* Sabatier has observed {Outlines of a Philosophy of Reli- gion, p. 41) that a phrase in the Gospel 'according to the Hebrews brings this out well. At the moment of His baptism, the Holy Spirit says to Jesus : ' Mi Fill, Te exspectabam in omnibus ]irophetis, ut venires et requiescerem in Te. Tu enim es requies
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presented with the conception of crisis, and with any theory of knowledge or life involving a breach of that rule of continuity by which we are ac- customed to giiidf our thoughts.
6. Recapitulation. — It will be convenient to approach our final answer by re-stating in our modern ways of speech that view of revelation in general, and of the Christian revelation in particular, which seems to be presented in the NT. It is, at any rate, coherent, and is taught by 8t. Peter as well as by St. Paul, by the Synoptists as well as by St. John. Nor is it out of harmony with the profoundest teachings of science about nature and about man.
The Christian doctrine of God presupposes that He is a Personal Being who lives and acts eternally. We cannot confine His Personal life by the con- ditions which limit our own ; to use the homely phrase of Wm. Law, perhaps the sanest of English mystics. He is really greater than man ; He tran- scends nature, for He is its Author. But He does not stand apart, as it were, from the created life which has issued from Him ; He is, as philosophers express it, immanent in nature ; He is its Life and its Light. The sun enlightens the earth with its beams, and warms into life the beings with which it is peopled ; but the Eternal Spirit is the Life and Light of all creation, and connnunicates this Life and Light consciously and with a pui'pose of love. In nature and in history God is always present, always active, always compassionate.
But neither in the field of nature nor in the field of history would it be true to say that the purpose of the Supreme is everywhere clearly revealed. On the contrary, it is for the most part veiled from our eyes. We may speak, indeed, of the Creation itself as a revelation of the Eternal. Perhaps it was an exhibition of that Divine law by which love always seeks an object on which to spend itself, that law which in human life at its noblest always demands sacrifice. Perhaps the law that we only secure our highest life by not attempting to save it received here a stupendous illustration. We cannot tell. But, at any rate, throughout creation, as it is, the Divine love is veiled. In the struggles and competitions of created life, pain and death are the inevitable issue for the weak ; in nature it is only the strong that survive. It is a perpetual tax upon faith, in the face of nature's cruelty, to believe — as nevertheless we do believe — that God cares for the sparrows, and tiiat the meaner creatures of the earth are not beyond the reach of His compassion.
(1) Where, then, in nature is God most clearly seen ? There is only one possible answer. It is in man, the highest creature of His that we know; in man, who is unique among the creatures, be- cause he reflects, however dimly, the Divine image in which he was made. Man, indeed, is far re- moved in fact from that which he was intended to be. Corrnptio oplimi pessima. His capacity for good, by misuse, has become a capacity for evil, to which the humbler animals cannot sink. That is all true. But even in the most degraded man or woman there is that affinity to the Divine which makes redemption possible. In this seed of good- ness, which lingers even in the foulest soul, there is always the hope of the future. It is ni this elect creature — this creature chosen to be the highest because the best fitted for the service of the Creator — that God perpetually reveals Himself, as we perceive that love is, after all, .stronger than hate. It is to this elect creature — despite his kin- ship with the beasts, a kinship displayed during every hour of his earthly life — it is to this elect creature, and to him alone, that God deigns to re- veal His will, — not perpetually, indeed, but at those too rare moments when the spirit is completely
master of the flesh. God is always active in nature ; He unveils His face only to the elect of creation, and to the elect individuals of the elect race.
(2) The like is true of the Divine revelation in the field of history. Of the destiny of nations, God is the supreme arbiter. Not theologians only, but historians too, will be found to declare that human history is providentially ordered, that ' the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men ' (I)n4-''^). And viewing history on a large scale, that may be the inevitable conclusion. But we cannot say that it is self-evident, or that perplexities do not pre- sent themselves to any one who endeavours to trace an eternal purpose in the decline and fall of empires. In the philosophy of history it is not always easy to find certain tokens of a superintending Providence. In history, as in nature, we see such tokens with greater distinctness when the observation is directed to a particular part of the field. The secrets of the Divine rule are disclosed to us most clearly when we recall the history of the Chosen People, the race elect of the Supreme as His instrument for the education of the world. No history reveals the Divine intention in the same degree as the history of Israel. And thus we rightly look upon the Hebrew literature and history as preserving for us in a special manner the revelation of God's purposes in the education of mankind. This is not to make any arbitrary distinction between sacred history and profane history. All history is sacred, for it is directed and controlled by the Eternal Wisdom. But not in all history alike are we per- mitted to discern the guidance of God who thus reveals Himself. It is no more anomalous or sur- prising that the revelation should be explicitly recognized as such only in the history of the elect nation Israel, than that His revelation in nature should be recognized as siich only in the character of the elect creature — man. The Divine action is always implicit in nature and in history ; both are potential revelations, so to speak, of the Eternal Light and Wisdom, but in neither field does the revelation become actual, save in the chosen organ of the Divine life. Man is not an anomaly among the creatures, nor is Isi'ael an anomaly among the nations ; but as man with his reason and power of choice is the best fitted of creatures, and Israel with its genius for religion is the best fitted of the nations, to receive and to impart the revelations of the Divine will, to man and to Israel have they been entrusted in a peculiar degree. The story of revelation is always a story of election (cf. Marten- sen, Christian Do(/matics,Tp. 13).