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which all men share. Or at least, in him they are brought to a condition of potential activity which specializes their possessor, and renders him a marked instance of the display of divine creative force. If inspiration be the power of discerning spiritual fact at first hand, then we must concede that it is by no means universal. For few indeed are thus able to come spontaneously and by original intuition directly at the higher facts of being. Not all sight is insight. Many may see what only one or two will see into. And so while all men are groping after the truth, it is only God permits a single mind to seize it. powers required to thus penetrate the clouding mysteries which surround the inner facts of life, which raise the soul of the seer to the height of extraordinary and special moods, we call the men of spiritual insight inspired men.

here and there that And because of the

There is need that those who aim to be careful thinkers should make distinctions at this point, since it is here that much inaccurate reasoning occurs in reference to the relation of inspiration to what we call the supernatural. It is common to confound the aspirations of humanity with their inspirations, the desire to know and the power to know. And so, because all men are seekers after God, some of our wise men jump to the conclusion that all men have found Him; and so the power and meaning of that other word, "inspiration," suffer loss. There are certain makeshift conceptions of spiritual truth which men work up out of their need of some support to faith, but which rest on no firm basis, and exercise no authority. And the construction of these makeshifts of thought is often identified with the work of inspiration. Because aspiration is the universal attitude of humanity we are told that inspiration is also universal. But aspiration is not inspiration. The one is a negative capacity, the other an active endowment. And while the capacity to receive divine facts is found wherever there is a human soul, it is only here. and there that Heaven endows a spirit with the insight and character to become a medium between God and man. No man can say to himself: "Go to now! I will discover the

truth about God, about destiny, or duty, or immortality, or the soul's nature. I will write a Bible. I will have a revelation." Not thus do the oracles of God announce themselves. They come unsought. They seize upon reluctant lips. They fill the souls of those who would fain escape their mandates. They possess obscure and humble men, and thrust them into publicity, bind heavy burdens upon them, and subject them to sad and tragic experiences. If ever the doctrine of election justifies itself, it does so in the lives and the characters of those whom inspiration claims as its own, and presses into the holy service of bearing the truth God fits it to see, to the men and women who listen for its sacred accents. Why are lowly Peter and James and John singled out, obscure and unskilled men, while the learned of the earth are passed by and ignored? Why is Paul taken and Octavius left? What reason shall we find, in the play of the lower forces which we call nature, for this dignifying of some men and giving them powers which exalt and separate them from their fellows, in the sublime and holy office of spiritual discovery and teaching? There is no account which fits the case except such an one as recognizes the direct and moulding influence of a Divine Power, shaping these exceptional characters and endowing them for the work they have to do. In every one of the selected souls whom God has chosen to speak for Him to the world, we see a new and original work of Divinity. The inspired man is commissioned for his work by virtue of that very insight which makes him unlike all other men. gives him his credentials in the work he is to do. That shall be his certificate of authority. And that is a certificate the world always honors. When the inspired man opens his lips to speak, the people give him audience. Some hearts treasure his oracles. And in the fulness of time they come to light in the power of divine life.

"One accent of the Holy Ghost

The heedless world hath never lost."

But there are differences in inspiration. not the same power to see God's truth.

God

All minds have Endowments vary.

Minds differ. The inspired man is not a fixed quantity, invariable and self-consistent. He is one thing to-day, and another a century hence. Moses is far from resembling Paul, either in character or in the portion of truth he saw. Yet Moses and Paul were both inspired men. Only the one was raised up for the leadership of Israel, the other to bear the religion which had grown out of Israel's life to the Gentile world. There are undoubtedly degrees of inspiration. It has been the Divine Plan to unfold the knowledge of the truth. as fast as man might bear it, and no faster. And so in every land God has raised up some souls whom He has quickened with power to perceive the truth, and to utter so much of it as they could understand. This is His answer to all those nations who seek the Lord if haply they might feel after Him and find Him." To be inspired is not to be infallible. It is not to be omniscient. It is to possess superior powers of discerning religious facts, the great truths of spirituality. It is to be especially open and sensitive to the speech of the Ever Present God. He is not far from any one of us. He dwells in His creation, a perpetual force sustaining it and feeding it with ever fresh supplies. Strange, indeed, would it be if God were to shut Himself away from any of His children, so that they should find no loophole and no cranny through which to catch the gleams of His glory and the light which streams from His presence.

