From this, however, we easily pass to a cognate meaning of the term. Thus we speak of the development of an idea, that is, the unfolding and applying of the results of an original thought, a discovery or principle, which were truly contained in it from the first, but were not from the first perceived to be so contained. For example, we say that railways are only a development of the original idea of turning to account the expansive force of steam; or that Newton's "Principia" and Laplace's "Mecanique Celeste," and, in fact, the whole of modern physical astronomy, are developments of the idea, or fact, call it which you will, of the universal gravitation of matter; or that the British constitution of this century is a development of Magna Charta; and so forth. What we mean by this language is that the essential principles of the development were implicitly contained in the original idea, and that one has been derived from the other somewhat in the same way as that in which the bird comes from the egg and the plant from the seed.

Dr. Newman, in his Essay "On the Development of Christian Doctrine," takes a somewhat different view. He speaks of the development of an idea as follows: "When some great enunciation, whether true or false, about human nature, or present good, or government, or duty, or religion, is carried forward into the public throng and draws attention, then it is not only passively admitted in this or that form into the minds of men, but it becomes a living principle within them, leading them to an ever-new contemplation of itself, an acting upon it, and a propagation of it. Such is the doctrine of the natural bondage of the will, or of individual responsibility, or of the immortality of the soul, or of the rights of man, or of the divine right of kings, or of the hypocrisy and tyranny of priestcraft, or of the lawfulness of self-indulgence.... Let one such idea get possession of the popular mind, or the mind of any set of persons, and it is not difficult to understand the effects which will ensue."[62] Taking this view, there is manifestly a difficulty in determining whether an idea has been rightly or wrongly developed, whether the growth be wholly from the root or partly parasitical; and the prime intention of Dr. Newman's book is to supply tests of genuine development, and to apply them in one particular case; but I wish it to be perceived that whether we take this wider view, or the stricter one which I endeavoured to present to you just now, it is essentially necessary to regard development as the exhibition in a new unfolded form of that which already existed in another.

When therefore we speak of development with reference to God, we must regard Him as the developer, and His eternal purposes as the thing developed: the point which I have to bring before you with reference to its bearing upon the faith of Christians, and the unbelief of those who scruple to be regarded as disciples of Christ, is the gradual character of the process by which God has developed His purposes.

And this being the meaning of development, I think it is manifest that it is a confusion of figures to speak of the development of a revelation. To reveal is to draw back a veil, and so to uncover something which was concealed before. Hence we can properly speak of God as revealing to us His person, His character, His will. His person is eternal and unchangeable; so is His character; so is His will; but He uncovers and shows these to us; it may be by Holy Scripture, it may be by the living voice, or the life, or the person of the Lord Jesus Christ; but however it be, the conception appropriate to the word revelation is that of something which exists independently of our minds, and which is uncovered, so that our minds can perceive it. Revelation, therefore, cannot be developed; if we use the word as meaning the process of revealing, then this is a different process from that of developing; and if we use the word as meaning objectively the knowledge which has been revealed, the knowledge which we obtain of God by revelation, then this knowledge comes to us in an already developed form: it is not an idea to be developed, but a truth to be received.

On the whole, I regard as the most important word in the title of my lecture, the word gradual: whether we speak of the development of His eternal purposes and intentions, or the revelation of His person and character, the process appears to have been a gradual one, and in a certain sense a slow one: and this gradualness of operation may be variously estimated according to the turn of mind and habits of thought of him who considers it: some will be content simply to bow their heads and worship as being in the presence of Him whose ways are past finding out: some will say that that which Christians believe to be the development of His purposes and the revelation of His person is inconsistent with their conceptions of God, and so will reject it: others will hesitate to reject on à priori grounds that which, to say the least, admits of a strong argument in its favour, but will confess that they feel the difficulties which have been urged against the creed of Christendom; and with regard to that particular phase of difficulty with which I am professing to deal in this lecture, they will say, and perhaps say with sadness, that the revelation which the volume of Holy Scripture purports to contain, does not commend itself to their minds, as corresponding to their highest thoughts of that which God might be expected to do in making Himself known to man. Now it is to minds in this condition that considerations concerning the doings of God may be hopefully offered. I do not see how it is possible to treat such a subject as mine, if I consider myself as speaking to persons who deny the impossibility of revelation as distinct from human knowledge: if a revelation be impossible, per se, it is useless to discuss the qualities of that particular form of revelation which Christians profess to have received; but if a man is willing to receive a revelation, and has something of the spirit indicated by the words, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him," then it does seem to be possible to offer some suggestions which shall tend to show that the manner of revelation which Holy Scripture exhibits is in harmony with all that we know of our Creator from other sources, and that the gradual character of the Divine operations, as exhibited in that history which culminates in the Lord Jesus Christ, is wonderfully analogous to the character of every other operation which we can rightly call divine.

Let us then observe what the revelation of God purports to be; and for the special end which I have in view, I think we may suitably divide it into the following principal steps:—

Let us look at each of these for a moment.

The revelation to Adam and Eve is represented as being of the simplest kind possible. In fact it is difficult to conceive how anything beyond a very simple and partial revelation could be possible in the very infancy of humanity. It amounts to little more than the revelation of God as a personal governor, whose will must be obeyed: a command is given; that command is broken, and a punishment is inflicted; and then mankind is represented as cast out of Eden into the wild, uncultivated world. It is necessary to realize the extreme simplicity of this history, and the imperfect character of the revelation: the more so, because there is some temptation to imagine Adam and Eve as being in the possession of more knowledge than Scripture attributes to them; Scripture in reality attributes no knowledge to them, but rather represents the tree of knowledge as having been the cause of their fall. Philosophically speaking, we may describe the condition of things which existed in Eden as being the dawn of man's religious consciousness; he has no responsibility, and no sin; but a law is imposed upon him, and thus comes responsibility, and thus by the breach of law comes sin: man "was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came sin revived," and man "died."

The sacred history represents the world as engaged, so to speak, in working out the results of this primitive revelation till the time of Abraham. God is represented as punishing the evil and rewarding the good, the punishment of the evil being the more conspicuous conduct of the two; thus Cain is punished, the people in the days of Noah are punished, the builders of the tower of Babel are punished: but I do not think it can be said that the being and character of God are any further revealed till the time of Abraham. Then we have the new fact of God calling out a family; granting to that family special promises and special privileges, and making it (as it were) the depository of the fortunes of the world. Probably this is a step which we should not have expected; possibly it may even be argued that it is no real step in advance; but, be this as it may, it is represented in Scripture as the next step in the process of revelation; whether it strike us as strange or not, we are compelled, on the hypothesis that Scripture contains the history of revelation, to regard Abraham and his family as a point, a station, in the process.