uestioning belief that predictions were made and that miracles did happen which was once common ; and it is being more clearly recognized, on the other hand, that a Divine revelation must be able to commend itself morally and spiritually to the conscience and reason of mankind, and that a revelation which could not so commend itself could never be accepted on any external evidence without such an abdication of reason and con- science as would involve a far more serious Injury and wrong to the moral and spiritual nature of man than could be compensated for by any such revelation. t
2, Evidence of the Literature of Revelation.— But, when we get to this position that the evidence of revelation is in the quality of its contents and the character of its bearers, we, to whom this revelation has not come at first hand, but has been transmitted by a literature, have to ask this further question: Is the literature trustworthy in its testimony to the consciousness and character of these bearers and to the contents of this revela- tion? This is the point at which the history of the formation of the Canon of the OT and NT
forces itself on our attention. This story has already been told in previous articles, and need not be told again; but one fact deserves special notice, that it was not by formal decree of any ecclesiastical authority that certain writings were selected as sacred, recognized as inspired, and accepted as authoritative for faith and life ; but this was brought about by their use in worship and for edification. We need not claim an in- fallible judgment for either the Jewish or the Christian Church, but what must be insisted on is that it was the religious consciousness which was the court of appeal with regard to the writings to be treated as the literature of revelation. The importance of such a literature cannot be over- estimated. Only if God had revealed Himself uniformly to all mankind, would there be no need for such a literature. Reason has already been shown why along with a general revelation we may believe in a special. To perpetuate and to diffuse this special revelation, limited both spatially and temporally, the written record was necessary. Jesus Christ would be incomprehensible without the record of the revelation which led up to Him, and His grace and truth would be inaccessible to the mind and heart of mankind without the report of the revelation realized in and proceeding from Him. Yet a difference between the importance of the two Testaments must, in view of the modern critical position, be clearly recognized and frankly explained. What were the stages and phases, the features and factors, of revelation in the OT is an interesting and important question for our under- standing of the OT ; but it does not in the slightest degree affect the historical reality of Jesus Christ. Not the view of the OT which most unquestion- ingly accepts as historical all its narratives and all the traditional opinions about authorship and date of the writings makes Christ most credible, but that which makes to us most intelligible the progress of revelation towards Him, and the fulfil- ment of its promise in Him. Accordingly, we can, without troubling or bewildering our faith with a task for which it is not competent, leave to a reverent scholarship, which makes neither ultra- supernatural nor anti-supernatural assumptions, all historical and literary questions regarding the OT. The NT, however, holds a much more immediate and vital relation to the revelation in Christ, and from Him through His witnesses. If the sub- stantial historicity of the Gospels and the Acts cannot be maintained, if the image of the Person of Christ presented there is mainly a work of fiction and not a copy of fact, if Jesus did not really so impress and influence men as He is repre- sented to have done, if the Apostles who have undertaken to interpret to us their experience of His grace ascribed to His Spirit what was due to their heredity, individuality, or environment, then the Christian revelation must lose so much of its contents as to affect its character. If, for instance, a filial consciousness towards God and a fraternal consciousness towards mankind was all that Jesus revealed, if He put Himself in no way into relation to the sin of mankind to save men from its guilt and curse, then undoubtedly Christianity becomes a religion of illumination, and not of redemption. But if the historical character of the NT as the record and report of the life and work of Christ, and the interpretation of the experience wrought by His spirit, is more necessary to Christian faith, it can be maintained as that of many parts of the OT cannot. We have more nearly contemporary evidence of the existence and the acceptance as authoritative of the NT writings than for any of the OT. The contents of many portions of the NT are self-evidencing to reason and conscience as revelation, as many portions of the OT cannot be
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said to be. The character of Christ, the existence of the Church, the experience of St. Paul,—all these are proofs of the reality of the Christian revelation as presented in the NT such as can meet doubt and help faith. That the NT can be accepted as a true record and a faithful interpre- tation of the revelation in Christ, is a conclusion which the best scholarship allows and Christian faith claims.