facts of God's other dealings, making the truth both credible and necessary to him. When the Word of God, directing men how to recognise truth, bids them "try the spirits whether they be of God," "know them by their fruits," "prove all things, and hold fast that which is good," it gives them not only previous revelation for a test to compare new truth with, as the Bereans tried Paul's teaching, and to reject "any other gospel," anything not according to the law and the testimony—it gives them also this other test, of comparing new truth with felt human nature, declaring that a dutiful state of heart is prepared to be a judge of religious truth, and that the heart must be exercised to sensitiveness in this function. "He that doeth the will of God shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God." "Have your senses exercised by reason of use to discern good and evil.

10. This requirement of the Revealer, that His revelations Duty of private shall be tested in prescribed adequate ways, points out that if judgment. the liberty of private judgment must be at the beginning of all real faith, the duty of private judgment as certainly must be there. The liberty of private judgment is not to be abused into the licence of refusing to consider the matters set by God before man's observation. That abuse is the common source and form of infidelity; which is mostly not reasoning disbelief, but carelessness or unwillingness to consider. Whether a man is accountable for his belief or not, he is undoubtedly accountable for the pains he has taken to know the truth. The duty of receiving religious truth, when it is proved to be truth, must as little be interpreted into relieving the hearer from judging whether "these things are so." That avoidance of personal inquiry gives birth to credulity instead of faith. A man may have a creed which he has suffered to be imposed upon him without his taking the liberty of thinking for himself, or which he has adopted at second-hand without having taken the trouble of thinking for himself; but in neither case has he a faith as well as a creed. As the unbelief is little worthy of respect which arises from mere carelessness of attending to the things of revelation, so the fancied faith is worthless that is not thought out by the believer himself, with God's Word and

Risk to faith in religious reading.

his own consciousness of human needs before him to test and value the new instruction which he adopts. If faith be missed by the carelessness or distaste which lets the living seeds of it fall as "by the wayside," such belief is rootless and without fruit, as the seeds that fall" upon a rock and forthwith spring up." The "word" which results in faith is heard and attended to with an "honest and good heart;" and the fruit of the consideration is "patiently brought forth" in abiding thought, in some "an hundredfold," in "some but thirty," according to different capacities for seeing much or little in a truth contemplated.

11. The great risk to faith in an age of much religious reading, whether of popular or profounder writings, is, that this necessary condition to real faith-the exercise of personal consideration — will be neglected. Though at first sight that risk seems an improbable result of the thoughts being more solicited to religious matters, yet it is found to exist; and the fact is, that an age of much reading of human books on religious topics may be an age of unstable faith. The reason is simple, and obviously sufficient. The reading of the "effectual" Word is extensively superseded by the perusal of feebler human writings; and besides, whatever the subordinate value of these may be, the thoughts of all but a few readers are sure to go no further than the words of their chosen writers, often missing the fulness of even their thoughts. Hence great part of what is heard in the talk of the present day about "the development of truth," "the opinions of thinking men," "advanced views," &c., is only jargon-words which do not represent definite thoughts belonging to the speakers or imitative writers. It is balanced by a cant of the same value, what, by a denomination equally unrepresentative of actual thought, is called "evangelical truth," " orthodox views." Both are chiefly borrowed views, or rather nothing more respectable than borrowed phraseology, and likely to give place to any other strong" wind of doctrine" (Eph. iv. 14) that may blow over the undutiful avoiders of religious painstaking. The cure for such dissipated looseness of thoughts on religion is familiarity with its facts and the inferences connected therewith as they are writ