Nevertheless this fact does not destroy another, which is that God reveals Himself and the knowledge of His truth through special and chosen men. Inspiration, or the power to perceive and utter the highe" facts of the spirit, is not only general but special. There are some in whom the faculty is come to fuller ripeness than in others. The same law holds as in other kinds of endowment. Minds vary in their power to understand mathematical truth, from the poor faculty of the savage who cannot count beyond the number of his fingers, to the thought of a Euclid or a De Morgan. Naturally we look to see the same law hold in those faculties which have to do with higher truth. God selects and elects some minds,

whom He endows with the power to see intuitively the highest facts of the creation, and to announce them to men. And between those whom He thus appoints and calls to His holy mount, and the multitude who wait at its base, there is the widest possible difference.

What more natural than the continuance of this law of selection and endowment to races and nations?

There could

God reaches

be no fact more true to the order of nature universal results through special means; does work for all men through particular men; builds principles and institutions for humanity by the hands of certain elect nations. This is one of the best attested results of human observation. And no man speaks of partiality when it is a question of Greece and her service to the world's intellect; or of Rome and her gifts to civilization; or of England and her contributions to the knowledge and practice of constitutional government. Why, then, shall we count it an impeachment of the Divine Fatherhood to say that Israel has done for man spiritually more than all these races in their work for man's intellect and his social nature; or that through that people God made His special and highest revelation to His children? Until you shall arraign the Creator because He made Greece more distinguished than Parthia, and Rome more serviceable to the world than Numidia, let us hear no criticisms on the Christian doctrine of revelation because it teaches that God has singled out ene people as the repositories of His highest truth. The same great law manifests itself in all these cases. It is no evidence of Divine exclusiveness that God has concentrated the fulness of inspiration in the person of Jesus Christ, any more than it is evidence of a partial spirit that He has centered His highest gifts upon the head of his favored creature, man. The sunlight streams from one central point in our system to bless all corners of all worlds. And so the rays from the great Sun of Righteousness radiate to every portion of man's spiritual territory. Thus the special inspiration

becomes the universal good.

Is it asked what standards of judgment the doctrine of in

spiration leaves us, as to the authority of any alleged revelation, what criterion to set up by which we may separate the false from the true, or discriminate between the higher and the lower? The answer is, that is a matter which God always leaves to the moral consciousness of man. There is a spiritual judgment which all of us possess. It is reason enlightened through conscience and the education of the slow years of human training. This is the only tribunal to which we may submit any proofs of the nature of revelation, or of the inspiration out of which that revelation comes. Every claim of authority must rest on proofs; and those proofs are all to be submitted to the enlightened reason of mankind. No allegation of truth of the highest sort will convince any single generation, even though supported by the wonderful works of Jesus the Christ himself. The moral sense of men opens slowly to the truth. And it is only by long years of blessing and enlightenment, the growing evidence of divine authority and power, that the Holy Ghost attests his presence. But this may be taught as an incontrovertible law, that truth strengthens itself from age to age, and ever grows to a firmer hold on men's convictions. But error weakens year by year, and slackens her hold upon the world.

"Fears and false creeds may fright the realms awhile,
But heaven and earth abide their time, and smile."

Rev. J. Coleman Adams.

ARTICLE V.

Dr. Harnack on the Origin of Christian Dogma.

[Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte von Dr. Adolf Harnack, Ord. Prof. der Kirchengeschichte in Giessen. Erster Band. Die Entstehung des Kirchlichen Dogmas. Freiburg i. B. 1886.]1

THE three centuries which intervene between the Apostolic Council at Jerusalem and the death of Eusebius witnessed an 1 Manual of the History of Doctrine. By Dr. A. Harnack, Prof. in Ordinary of Church History in Giessen. Volume First. The Origin of Ecclestastical Dogma.

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