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by the gradual quickening of his spiritual faculty, in response to the discipline of life ? *
These are among the largest and most moment- ous questions on which the human mind can be engaged. It would require encyclopaedic know- ledge to answer them fully, and only the briefest treatment is possible here. But it may help to prepare the way for an answer if we examine the aspects under which the idea of revelation is set forth in the NT, and the presuppositions which it is necessary to make before the questions that have been rehearsed can be clearly apprehended. We cannot entertain the idea of a Divine revela- tion without making certain large assumptions as to God and man of which it is well to remind our- selves at the outset. They are all assumed in the NT.
2. Presuppositions. — (a) First, then, we take for granted the central fact of life — the fact that God is a living Being, Merciful and Just : that ' God is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him' (He 11"). One must begin somewhere, and we begin here. That is, we assume that, supposing God's creatures to be capable of under- standing His purpose in Creation, He is capable, on His part, of making it known to them. He is the Giver of all good things, the Author of all knowledge ; and we recognize that the highest of His gifts may be the knowledge of His will and the stimulus of His grace, (h) To say this implies, secondly, that there is a certain capacity in the recipients of such Divine communications. No one will maintain that the Eternal Spirit could thus reveal Himself to the brutes ; for, to be sure, a revelation is limited by the capacity of those to whom it is addressed. Revelation, as Maurice said, is always the unveiling of a person ; and a revelation can be made to personal beings only in terms of personality.
Thus far, no assumption has been made which is peculiar to Christianity. The thesis is simply this : that whatever diffi- culties are found in believing that men could appreciate a revelation, there is no difficulty in believing that God could give them one, if He be indeed alive. Whether man could securely recognize it as revelation, and not as a mere discorery of new truth, is another question, to which we shall return later. All that is here asserted is that God may communicate with man. If He be a Personal Being, communication with Him is possible. This is the first principle of all religion worthy of the name.
(c) We assume, in the third place, that as reve- lation is thus possible, it may also be described as probable. Creation involves responsibility for the creature, and thus there is a probability that He who made the world will continue to guide it. Mankind is not perfect, and it is not doubtful that the progress of the race towards holiness and truth would be made easier by the grace of heaven bringing light and life.t To assert that revelation is probable is then only to assert that God has pity for human weakness, and that it is not His will that it should be left unaided to perish.
3. Aspects of idea of revelation. — We have now to consider the aspects under which the idea of revelation f is presented in the NT. There are, as it seems, two lines of thought in St. Paul about this great matter which we must try to distinguish. Sometimes he speaks of Divine revelation in terms which would be acceptable to avery believer in a spiritual religion ; at other times he uses language which can be interpreted only if we remember that
* This is, seemingly, the view taken in Canon Wilson's essay on ' Revelation and "Modern Knowledge' (Cambridge Theo- logical Essays, p. 229 ff.).
t This is the thesis expounded by Butler (in opposition to Tindal and the Deists of his day) at the beginning of Part ii. of the Analogy : ' To say Revelation is a thing superfluous, what there was no need of, and what can be of no service, is, I think, to talk quite wildly and at random.'
t The word inoK6.\vKl/ii occurs in the Gr. OT {e.g. 1 S SD'o, Sir 11" 2222 421), but never in the sense of a Divine communi- cation. Charles Scrihner's Sons
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to him Jesus Christ was a supreme, a unique, a final revelation of tlie character of the Eternal God. We may take these separately, although they are quite consistent.
4. Revelation in general. — There is a sense in which all religion must presuppose a revelation — that is, the unveiling of His purposes by the Supreme, and the response with which He meets the aspirations and tlie yearnings of human souls. No religion, e.g., can live which does not encourage and justify the habit of prayer, which does not claim that prayer is heard and answered. In other words, all religion presupposes not only movements of the human spirit towards God, but also a move- ment of the Divine Spirit towards man. And in every age, and by men of every religious creed, it has been believed — and we cannot doubt that the belief was well founded — that God enters into holy souls and makes known to them His will. In every age and place men .have realized His provi- dence, have believed that the Eternal manifests Himself in the world. Now this manifestation may be either ordinary or extraordinary ; by which it is not intended here to suggest any distinction between what is natural and what is supernatural. That distinction may not be tenable, for we do not know all the possibilities of nature, and so do not know what may be above it. But what is meant is that there are two distinct kinds of experience, in which men become assured that God is speaking to them — one the commonplace, everyday routine of life, and the other the experience of rare moments of high spiritual exaltation.