ten, examples of true reasoning, for man's guidance in the words of God Himself. If "advanced views" of religious truth do not take along with them all the facts and their appended lessons which make religious truth, they have not advanced in the truth, but run away from it. On the other hand, no "orthodox" handling of point after point, or—what has been, under every famous creed as yet, the character of human writings—a selection of points of the emotional truths of revealed religion, can give to the mind and heart confident hold of them, like the divinelyappointed and divinely-fitted description in which the Word sets them before us truly connected; truly balanced, so often shown to us in the form of life-pictures, the histories of real men's real intercourse with God. Whatever theories or difficulties may be about "verbal inspiration," the expressions of the Bible and its collocations of thoughts come home to man's convictions as no human choice of different language, and no other logic, ever comes near to doing. The neglect of God's own Word, then, for any professed assertion or discussion of its contents, is a most illogical disregard of the actual merits of the case to be judged; for that case is the offered facts and their offered evidence presented by the Offerer in the connection which He says is true. The disbeliever who has not examined these for himself has no disbelief- he merely can repeat the words of professed disbelievers. The believer who has not examined these for himself, who does not think on these things for his faith, has no faith in them; he is merely quite willing to believe them, but as yet he only believes in the man whose opinion he has copied with such a saving of trouble to himself. No shortcoming in the practice of faith is less defensible than the neglect of private judgment. The command is distinct to "search the Scriptures," "try the spirits," "prove all things, and hold fast the good," "be ready to give to every one that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you." The religion that is required of us is not a thing that can be made up of indolent well-meanings, or fond or slight imaginations and credulous beliefs. It must be the loving work of heart and soul and mind and strength; and its faith must grow out of deliberate consideration, diligent think

truth.

ing on God's own statements of the truth, convictions made our own by much thinking, and comparing His words with the histories of His love and with our own conscious condition. So much is this the case, that even those most distinctly revealed truths which God's authority is to be enough for our accepting, we do not believe as we have to believe them until we also, by considering them from every side, in every connection with our consciousness, commend them to our feelings as things true for us, as well as divinely declared to be truthtruths subjectively true for man, necessary parts of man's absolutely-needed religion, as well as given him by the Revealer of all truth. A man has that possession of religious truth which we call faith only in so far as he feels it fitting him, and consequently "ever before him." Any other portion of truth laid up in his mind may become religious truth to him, and is in the way of preparation for becoming such, but it is not religious truth or faith to him as yet. From this arises the necessity of

Second, To 12. The second work of reason in acquiring faith-a work assimilate recognised also commanded. It is, that we shall not only examine and satisfy ourselves of the evidence of revealed truth, but shall then go on to familiarise our minds with the proven truth, making it habitually present to our feelings. After "proving all things," we are to "hold fast" that which is good. "Whatsoever we see to be true, seemly, just, pure, lovely, of good report—whatever excellingly virtuous or worthy of praise" -we are, after knowing them, seeing them to be so, to go on "to think on these things." This is the human proceeding by which truth that is known is to become in any man what the Scriptures mean by faith.

Reasoning

and re

vealed truth to coincide.

13. Indeed so thoroughly does religion require that its revealed truths and the habitual thoughts of our reason should be brought into most satisfied union, naturally at home with each other-so entirely are these truths to possess our minds habitually, that our reason and our religion are meant to be really one, different names only for practically one guide of life; so that when we think on any religious matter, we shall be thinking as our own reason spontaneously guides us,

and when we reason on any matter of worldly life, our reason shall of itself bring up the very principles and maxims of revealed religion. There is no unacknowledged error of thought that so dislocates the facts of man's condition here, or which should be so universally corrected by the logic of human feeling, as the prevalent habit of speaking, and consequently so far thinking, as if a man's religion were a different thing from his life-corrective of it, or otherwise related to it, but only related. The only true feeling, the only good logic, in the matter is, that a man's religion is his life and his life is his religion. Nothing else comes up to the needs of human nature, every faculty and propensity of which is in need of being healed, savingly controlled, or helped. The objective religion taught us by God and the subjective religion (connection with God) felt by us must be one and the same. The second department of the work of reason in connection with revealed faith is the lifelong one of bringing this to pass by accustoming the soul to feel as well as know the truths of revealed faith. Having satisfied the mind of the truth of the great assurances of God's love, and of the reasonableness of the requirements of human love and service to Him which these imply and have appended to them, the reasoning faculty has next, by setting the precious instructions in all their lights before the soul, to bring it to love and take them to itself, and assimilate them, feeding its natural life of emotional thought and activity upon them as its needed and sure food.

assimila

14. What is the process of this appropriation? It is de- Process of scribed and enjoined in the Word itself: "Think on these tion. things; "Abide in me, and let my words abide in you; "Thy word have I hid in my heart;" "Thy testimonies have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage; " "Thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes, and I have walked in Thy truth.” In the fact that this is the appointed process of assimilating religious truth into being the soul's own habitual thoughts and feelings, we have the explanation of how faith is so far from being coextensive with knowledge of the truth-a coextension which religionists are apt to assume. It is not the