external world, and in human affairs, was not the result of logical thought and mental excogitation on the phenomena these worlds supplied to their senses. It was not the outcome of philosophy; it is astonishingly free from all the entities and abstractions, which invariably accompany such excursions into transcendent philosophy. It has always the stamp of reality, never the empty sound of mere word-jangling. There is ever a glow of life on it; rarely, unless in one or two speculative books, do we see the "pale cast of thought.' Had the nation, unaided by the Spirit of God that worked in their midst, producing this consciousness of the Divine and evidencing the Divine itself from its own consciousness, as the Germans say, by pure severity of thought, by reasonings from design, for instance, produced such splendid monuments of religious meditation and moral thought, such elevated spiritual poetry, or attained such profound spiritual insight into the workings of national events, we would have been disappointed to find that it did not equal or surpass other nations, in the pursuit of what is regarded as philosophic truth. If their knowledge of the spiritual and the Divine was the outcome of ordinary mental activity, such a clear and vigorous outcome of thought must have co-existed with what, in other places, are the usual concomitants of mental life. If it is the fruit of discursive thought alone, where are the stages through which it must have passed, before reaching the result that has come down to us?

The Jewish religious books bear throughout, marks of a peculiar line of activity. The spiritual truths in them are directly and immediately perceived, not indirectly and mediately. It takes the shape of a Divinely manifested revelation, working in the awakened spiritual consciousness of the people. We see this better when we come to its fuller manifestations-when the higher development of the spiritual consciousness among the people had been reached, and the last and most beautiful and perfect efflorescence of the spiritual, for which the course of Jewish thought and life had been preparing, and towards which each new realisation had been approximating, bloomed. The answer to such inquiries, as we have mentioned, regarding the primary source of these preparatory revelations, and all revelations, lies in the description of the perfect Revealer, as one to whom the Spirit was given without measure; who, therefore, spoke with authority, which is always distinctive of revealed truth, and who declared God as no one had ever done, because He is in the bosom of the Father. Historical reasons alone have failed utterly to account for the ideal realisation of Jewish life and thought, as

they failed to account for the preparatory fulfilments. In Christ we have, so far as we yet know, the ultimatum of Divine revelation to man. What was vague in Judaism, became definite in Christ; what was local, and there was much that was so, became universalised. The revelation of God is more elevated, the medium is pure and undisturbed, and contrasts strongly with earlier visions and ecstatic states; the human, the natural, bodies forth perfectly the Divine. Christ in His person is that, of which miracle essentially considered is the reflection, viz., the Divine in the human, the supernatural in the natural, and this is the distinctive feature of all revelation. Paganism, as a whole, missed this relation, which received its organic development in Judaism alone, a kind of development which, as Bunsen thinks, conclusively manifests the reasonableness of religious truth. No life power which was based on unreason could have existed so long. If Judaism and Christianity had not met, and satisfied the religious aspirations of men, and been in the main true to their spiritual nature, they would not have found the which response they have found. This may seem to cut two ways: in accounting for the spread of other systems as well as that of Christianity. It no doubt does so. These systems, although for the most part yearnings, and yearnings often after what was anything but spiritual, had a true spiritual source, and, therefore, contained elements of truth. To the consciousness of man everywhere, more or less clear visions and premonitions were imparted, but these were not so regularly and perseveringly followed out anywhere, as in Judaism, and the consequence is, that the Jews advanced in religious perception while others have remained comparatively stationary, where they have not retrograded. It is not difficult, as so many have done, and as we are regularly in the habit of doing (what has very likely been done in the course of this essay) to write antithetical sentences, the points of which are paganism and Christianity; but antitheses of this kind are highly dangerous. Marks of heathenism, from the Christian stand-point, may be readily noted, as, for example, its tendency to the humanistic element with all the consequences of that tendency, and its limitation; and these are contrasted with the absence of hero worship in Christianity and the universal scheme of the Christian religion. On the other hand, from a wider platform, such, for example, as that which Paul occupied at Athens, we can see evidences of a perception of the Divine in pagan thought; echoes in all the Indian, Persian, and Egyptian systems of a clearer faith, than the records of later times would lead us to expect; and in Judaism tendencies to lapse,

