Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not,
And which entered not into the heart of man,

Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him.

But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us by God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, and he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.-I Cor. 2:6-16.

Our first business is to try to understand the peculiar quality of the mind of the poet and the prophet.

William Blake once said that he saw not with his eyes but through them; by which he meant that he saw with his mind. To him, seeing consisted not in perceiving alone, but in the way his mind reacted to the thing perceived. The vision included not only the object, but what his mind was provoked to add to or to read into the object. So he went on to say that when he looked at the sunrise, it was not a round disc of fire that he saw, but "a great multitude of the heavenly host, crying 'Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.' So Francis Thompson looking at the sunset found in it a suggestion of his crucified Lord: "Thou art," he sang,

"Thou art of Him a type memorial;

Like Him thou hang'st in dreadful pomp of blood
Upon thy western rood."

But it is given to few of us to see things after this

manner. This daring and flaming quality of imagination is God's peculiar gift to the poet and the artist.

Yet great as this gift is, it is not God's greatest gift of vision. For neither did William Blake at sunrise nor Francis Thompson at sunset read in the face of the sun its essential secret. They saw that God was therethe one saw the Creator, the other the Redeemer; but the image under which either saw Him was the creation of his own imagination. Neither as it were-saw through the sun; what he did was to paint a picture on the face of the sun, a picture essentially true no doubt, but still a picture. The greatest gift of vision is not imagination but insight, not the gift that adds a picture, however true, to the fact, but which pierces through the fact and discovers the meaning hidden in its heart. This same William Blake wrote a poem about the American Revolutionary War; but for him the war-zone was not the thirteen colonies, but the invisible no-man's-land between heaven and hell. He saw it not as a conflict of men or of political interests, but as a struggle of titanic spiritual powers. His fancy painted the war on a crowded and bewildering canvas; but before his imagination had got to work, his insight had perceived the issue to be one of eternal principles. The war, as he saw it, was part of the long and checkered drama of human liberation, in which heaven and hell were as deeply engaged as this world of living men. And this is the greater gift of vision, that breaks through the crust of the outward event to its core of spiritual reality. The poet must have it if he is to be more than a minor poet; it is the first necessity of the prophet. Some have a greater capacity for it than others; but in his measure every man must have it, for without it he goes through life blindfolded.

First Week, Second Day

Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth: for he shall not speak from

himself; but what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak: and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you.-John 16: 13, 14.

What the true seer sees does not, however, depend solely upon his insight. Wordsworth in one of his poems asks,

"Think you amid this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come
And we must still be seeking?"

Indeed, it is one of our commonest experiences that things do come to us. But in our day there has been considerable skepticism as to the value of anything that comes to us except along the accredited highway of the "scientific method." The only safe knowledge, we have been told, is that which we gain first through the senses and then through the exercise of reason upon the data gathered by our senses, the knowledge toward which we struggle by the exercise of our natural faculties. But from this view we are nowadays being gradually emancipated. While we accept the validity of the scientific method in its own field, we do not now believe that it is efficient over the whole field of possible knowledge.

"Reason," says G. J. Romanes, the English biologist, "is not the only attribute of man, nor is it the only faculty which he habitually uses in the ascertainment of truth. Moral and spiritual faculties are of no less importance in their respective spheres even of everyday life. Faith, trust, taste, etc., are as needful in ascertaining truth as to character, beauty, etc., as is reason. Indeed, we may take it that reason is concerned in ascertaining truth only where causation is concerned; the appropriate organs for its ascertainment where anything else is concerned belong to the moral and spiritual region.""

1 "Thoughts on Religion," p. 112.

Henri Poincaré, in his book "Science and Method" tells how his discoveries in mathematics-and few men have made more or greater-came to him in sudden flashes. True, he had been seeking these things, but he did not arrive at them by process of conscious reasoning. They arrived, as it were, and often in irrelevant times and places, when his mind was engaged with other matters-all of which goes to show that while we have faculties that are essentially acquisitive, that go out and seek the truth, we have others the nature of which is receptive, they are there to receive such truth as may come to us; and both are essential to our knowledge of the truth.

Now Poincaré adds in his account of his experiences that these discoveries of which he speaks had been preceded by spells of intense mental concentration on the subject. He had gone out, as it were, resolutely to meet the truth, and then the truth had come to meet him. From this we may infer that no man will understand Jesus who does not put all the mind he has to the task. That, indeed, will not of itself bring a full understanding of Jesus; but without it there can be no understanding at all. Yet if a man will do this thing, the rest will come; and the process by which it comes we call revelation.

First Week, Third Day

Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities. Shall two walk together, except they have agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing? Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is set for him? shall a snare spring up from the ground, and have taken nothing at all? Shall the trumpet be blown in a city, and the people not be afraid? shall evil befall a city, and the Lord hath not done it? Surely the Lord

God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?-Amos 3: 1-8.

The conditions of an adequate personal judgment upon Jesus and indeed upon any subject that really matters -are first, insight backed by a concentrated effort of understanding; and second, revelation, a something communicated. The measure and vividness of a revelation depend upon the power and quality of one's insight; and that in its turn depends upon two things: first, natural endowment, and second, cultivation. The prophet is made by a unique original gift of insight, strengthened and sensitized by much thought and meditation, which make him capable of receiving great revelations. Prophets vary in size, of course. There are major prophets and minor, as there are major and minor poets. But the difference between them is essentially one of scale and degree, not at all of kind. Moreover, it would be difficult to draw a psychological line which separates the prophet from the poet. The prophet is frequently a poet; and the poet is often a prophet. Both have the same quality of vision. The difference between them lies in another quarter, to which we shall attend presently.

Meantime, let us consider the nature of this insight more particularly. What we sometimes call "common sense" is a kind of insight. It consists of a sane perception of the relation of facts to each other, a just appreciation of their comparative importance, and a sound judgment upon the conduct proper to the situation. It is a useful and generous gift; and though we call it common, it is none too prodigally distributed. Few of us have as much as it would be good for us to have. Yet common

2 In the Old Testament, the distinction between the major and minor prophets refers to the length of the books attributed to them. We are using the words here rather with reference to the quality of their message. The prophet who prophesies most is not necessarily the greatest prophet. Ezekiel is not a greater prophet than Amos.