given us by Paul of God's principle of judgment, discriminating between those who," without law, are a law unto themselves," and those that "sin in the law" (Rom. ii. 12-16), following his history of God's judgments on the heathen when unfaithful to the light which they had? (Rom. i. 18-32.) Without any knowledge, let it be repeated, as to the future of relatively darkened races, opinion is incompetent; but the line of our thoughts believing in God's "so great love"-the love we find proved in our own case-is directed by these things not to stop short of believing in His love beyond historical limits; but to believe that, however Christian minds may be perplexed or grieved at times in thinking of whole regions of the earth, and many generations in other regions, which have never known the blessed light of the truth that alone has made dwellers in Christian lands so free as they are, yet, when the end of God's government of the world shall make His ways known from the beginning, nothing will be seen in those ways disappointing to the thoughts which a good man loves to cherish concerning God's grace. Looking from the times of Christianity across the heathen world, it may be only patches of glimmering light that we see; but twilight as surely testifies of the sun as the growing morning does. It may be like the darkness of night that we look upon, but it is a darkness in which there are stars.

Faith a cooperative result.

Human

part of the work:

CHAPTER V.

REASON'S TASK IN RELIGIOUS FAITH.

Ps. xxvi. 3.-Thy loving-kindness is before mine eyes; and I have walked in Thy truth.

PHIL. iv. 8.-Think on these things.

DEUT. vi. 6, 7.-These words, which I command thee, shall be in thine heart : and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children. Thou shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

1. THE use that is to be made by man of the historical revelation of God's "so loving the world" is the subject of this chapter. The human and the divine operations by which faith in God's love is produced are not separated in practice. They are a co-operation. In describing, however, the practice of faith, the work which man himself does may be separately contemplated with advantage.

2. David describes practically the origin of his habit of living in God's faithfulness of love; "Thy loving-kindness is before mine eyes, and [as a consequence] I have walked in Thy truth." The human origin of faith is the believer's own thinking upon the reasons he has for believing in God's love. These reasons are chiefly revealed in the Word of God, or set in authoritative connection there; and accordingly we are taught "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Some of the reasons are matter for man's own observation, and all must be set before his mind by man himself, and so the direction is also given to us, "My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways." "Believe me for the

works' sake."

3. It has been already seen (Chapter II.) that the reasons for

of doc

believing that "God so loved the world" are definitely marked not study and pointed out as historical reasons. They are God's "ways" trines, which man's own eyes can observe, or which he can learn from "the Word of God." The subject of faith is the facts of God's love recorded along the world's history—the facts or doings spread over His works of creation and providence, and the assurances of His love, which are given in His Word historically by means of pledging facts and assumed relationships to man -relationships which, to our habits of thought, have the form and force of familiarly understood facts of human life. It is not God's attributes, but God's ways, that are the study of faith -not generalisations, doctrinal propositions logically collected, but the events and relationships themselves, both historical and anticipated, from which doctrines of theology would be collected.

love.

4. This settled point, that observation and not speculation but conis the domain of faith's characteristic thoughts, prepares us so of the facts templation far to deal with a question which meets us at the threshold of of God's any inquiry into man's part of the co-operative work—viz., What is the proper business of human reason in matters of faith? In the case of all facts that are to produce emotion, which is the essential character of the facts of religious knowledge, the work required is to set the facts in the most impressive light by contrast and illustration, and to make their reality felt also by proof where that is left to be done. This, then, is to be the aim of man's reasoning in religious knowledge. The subject is one of definite facts, and the relative emotions they should excite; which are often also so far settled, being described in God's Word in connection with the facts. The work of discovering entirely new truth, investigating theories from known facts so as to open up separate subjects of inquiry, which is reason's occupation in unrevealed knowledge, is not left to it in the definite subject of man's thoughts and interests revealed for his religious contemplation. Revealed religion does not contain theories in the sense which the word has in physical or metaphysical science. Its subject is simply demands of affection upon the consideration of facts of affection, after the manner of the example already quoted, "My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways." Where theories of God

Is reason competent to investi

case?

head and manhood, and their necessary relations and possible contact, are in human creeds, they are importations from metaphysical studies. And they bear a distinctive mark of their having a different origin from the line of thought given to religion in God's Word. They do not bear fruit in emotions, like the things, facts, ways, deeds of love, which the Word bids mankind think upon.

5. With reference to the propriety of human reason being barred from its common function of theorising, in the case of gate in the revealed religion, it is of importance to consider its competence for investigation in such a subject. Does it run with such accuracy upon the scent of truth in familiar fields as to warrant its entering boldly, as it has always wished to do, into that awfully unknown one? With all history before him, does man reason conclusively upon political science? Is it the case, even in experimental philosophy, that his advance is only a slow groping process, making but a step or two in a generation? Is the science of the human mind still without any generalisation deserving the name of a comprehensive theory-a generalisation bearing practical inferences-still a collection of facts which have almost held their place of ultimate facts from long before the birth of physical science? Is, then, the faculty which is yet so baffled in this department of mind competent to investigate the manner of the Divine mind, and establish principles which must or ought to regulate His working? Even in physics the unity of the great "forces" is yet but guessed at in the midst of every means of experimenting so as to make them declare themselves. Is the reason which can get so little below the surface of visible things able to investigate the unity in diversity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? No one will be slow to answer the question after reading the confused and confusing manipulations of words, making a form of knowledge, which stopped all progress of reasoning in obscurity, and shunted religious energy on to the line of polemical zeal, in the metaphysical age of the Greek Church, when so many of the terms were invented which have been used since in the contests of theological speculation, and used as if the words really represented perfectly understood definite things.

over-wis

scepticism

of observ

6. History teaches us that the wanderings of reason, either to Source of the side of scepticism or of over-wisdom, have arisen, as a rule, dom and out of departures from considering Christianity (revealed reli- -theorisgion) as a religion of observation—one habitually contemplat- ing instead ing a certain history. The state of mind which seeks to be ing. wise above what is written, and ends in knowing nothing as it ought to be known, is that self-conceit which in all ages has come, in its mischievous progress, to substitute critical discussion of theories for emotional thinking of recorded deeds of saving love-tempted, by the gratification of intellectual triumphs, away from the humble enjoyment of thinking upon the distinct promises and relationships and expressive forms of assurance of love which surround, and are to be associated in our thoughts with, such names as "the Father," "the Son," and "the Holy Ghost"-names given for historical, and not for philosophical, thinking. Successful scepticism has to the same effect seduced the mind away from thinking of the separate facts or whole history of revealed love, to look at something else. The Pharisees, by boldly asserting that Jesus cast out devils by Beelzebub, drew away the attention of their hearers from the deeds they saw done to that startling theory on the subject, to think of how that might be the case, and reason on that question, and shut their eyes to Him. Had their minds. not once gone off on that hunt after a tempting exciting theory-had they stayed to look in the face of the facts of Jesus' healing the possessed-they would have seen and felt that the health and peace and new life which His healing gave to Satan's victims could be no work of Satan's will. Like the blind man who could not be reasoned out of feeling the greatness of the fact of his own deliverance, they would have laughed to scorn the theories which would assign such works to any but God. Yet Jesus had to bring them that saw the miracles back even to that plain reasoning once they let themselves be led away from it. The doctrine of myths is a modern example of the same kind. When the thoughts are busied with considerations of how universally mankind have had beliefs in supernatural beings and arts-such as fairies, magic, &c.-the reason forgets what manner of supernatural

H