religion (subjectively considered) is the reception of certain doc- trines as true, and a state of heart and course of action in accord- ance with those doctrines. The Apostles propounded a certain sys- tem of doctrines ; they pronounced those to be Christians who received those doctrines so as to determine their character and life. They pronounced those who rejected those doctrines, who refused to receive their testimony, as antichristian ; as having no part or lot witji the people of God. Christ's command was to teach ; to convert the world by teaching. On this principle the Apostles acted and the Church has ^er acted from that day to this. Those who deny Theism as a doctrine, are atheists. Those who reject Chris- tianity as a system of doctrine, are unbelievers. They are not Christians. The Bible everywhere assumes that without truth there can be no holiness ; that all conscious exercises of spiritual life are in view of truth objectively revealed in the Scriptures. And hence the importance everywhere attributed to knowledge, to truth, to sound doctrine, in the Word of God.
2. This theory is inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrine of revelation. According to the Bible, God presents truth objectively to the mind, whether by audible words, by visions, or by the imme- diate operations of his Spirit. According to this theory, revelation is merely the providential ordering of circumstances which awaken and exalt the religious feelings, and wliich thus enable the mind intuitively to apprehend the things of God.
3. It avowedly confines these intuitions, and of course revealed truth, to what ai-e called " eternal verities." But the great body of truths revealed in Scripture are not " eternal verities." The fall of man ; that all men are sinners ; that the Redeemer from sin was to be of the seed of Abraham, and of the house of David ; that He was to be born of a virgin, to be a man of sorrows ; that He was crucified and buried ; that He rose again the third day ; that He ascended to heaven ; that He is to come again without sin to salvation, although truths on which our salvation depends, are not intuitive truths ; they are not truths which any exaltation of the religious consciousness would enable any man to discover of hirrself.
4. According to this theory the Bible has no normal authority as a rule of faith. It contains no doctrines revealed by God, and to be received as true on his testimony. It contains only the thoughts of holy men ; the forms in which their understandings, without supernatural aid, clothed the " intuitions " due to their religious feelings. " The Bible," says Morell,i " cannot in strict
1 Philosophy of Religion, ch. 8, p. 143, London ed. 1849. yoL. I. 12
178 INIRODUCTION. [Ch. Y1. - P R. of Faith.
accuracy of language be termed a revelation, since a revelation always implies an actual process of intelligence in a living mind; but it contains th6 records in which those minds who enjoyed the preliminary training or the first brighter revelation of Christianity, have described the scenes which awakened their own religious nature to new life, and the high ideas and aspirations to which that new life gave origin." The Old Testament is the product of " the religious consciousness " of men who lived under a rude state of culture ; and is of no authority for us. The New Testament is the product of " the religious consciousness '^of men who had ex- pei-ienced the sanctifying influence of Christ's presence among them. But those men were Jews, they had Jewish mode? of think- ing. They were familiar with the services of the old dispensation ; were accustomed to think of God as approachable only through a priesthood ; as demanding expiation for sin, and regenei'ation of heart ; and promising certain rewards and forms of blessedness in a future state of existence. It was natural for them, therefore, to clothe their " intuitions " in these Jewish modes of thought. We, in this nineteenth century, may clothe ours in very different fonms, i. e., in very different doctrines, and yet " the eternal verities " be the same.
Different men carry this theory to very different lengths. Some have such an inward experience that they can find no form for ex- pressing what they feel, so suitable as that given in the Bible, and therefore they believe all its great doctrines. But the ground of their faith is purely subjective. It is not the testimony of God given in his Word, but their own experience. They take what suits that, and reject the rest. Others with less Christian expe- rience, or with no experience distinctively Christian, reject all the distinctive doctrines of Christianity, and adopt a form of religious philosophy which they are Avilling to call Christianity.
5. That this theory is antiscriptural has already been said. The Bible makes revelation as therein contained to be the communica- tion of doctrines to the understanding by the Spirit of God. It makes those truths or doctrines the immediate source of all right feeling. The feelings come from spiritual apprehension of the truth, and not the knowledge of truth from the feelings. Knowl- edge is necessary to all conscious holy exercises. Hence the Bible makes truth of the greatest importance. It pronounces those blessed who receive the doctrines which it teaches, and those accui'sed who reject them. It makes the salvation of men to de- pend upon their faith. This theory makes the creed of a man or of a people of comparatively little consequence.
§8, B.J THEORIES OF mSPIRATION. 179
In the Church, therefore, Christianity has always been regarded as a system of doctrine. Those who beheve these doctrines are Christians ; those who reject them, are, in the judgment of the Church, infidels or heretics. If our faith be formal or speculative, so is our Christianity ; if it be spiritual and living, so is our religion. But no mistake can be greater than to divorce religion from truth, and make Christianity a spirit or life distinct from the doctrines which the Scriptures present as the objects of faith.
B. G-racious Inspiration.
This theory belongs to the category of natural or supernatural, according to the meaning assigned to those terms. By natural effects are commonly understood those brought about by natural causes under the providential control of God. Then the effects produced by the graci9us operations of the Spirit, such as repent- ance, faith, love, and all other fruits of the Spirit, are supernatural. And consequently the theory which refers inspiration to the gra- cious influence of the Spirit, belongs to the class of the supernat- ural. But this word is often used in a more limited sense, to des- ignate events which are produced by the immediate agency or volition of God without the intervention of any second cause. In this limited sense, creation, miracles, immediate revelation, regen- eration (in the limited sense of that word), are supernatural. As the sanctification of men is carried on by the Spirit by the use of the means of grace, it is not a supernatural work, in the restricted sense of the term.
There are many theologians who do not adopt either of the philosophical theories of the nature of man and of his relation to God, above mentioned ; and who receive the Scriptural doctrine as held by the Church universal, that the Holy Spirit renews, sanctifies, illuminates, guides, and teaches all the people of God ; and yet who regard inspiration to be one of the ordinary fruits of the Spirit. Inspired and uninspired men are not distinguished by any specific difference. The sacred writers were merely holy men under the guidance of the ordinary influence of the Spirit. Some of those who adopt this theory extend it to revelation as well as to inspiration. Others admit a strictly supernatural revelation, but deny that the sacred writers in communicating the truths revealed were under any influence not common to ordinary believers. And as to those parts of the Bible (as the Hagiographa and Gospels), which contain no special revelations, they are to be regarded as the devotional writino-s or historical narratives of devout but fallible
180 INTRODUCTION. [Ch. VI.— P. R. of Faith.