between the instinctive wants and
yearnings of the human heart, as well as the necessary ideas and laws of
the reason, and the fundamental principles of revealed religion. There
is "a law written on the heart"--written by the finger of God, which
corresponds to the laws written by the same finger on "tables of stone."
There are certain necessary and immutable principles and ideas infolded
in the reason of man, which harmonize with the revelations of the
Eternal Logos in the written word.[971] There are instinctive longings,
mysterious yearnings of the human heart, to which that unveiling of the
heart of God which is made in the teaching and life of the incarnate God
most satisfyingly answers. Within the depths of the human spirit there
is an "oracle" which responds to the voice of "the living oracles of
God."

[Footnote 969: Pressense, "Religions before Christ" (Introduction);
Neander, "Church History," vol. i. (Introduction).]

[Footnote 970: I Corinthians, i. 21.]

[Footnote 971: "The surmise of Plato, that the world of appearance
subsists in and by a higher world of Divine Thought, is confirmed by
Christianity when it tells us of a Divine subsistence--that Eternal Word
by whom and in whom all things consist."--Vaughan, "Hours with the
Mystics," vol. i. p. 213.]

Here, then, are two distinct and independent revelations--the unwritten
revelation which God has made to all men in the constitution of the
human mind, and the external written revelation which he has made in the
person and teaching of his Son. And these two are perfectly harmonious.
We have here two great volumes--the volume of conscience, and the volume
of the New Testament. We open them, and find they announce the _same_
truths--one in dim outline, the other in a full portraiture. There are
the same fundamental principles underlying both revelations. They both
bear the impress of _divinity_. The history of philosophy may have been
marked by many errors of interpretation; so, also, has the history of
dogmatic theology. Men may have often misunderstood and misinterpreted
the dictates of conscience; so have theologians misunderstood and
misinterpreted the dictates of revelation. The perversions of conscience
and reason have been plead in defense of error and sin; and so, for
ages, have the perversions of Scripture been urged in defense of
slavery, oppression, falsehood, and wrong. Sometimes the misunderstood
utterances of conscience, of philosophy, and o