A revelation is admitted, or at least, is possible. But it is merely providential. It consists in such an ordering of circumstances, and such a combination of influences as to secure the elevation of cer- tain men to a higher Level of religious knowledge than that attained by others. They may also, in a sense, be said to be inspired in so far as that inward, subjective state is purer, and more devout, as well as more intelligent than that of ordinary men. There is no specific difference, however, according to this theory, between in- spired and uninspired men. It is only a matter of degrees. One is more and another less purified and enlightened. This theory also makes the Bible a purely human production. It confines reve- lation to the sphere of human knowledge. No possible degree of culture or development can get anything more than human out of man. According to the Scriptures, and to the faith of the Church, the Bible is a revelation of the things of God ; of his thoughts and pui'poses. But who knoweth the things of God, asks the Apostle, but the Spirit of God? The things which the Bible purports to make known, are precisely those things which lie beyond the ken of the human mind. This tlieory, therefore, for bread gives us a stone ; for the thoughts of God, the thoughts of man.
Sclileiermacher'' s Tlieory.
Thirdly. There is a theory far more pretentious and philosophi- cal, and which of late years has widely prevailed, which in reality differs very little from the preceding. It agrees with it in the main point in that it denies anything supernatural in the origin or com- position of the Bible. Schleiermacher, the author of this theory, was addicted to a philosophy which precluded all intervention of the immediate efficiency of God in the world. He admits, how- ever, of two exceptions : the creation of man, and the constitution of the person of Christ. There was a supernatural intervention in the origin of our race, and in the manifestation of Christ. All else in the history of the w^orkl is natural. Of course there is noth- ing supernatural in the Bible ; nothing in the Old Testamei.t vhich the Adamic nature was not adequate to produce ; and nothing ia the New Testament, which Christianity, the life of the Church, a life common to all believers, is not sufficient to account for.
Religion consists^ in feeling, and specj^ficallyjn a feeling of abso- lute dependence (or an absolute feeling of dependence) i. e., the 'consciousiiess"tTiiat the finite is nothing in the presence of the Infi nite, — the indivrdual in flie presence of the universal. This con- sciousness involves the unity of the one and all, of God and man.
174 INTRODUCTION. [ Ch. VI — P. R. of Faith.
" This system," says Dr. Ullmann, one of its more moderate and effective advocates, "is not absolutely new. We find it in another form in ancient Mysticism, especially in the German Mystics of the Middle Ages. With them, too, the ground and central point of Christianity is the oneness of Deity and humanity effected through the incarnation of God, and deification of man." ^
Clu'istianity, therefore, is not a system of doctrine ; it is not, sulDJectively considered, a form of knowledge. It is a life. It is tlie life of Christ. Ullmann again" says explicitly : " The life of Christ is Christianity." ^ God in becoming man did not take upon himself, " a true body and a reasonable soul," but generic humanity ; i. e., humanity as a generic life. The effect of the incarnation was to unite the human and divine as one life. And this life passes over to the Church precisely as the life of Adam passed over to his descendants, by a process of natural development. And this life is Christianity. Participation of this divine-human life makes a man a Christian.
The Christian revelation consists in the providential dispensa- tions connected with the appearance of Christ on the earth. The effect of these dispensations and events was the elevation of the religious consciousness of the men of that generation, and specially of those who came most directly iinder the influence of Christ. This subjective state, this excitement and elevation of their religious life, gave them intuitions of religious truths, " eternal verities.' These intuitions were by the logical understanding clothed in the form of doctrines. This, however, was a gradual process as it was effected only by the Church-life, i. e., by the working of the new divine-human life in the body of believers.'^ Mr. Morell in expound- ing this theory, says : * " The essential germ of the religious life is concentrated in the absolute feeling of dependence, — a feeling which implies nothing abject, but, on the contrary, a high and hal- lowed sense of our being inseparably related to Deity." On the preceding page he had said, " Let the subject become as nothing — not, indeed, from its intrinsic insignificance or incapacity of moral action, but by virtue of the infinity of the object to which it stands
1 Studien und Kritiken, 1845, p. 50.
a Studien und Kriliken, January 1845; translated in The Mystical Presence, by Dr. J. W Neviu.
8 The English reader may find this theory set forth, in Morell's Philosophy' of Religion; in Archdeacon Wilberforce's work on the Incarnation; in Maurice's Theolm/ical Essays; m the Mystical Presence, by Dr. John W. Nevin, and in the pages of the Mercersburg Quarterly lieviev), a journal specially devoted to the defence of Schleiermacher's doctrinea and of those of the same general character.
* Philosophy of Rtliyion, p. 77.