtue that will mingle with the passions of the human character, and mitigate the aspect of human affairs; and yet it may remain a truth, not merely announced by Scripture, but confirmed by experience, that nature hath renounced her wonted alliance with the Divinity,-that the world hath departed from its God.

"That indeed is a woeful delusion by which the natural virtues of the human character are pleaded in mitigation of its ungodliness. When beheld in their true light, they enhance and aggravate the charge. For who is it that attuned the heart to those manifold sympathies by which it is actuated.' Who gave the delightful sensibilities of nature their play, and sent forth the charities of life, to bless and gladden the whole aspect of human society? By whose hand has