We find, as a matter of fact, that men who have accepted Christ's revelation are not fettered in mind by it; but are most often enterprising, energetic and bold searchers after truth. I believe that it would have been unfavourable to the preservation of this vigour of mind and to the temper which should “try all things and hold fast those which are good,” if the full and absolute revelation which some demand had been delivered to mankind, and all the problems which beset human life had thereby been settled once for all. To the questions “Why we are told what we are told?” “Why we are not told more?” and “Why doubt and ambiguities are not all cleared away?”—we cannot hope to give answers, but we may find ways of looking at them which shall help in some degree
“To justify the ways of God to man.”
It will be best to discuss this subject in a separate Chapter.
Chapter III. Of Revelation.
If I took the word Revelation in its widest sense I should not attempt to treat of it here, for it would comprise nothing less than God's education of the human race. We talk of Natural Religion and Revealed Religion, but all Religion has in it an element of revelation from God. If God had not provided man with a mind's eye suited to see Him by, and also something that shadowed Him forth which that eye could behold, we could have no religion at all. Of the processes by which belief has come about in men not the least notable is this. Men have recognised in some new tidings what they seemed to have been looking for, without being aware of it. Some new teacher has become the spokesman of thoughts which were lying in them in a state too vague for utterance. Thus “thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.”[10] Now it is God who has planted these thoughts in men, and He brings about the occasions which reveal them.
There are for man two worlds, that which is without him and that which is within. Some races from temperament or circumstances have been most taken up with the former, with the workings of nature and with active social life; while others have looked within rather than without;—their minds have found most congenial play in the contemplation of their own natures, and in brooding over the mystery of how they came to be what they were. Corresponding to these two leading diversities of the human mind, there are two modes by which men are brought to recognise a great spiritual agency in the world.
The man of Aryan race, the type of the first variety, caught sight of an infinite force underlying all the workings of nature, and so conceived Deities, with a personal will like his own, animating the physical world. For the people of the Semitic race on the other hand, the surpassing wonder was their own selves—their minds turned to contemplating their own nature. In so doing they noted this; they found something within them which caused them to be happy when they acted in one way—when they had done a kindness for example—and made them unhappy when they had behaved differently. This was so, even when no one knew of the act, and when they looked to no consequences from it. They called such actions right and wrong; but they asked, Where can this notion of right and wrong come from? This conscience [pg 054] too which witnessed of it—which strove with them just as a friend might, and seemed to be something outside them—Where did that come from? They were led by this to conceive a spiritual personal Being in the world who had left some trace of himself in men's hearts, and kept up some communion with them through this voice of conscience. Thus men of different stamps of mind were led along different roads, to the notion of something Divine in the world; and we may say that God revealed himself to man in these two ways. Now for knowledge to be sure and solid two elements must go to the making of it. One from outside the learner, and the other supplied by him. This outside element is in physical science provided by observed fact, and what answers to it in theology is authoritative revelation. Men can never feel fully assured about what is wholly spun out of their own brains, and has no external sign or testimony to lend it support.
Revelation, in the sense in which I have to do with it just now, means an authoritative communication from the Almighty, vouched by some outward sign, or manifestation. It is with this outward sign, and with the difficulties attending the ways of bringing it about, that I am now chiefly concerned.