and departures from the spiritual ideal of the nation that bring the Jews into contact with the whole family of mankind. Enchantment, sorcery, witchcraft, the saws of death-beds, and as many artificialities as elsewhere; denial of the Divine; immorality and debased priestcraft, against which the men of spiritual thought protested with vehemence. In paganism we have dawnings of the Divine; in Judaism and in Christianity remnants of paganism; or what physical philosophers would call rudimentary forms and survivals. The teaching of facts like these is obvious; they should preserve us from blind admiration on the one hand, and indiscriminate objection on the other. There are many ways of working out the world plan we may be certain, and not one way only. What we consider aberrations from the spiritual, are not without significance in the light of the growth of our whole nature. Judæa did not contain every good. If Greece, for example, was an aberration, as it is called, it was not without beauty, and of a kind of beauty which, if we would judge from the actions of men, the world would be sorry to have missed. There are various forces necessary for the production of such a complex result, as the perfection of humanity, which is the object of the Christian religion: "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Judaism was one of these forces, and the most important one. But the others, derived from paganism, although second in relative importance, were no less necessary for the accomplishment of what we this day witness. In Judæa we see the growth of a spiritual capacity in man, outside the influences of a very high state of civilisation, and in paganism there appears the steady growth of civilised communities, independent in a large measure of spiritual impulses. It is notorious how one-sided men become in all their struggles. Eager pursuit of one object induces a certain amount of disregard to what lies even a little beyond this. Races, absorbed in search after the Divine element in life, show comparative indifference to other elements, even as attention concentrated on the side of life that is not, strictly speaking, divine, ends frequently in the entire exclusion of the spiritual. It is well for the complete advancement of each type, that different men should think their own mission the most important, and should work it out under the sway of such an engrossing feeling as I have indicated. It is this very intense concentration that makes any work a mission. But the two missions must ultimately unite if the entire man is to be perfected. Culture and religion have need of each other, and to effect an organic union, we

must have the best type of spiritual life, and the best form of civilisation. Looked at in this way, the controversy, if such there be, between paganism and developed Judaism, is but the friendly rivalry of two vast powers, to lay their might at the feet of Him whom they each, with a little knowledge, and a great deal of ignorance, have both been aiding to bring in the new kingdom of righteousness. The Jews were the nation, in which the spiritual reached its most perfect form, and in this sense they must be, for all time, the human founders of the spiritual in the earth. They most clearly saw God in all things, and most fully and intelligently served Him, and were the medium of a continuous revelation of His will. They were in the deepest sense a holy people, and realised the highest life of man upon earth,—a life of faith in God, walking by the unseen, in time feeling themselves enveloped by eternity. This is the meaning of their history to us, as distinct from other histories; a people and a history which we distinguish by the name of spiritual, to describe the relation in which all things were viewed by them, and the position which they held in the life of our race.

CHAPTER X.

THE RECORD OF THE SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION AMONG

THE JEWS.

"Alle absoluten Wahrheiten sind falsch; Relationen dagegen können genau sein."

Ir is necessary to insist upon the view already stated, that by Scripture revelation is to be understood, not revelation itself, but the record of it. It should never be forgotten that revelation, in itself considered, is a very different thing from the manner in which tradition has handed it down to us. Revelation proper, can only be to the spiritual in man; it is the Divine acting on the human. It implies, as has been said, a manifestation and a condition of spirit fitted for such a manifestation. We have seen reason to believe that man could form no true conception of spiritual facts from nature, and that no revelation of these was given in conscience. Nevertheless, we have recognised traces in the histories of religions other than the Jewish and Christian, and in many efforts of thought, that evidence a capacity in man susceptible to something else than the phenomena of the external world. We have not gone thus far without seeing signs here and there, of dawnings of what may be called a God-consciousness. This required everywhere to be enlightened and informed, strengthened and stimulated. What is of most importance in the preceding chapters is the proof they supply, that this consciousness is a genuine part of man's nature, and capable of development according to its own laws-that only through the growth of this spiritual faculty, can we receive impressions of that condition of things which it is the function of this faculty to take cognisance of. The character of the spiritual is such that the common eye cannot discern it, and the ordinary course of things cannot suggest it to the mind of man. The Scripture record is the account of this revelation as perceived by the Jews, and as given by Christ, who was its concrete expression, its fulness and brightness. Most people will acknowledge that a written form is the most secure method of preserving an objective spiritual revelation, although some serious questions have presented themselves to men's minds, respecting the character of this written revelation, and the relation it bears to the manifestation itself.