truth articulately declared or set forth in expressive action, amidst which it finds itself at home, surrounded by features recognisable as akin to itself. The Psalms exhibit to us a great amount of this recognition by human nature of a congruous nature in the divine love expressed in the Word-" joy in its testimonies," "the entrance of His words giving light," "His comforts delighting the soul in the multitude of its thoughts within itself." The subjective cleaving of the most spiritual psalmists' whole souls to Him who appeared to them in the Word, is expressed in one place in a phrase which might be set as a motto before the mass of their religious self-expression -“I said, Thou art my God." The words contain the rationale of all human acceptance of revealed truth. It is truth that is the truth to man—human truth-truth of which human nature is consciously a part. faith suited capacity. 15. The particular form of the word of faith-that it is Historical a record of facts which are congruous to man's conscious to differstate of relationships, familiar to all, and persuasive of ences of a love consciously needed; and of expressions of love so widely varied, and finding an answering voice in one or other human consciousness-exactly fits the condition of human kind; putting faith, as it should be, within the grasp of all capacities. Every individual, however his ability to reason differs from another's, can take in, and keep habitually before his mind, as much of fact, of certain realities of God's deeds of love, as will fill his own power of enjoyment. That is the perfection of adaptation of the means of faith to the endless diversities of condition of soul found in the wreck of human nature. It is not necessary that all the facts which demonstrate or illustrate God's saving love should be remembered and understood. They all show forth one thing, only placing 'it in different lights-that "God so loved the world." Religious knowledge, analogous to family thought, is not by any means strictly analogous to scientific knowledge, as to range of subjects. In science, as yet, ultimate truth is not one and indivisible, but consists of a number of truths only partially or not at all connected with one another; and a number of scientific facts presented to a scientific man may Expedient form of propagating the faith. lead his thoughts to a diversity of theories or ultimate points of knowledge, or a new fact may be irreconcilable with any established theory, and compel the adoption of a new ultimate truth. The hope of physical science is to get, by the progress of investigation, at one ultimate truth, of which all the present ultimate truths shall be found to be members, and not merely head truths to their respective bodies of facts. That is not the state of the religious knowledge upon, which faith rests. It contains one simple ultimate truth-"God so loved the world." No intermediate barrier of propositions need stand in the way of any one thinking from the facts of religion, or from any fact of it, directly up to that head truth. Every fact directly illustrates that. And the fitness to man's condition of this revealed manner of instructing faith lies in the human circumstance that one fact may fill up one feeble soul's power of feeling and enjoying the love declared, as wholly as a large history does "the multitude of thoughts" which a stronger mind is capable of gathering happiness from. In human family life the full-grown son differs from the little child in the number of facts of family love he has whereon to muse, but we cannot say his enjoyment is differently full. In receiving the happiness of faith, the case is the same as in the giving of the widow's mite and the rich man's abundance. The smallest in human measurement may be the fullest in enjoyment it needs only that the capacity be filled. Who would venture to say that there was any difference in the happiness felt by those four examples of faith who so differed as to the number and kind of facts they had to think of in order to feed their happy faith-the Syro-Phoenician mother, the woman who washed the feet of Jesus with her tears and wiped them with the hairs of her head, the disciple whom Jesus loved, and Paul the "persecutor and injurious," but the "chosen of Christ to be His apostle unto the Gentiles"? 16. The well-marked way in which faith in God's love has been learned by man-viz., in contemplation of that truth as it appears in the history of it-must determine much what manner of teaching is expedient in man's endeavours to extend the faith. The teaching should essentially be historical, as dis tinguished from doctrinal. It should be chiefly the facts and the expressions of the word of salvation-its own narratives of the facts which made God's holy love of mankind actually manifest to generation after generation-its own representations of the special relationships which He assumes towards man, which are the nearest possible representatives of the facts or well-understood habits of family love—and His peculiar language, the marked expressions He uses to influence us, which make a feature of the Word so definite and impressive that the Bible stands by itself among writings as a treasury of texts, maxims, terse expressions of wide truths, cumulative expressions of affection, and penetrative single words of persuasion. These facts and words of God's own representation of saving truth, and not doctrines logically arranged by man out of all the materials afforded by the Word, are the knowledge which faith feels its possession of, the effective help to the human soul to “have the Lord ever before it." Systems of doctrine do not carry the same life, the same conviction of reality, with them to man's recognition. Containing always a mixture of other language with the Bible's language of fact,—containing also, unavoidably perhaps, as history would seem to teach, a mixture of human theory with Scriptural facts-of necessity, too, breaking often the connection of facts, and of expressions arranged in the sacred writings to come home to human consciousness,—they fail in so coming home. They have a convincing power which only ranks between the living transactions of revealed religion and the metaphysical reasonings of philosophical faiths, which have not facts, but only opinions which one man may reason out, but another not recognise as of value to him. All creeds must, as they have done, fail from this cause of such ready and wide acceptance as the Bible's own language has met with. Whatever be the defect in merely human religious language, no explanation in other words than the Bible's, even of the Bible's own emotional inferences from the facts it narrates, finds the same thorough recognition by the inner man, understanding, feeling, and desires, that the Bible's own expression of the true human reasoning of mind and heart upon these facts commands. Inherent effective ness. 17. The Bible's language being the language of fact, and not of imagination or of theory-being the narrative of things actually done by God, exactly according with man's conscious needs, and of feelings experienced characteristic of the human life all readers are conscious of-abounding, too, in representations, which other language might distort, of states of heart which individual readers feel, but which they thought their own secret-faults, failings, needs, troubles, or pleasures not common to man, certainly not described in man's books-its perpetually suggestive and demonstrative phrases pierce to the dividing asunder of the very soul and spirit, discern the unspoken, perhaps, till thus discovered, unperceived, thoughts and intents of the heart, and so become an irresistible evidence themselves to man's inner feeling-his peculiar knowledge of himself, that the religion they belong to is the gift of man's proper God. CHAPTER III. THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD TO FAITH. PART FIRST.-THE PROGRESS OF REVELATION. ISAIAH Xxviii. 10.-Line upon line, line upon line; precept upon precept, precept upon precept; here a little, and there a little. JOHN xvi. 12.—I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. perception 1. We have no means of comparing the first pair's original Religious ability to understand and appreciate the nature and love of fost by God with the power their nearest descendants had, except the sinning. but slightly approximate comparison we can make between a very virtuous Christian's readiness of head and heart and the slowness or inability of greatly demoralised persons to realise spiritual truth, whatever their ability to discern and appreciate other knowledge. The sacred Scriptures, however, give expressive representations of the effect produced by continued sin upon the power both of reasoning and feeling as to religious truth. The "understanding is darkened," or "befooled;" the mind is "turned away from the life of God through the ignorance that is in it," brought on by "blindness" or "callousness" of the heart (Eph. iv. 18). The conscience becomes evil (Heb. x. 22). The mind is "fleshly," and not "capable of accepting the law"- the fully declared will of God (Rom. viii. 7). and rudi 2. In exact accordance with this picture of the effect of sin- Man's fall fulness upon the human nature is the manifest change which mentary God immediately made in His manner of intercourse with tion. mankind after the change which their new condition of sin instruc |