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another inadequate. And how can a visible, material creation
sufficiently reveal the spiritual? How can institutions and systems
reveal the personal, living God? How can human language even express
spiritual ideas? Sometimes the means adopted appear utterly incongruous.
Will the great Spirit, the holy and good God, speak to a prophet in the
dreams of night? Shall we say that the man of God sees real visions
when he dreams an unreal dream? Or will an apparition of the day more
befittingly reveal God? Has every substance been possessed by the spirit
of falsehood, so that the Being of beings can only reveal His presence
in unsubstantial phantoms? Has the waking life of intellect become so
entirely false to its glorious mission of discovering truth that the God
of truth cannot reveal Himself to man, except in dreams and spectres?
Yet there was a time when it might be well for us to recall our dreams,
and wise to believe in spiritualism. For a dream might bring a real
message from God, and ecstasy might be the birth-throes of a new
revelation. Some of the good words of Scripture were at first a dream.
In the midst of the confused fancies of the brain, when reason is for a
time dethroned, a truth descends from heaven upon the prophet's spirit.
This has been, but will never again take place. The oracles are dumb,
and we shall not regret them. We consult no interpreter of dreams. We
seek not the seances of necromancers. Let the peaceful spirits of the
dead rest in God! They had their trials and sorrows on earth. Rest,
hallowed souls! We do not ask you to break the deep silence of heaven.
For God has spoken unto us in a Son, Who has been made higher than the
heavens, and is as great as God. Even the Son need not, must not, come
to earth a second time to reveal the Father in mighty deeds and a
mightier self-sacrifice. The revelation given is enough. "We will not
say in our hearts, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring
Christ down:) or, Who shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring
Christ up from the dead.) The word is nigh us, in our mouth, and in our
heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach."[1]
The final form of God's revelation of Himself is, therefore, perfectly
homogeneous. The third verse explains that it is a revelation, not only
in a Son, but in His Sonship. We learn what kind of Sonship is His, and
how its glorious attributes qualify Him to be the perfect Revealer of
God. Nevermore will a m
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