ead. But the
people on the hillsides of Galilee knew nothing about the Godhead of
Jesus. To them He was a heaven-sent teacher, a great and inspiring
master, whose words carried weight. His authority, therefore, must
have been self-evident in contradistinction to that of the scribes, who
always began their discourses by saying, "It is written." They never
seem to have thought of appealing to anything else than the authority
of the letter. But we see that Jesus, notwithstanding His reverence
for the scripture, handled it with perfect freedom. His authority was
that of the Spirit of God speaking within His own soul, the only
authority that has ever mattered in the history of religious thought.
He did not deny the authority of Scripture, but He claimed to be able
to see when it rang true to His own inner experience and when it did
not.

+The true seat of authority.+--If we could grasp this principle clearly
and strongly, it would give us a new and higher sense of freedom and of
confidence in the word of God as declared in the Bible and revealed in
human hearts. God has never stopped speaking to men. He speaks
through us collectively and individually. "The word is very nigh unto
thee, in thy mouth and in thine heart, that thou mayest do it." If we
are only in earnest to listen for the divine voice and to trust it when
we hear it, we shall not listen in vain. To realise that God is
speaking to us just as He spoke to earnest souls in the days of old
will send us to the sacred scriptures with an even greater appreciation
and reverence for the men of whose experience they are the expression.
But they will no longer bind us; they can only help and encourage us.
We shall feel that these men of faith of an earlier day and a different
race were our brothers after all, men who lived a life much like our
own, and who were trying to understand God as we are trying to
understand Him. The Bible is not infallible for the simple reason that
the human nature, even of wise and great men, is not infallible. It
helps us because these men were struggling with the same problems as
ourselves, and therefore what they have to say about them is valuable.
But the best of them had their limitations and shortcomings. They did
not know all the truth that was to be known, but they kept their faces
to the light. If we allow ourselves to be fettered by their actual
words, we shall be in danger of losing sympathy with them in the spirit
whic