We

awakened perception we have heaven about us, and the Divine near us, in a truer sense than the childhood of the world ever had. By it we are enabled to see the spiritual world as really and truly as we now see the earthly. Our spirits are open to higher strains and finer harmonies. Through this life, as it grows and strengthens, we shall receive spiritual impressions, enlarging our faculties, and therewith expanding our knowledge of the spiritual sphere, of God, of heaven, of eternity. How this new birth or Divine consciousness is produced, and when it was first manifested, we do not profess to know, any more than we pretend philosophically to understand how vital influence is given to our own and other bodies. But we know the facts concerning both; we are certain, that as there is in what we call nature an unseen but felt power which spreads life and beauty around us and manifests itself through the lives which it has formed, even so in the spiritual kingdom there is this higher influence moving among the spirits of men, and here and there bending before its invisible presence the souls which it has born anew. do not pretend to describe its action, or trace its movements, but we with others are conscious of these "quickening, animating influences on all sides as of a holy world throughout governed by supernatural powers." These influences are, as might be expected, most abiding, and direct, and impressive when we cross the threshold" of the Book that records the unfolding, in one nation, of this sphere to man. It is here naturally that we feel brought into the more immediate presence of the Divine, although the influence is by no means limited to it, and may even in other manifestations sometimes surpass what we find there. We know also from the Bible, what we feel in experience, that the new life of holiness by faith in our spirits is capable of rising to heights of spiritual perfection hitherto unattained by ourselves or those before us in the same order of experiences. With unknown ages before us, of which the geological past may help us to form some dim and approximate idea-with unknown higher spiritual influences in that measureless expanse in our religious life, which developing life everywhere now faintly discloses,-I am persuaded that it is no dream to cherish the hope of the fullest development of this Divine consciousness, that it is no vain desire to long for the great ideal of all life, to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. As this is the hope of the living, so is it the grandest "doom we can imagine for the mighty dead." We are quite aware that this consciousness of the spiritual, or, as we have termed it, the new birth, which lies at the very basis

ARY

of spiritual truth (whether in Scripture or elsewhere), even as the
Being towards whom we aspire forms its apex, is questioned by
many, and proof demanded of the certainty of these things. To
him who has not this certainty in himself, I confess I can find no
fitter words, in addition to what has already been said, in which to
state this certainty, than the following:-"Soll denn der geistig
Geheilte oder wenigstens in die Heilung Eingetretene nicht eben
so unmittelbar, ohne irgend welche Beweisführung, zwischen Krank-
heit und Gesundheit unterscheiden und seine Gesundheit fühlen,
wie der körperlich Geheilte oder doch in der entschiedenen Recon-
valescenz Begriffene es thut? Welche Vorstellung von der Fröm-
migkeit liegt doch überhaupt dem gegnerischen Raisonnement zu
Grunde! Ist sie denn nicht ihrem Wesen nach unmittelbare Selbst-
gewissheit? Bezeugt sich denn nicht das Göttliche selbst dem
Empfänglichen unmittelbar als solches, und ist nicht eben nur die
auf solchem Selbstzeugniss desselben beruhende Gewissheit die
volle religiöse Gewissheit? Das wirklich göttliche Leben ist als
das schlechthin wahre und reelle Leben auch seiner Realität sich
bewusst."
""*

In treating of spiritual truth, under whatever form, we cannot advance one step unless we are agreed upon the conditions of discussion, viz., the nature of the truth, and the mode of its perception. To those who really feel no consciousness, or only the vaguest perception, of the Divine, and to those who may have it faintly but have not sought to quicken it by contact with the sphere of its action, this chapter may seem the expression of emotion, rather than of experience. To those who feel a capacity for perceiving the truth we call spiritual, the emotion, if it please any one to call it so, will be felt to mirror the nature of the experience, and to be repressed rather than exaggerated. In æsthetics Schiller says, we need "a heart which feels, and puts in force, the whole power of the beautiful; ' and in spiritual truths also we must have a capacity-a Divine consciousness or spiritual susceptibility, since it is so necessary at every step to appeal to experience and feeling, rather than to general principles. The task may be simple and effective, or severe and useless, as we have, or have not such internal faculty to respond to this appeal. This has ever been the supreme difficulty in all religious questions which were deeper than bare dogma, and touched vital spiritual existences. We may get a response when the life is

*Rothe.

there, but we cannot inspire the life if it is so feeble, and inoperative, as to be practically unconscious. And this spiritual unconsciousness arises mainly from the fact that we will not come to Him that we might have life, or having it, have it more abundantly.

