ourselves that the laws of its structure are the ! that obtain in the structure of the eye itself. It i£ an organ of vision as is the eye itself, though, of course, an organ of vastly greater range. What it discloses to us we could not apprehend without it. Much that it discloses to us, we either only gradually come to comprehend, or find to be at present incomprehensible to us. But whether we comprehend what we apprehend through the telescope or not, we accept its disclosures, and at least refer them to the large and vague category of what we call facts of existence, and wait expecting to be able to make a closer classification with our advancing knowledge, or the further development of our powers. And, while we never reach the point where we are able with our own eyes to verify the facts given us through the telescope, yet, when we have used the norm in our eye upon the norm in the telescope, and have thus proved a complete correspondence between the two, we have an unshakable conviction that they are not two but one, and that what has been disclosed by the norm in the telescope is assented to by the norm in our eye, as much so as if we had been in a position to bring the norm in our eye to bear directly upon the phenomena revealed to us through the telescope. Just so it is in the case of the individual and Christ. For the knowledge of certain facts re- garding God and Christ, and concerning God in Christ, we are absolutely dependent upon the testimony of Christ. We can- not verify the correspondence between that testimony and reality by ourselves comparing it with the reality. The reality ■■ ' ■ spection as the
inaccessible
immediate
badge of our individuali menta? Does He claim without our being able to subject them to any process of ' inner verification,' the latter being, of course, the only possible real verification? Not at all. What He does claim, however, is that when we have assented to His trustworthiness, we have assented to the trustworthiness of His statements. Obviously, if He is as He claims to be, ' the Truth,' and we have satisfied ourselves of this by the same rational and moral processes by which we satisfy ourselves of any other propositions whatever, then in verifying Him, so to speak, we have verified His statements, as truly and as certainly as if we were capable of comparing those statements with the great realities to which they relate. Other- wise, where would be the sense in examining witnesses in our courts? And how else do we verify the ultimate facts given us, in the frame ot nature and in the constitution of our own being — which, be it observed, are after all but the testimony of God, — except by verifying God ? That we can do, of which proposition the simple proof is that we do it. For nothing is more certain than that * it is impossible for God to lie.' This is the ultimate axiom upon which not only all certainty, but the possibility of any certainty depends.
Christ's teaching in reference to an external revelation, and our absolute dependence upon His \-cvn"i^\- fnr thr- +rMth nnd the righteousness of its contents, dn nm tmi-iii .■ m il,r l':tsl either upon His te.achiT]-as to the juih. : ,, i ; .IimI,
implicati"ii tender" is
siieak, and that it is at uuce tlieir to do so. And how exquisitely al to His disciples to ajiply to His
not so, 1 would have told you ' (142). (2) While Christ accords a large judicial authority to the individual, it is, as already stated, neither an unlimited, nor an absolutely final authority. In His famous words to St. Peter, He speaks of ' my church' (Jit 16"*), and in His equally celebrated words to Pilate, of ' my kingdom ' (Jn 18^"). Now it is no doubt true, as Dr. Vos has shown (The Kingdom of God and the Church, ch. ix.), that these expressions are not absolutely coterminous in their respective connotations, the ' church ' being but one phase of the 'kingdom.' Still, even this being true, it follows that the Cimrili is an organ- ized body, with officers, l.-iws, and iiienihers. Now it is clear, from what Clirist say.s of the Church,
that the authority vested in her, and exercised through her officers, is a purely judicial authority. The Lord is her lawgiver. From Him alone she receives all the laws by which she binds the con- sciences of men. Her sole functions are to declare and to apply the law of Christ. To make any laws for her tiwn members or for [others is beyond her prerogative.
That sufii is her authority as set forth in the teachings of Christ appears from such statements as, 'If thy brother sin against thee, go show him his fault between thee and him alone : . . . Rut it he hear thee not, take with thee one or two more, etc. And if he refuse to hear them, tell it unto the church : and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and therefore, and make disciplei to observe all things whatsoever ) (Mt 2Si9f).