We do not seek by these remarks to judge others and their spiritual and intellectual position; we state merely the general condition of internal spiritual development. The causes why these conditions are inoperative, we dare not seek to determine. The known complexities of physical and mental life within the domain of observed phenomena, would hinder any one from rudely and ignorantly dogmatising upon mental and moral conditions; but when we add to these the action of the spiritual life with which the moral and intellectual states are closely allied, he would be a rash man, not to say uncharitable, who would trespass the bounds of general observation and enter the domain of personal experience. Harsh judgments are much easier, less true, and when true, if they ever chance to be so, less edifying, than dispassionate and affectionate statements of truth. Truth, whether in spiritual matters or physical, is never personal; when pure and purely held it has ever the note of universality. It is the admixture of error that makes it limiting, and particular, and personal; and this is the manner in which we are all too apt to hold our grain of truth, and the reason why our statement of it is so exceedingly individual and bitter. The more nearly we approach Him who was "the truth," the more will we be filled with that charity which is the bond of perfectness, and which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things. I scarcely expect that we shall then have a division in our science of theology, or knowledge of the spiritual, assigned to polemics.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MANIFESTATION OF SPIRITUAL TRUTH.

"One principal feature in the characteristic religious activity of the Holy Scriptures is, that it transports us in a distinct manner into the historic facts of the Divine revelation itself."

THE general idea of a revelation being, as we have seen in a previous chapter, the unveiling of the Divine through spiritual facts made luminous in the ordinary course of events, whether in nature or in history, and these requiring in man for their apprehension a receptivity which I have called for the sake of distinction a spiritual consciousness, we are led, so far as analogy can lead us, to anticipate a gradual devolopment, both in the external revelation and in the internal capacity. Revelations could only be given as men were fitted to receive them. This statement must not be stretched too far. It is not meant to convey an opinion, for instance, that the earlier revelations were known absolutely in their entire compass at the very first. They could, in fact, only be known by degrees, as the awakening spiritual consciousness attained vigour and insight. As we know from experience in other forms of truth, spiritual truths already known in consciousness would be dependent on truths not yet presented, and in this way the comprehension of a truth already in presentation would be postponed. Later revelations were not always grasped in an adequate manner when uttered, nor are they even now clearly realised by the enlightened spiritual consciousness. On the contrary it is not difficult to see that many of them are absolutely misapprehended. In the Bible record a process, which we found to be at the basis of our conception of spiritual life and a spiritual sphere, is plainly seen to be begun and carried on, viz., that of exciting activity in the spirit of man,-of unfolding and purifying his consciousness for the perception of the Divine manifestation. The method of God with man was essentially that enunciated by Lessing. The primitive revelation stood to man in the same relation that education stands to the individual. It was an education in the spiritual. But, while Lessing conceived truly the method and nature of the earlier revelation, the conclusions drawn by him from this fundamental conception were erroneous. He

failed, we think, to realise the double element in man's constitution, corresponding to the twofold sphere outside of him, and the distinctive, and in some respects independent, character of these elements. The relation of sensible life to sensible phenomena is not the same as the relation of the spiritual life to what is Divine. It is true that we speak of consciousness in connection with both, but this is merely the most general expression for the primordial internal state produced in each case: we do not pretend by it to describe in detail the mode in which we stand related to that which produces this state. Through sensible consciousness, when developed as we now see it, we gain a knowledge of the relations of one thing to another in the world of sensible phenomena; in spiritual consciousness, as addressed through revelation, we are lifted out of the sphere of generalised relations into personal contact with One who transcends these relations, but whom their most comprehensive expression cannot touch. Personal union with the Divine is widely apart in many ways from phenomenal experience; just as, in a less complete manner, personal union with humanity, in emotion, and intellect, and moral sensibility, would be different from experience of these, if we could have such experience, existing in some external material manifestation, and severed from all personality. The fact that an education was needed by man through revelation, as Lessing himself seems in one way to allow, might have led him, one would think, to consider that there was something special requiring this special means. Instead of this, however, he concludes that revelation being an education, and education giving nothing which might not be educed by man, the truths of revelation might be attained by reason, independent of all special manifestation, but that revelation enabled man to reach them much earlier. The mistake in the conclusion is rendered all the more patent from the fact that it is drawn, not from the primary conception of revelation, but from the bare etymological meaning of education. In using such a comparison, it is necessary to distinguish between God educating and man educating; the one not only presiding over the process, but supplying the material; the other directing the process merely. Paul expresses the idea better, perhaps, than Lessing, and without carrying the comparison to an extreme, as there is always a danger of doing in any analogy, when he calls the law, the schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ. It was the purpose of this schoolmaster to awaken in the spirits of his pupils the consciousness of the Divine, and to do this synchronously with the development of