wn confidence that the verification of the
truths contained in the New Testament was never intended to rest upon
an absolutely inerrant record or on an inspiration which dictated to a
personality rather than expressed itself through a personality. The
Bible presupposes a power in man to test and verify its statements and
doctrines. It makes its appeal to this steadily from the earlier books
to the later; the appeal growing in content as the soul has developed
its power of recognition. This is the familiar law of knowing and doing,
of proving by practice, of perceiving the leadership of Jesus Christ
through the leading of the Holy Ghost. As to doctrine, there is left in
man the power to make the beginning of a faith. On this beginning
devotion builds a belief in the greater mysteries. Thus reason deduces a
First Cause, then the unity of the First Cause. This is as far as reason
can go. Huxley, looking out on the universe with this power, said:
"There is an impassable gulf between anthropomorphism, however refined
and the passionless impersonality underlying the thin veil of phenomena.
I can not see one tittle of evidence that the great unknown stands to us
in the light of a Father." Nor could he. Religious truth is conditioned
in a way in which the apprehension of physical truth is not. There must
be a certain condition of the heart, conscience, and will to see the
truth of the Godhead of Christ. One may resist this evidence.[2] Only a
living Christian is competent to look at the subject--"unto you it is
given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God." In physics "nothing
is needed but open eyes and a sound understanding."[3] Moral character
has nothing to do with it, except as vice may affect vision and
deteriorate the judgment. But in a soul's relation to the Christian
religion, the ethical element is that which is fundamental. "The pure in
heart shall see God." The foul soul has no vision for the eternal
purities. In the days of idolatry "there was no open vision." So in the
heart of sin there is no light of spiritual truth. The higher verities
appear fully founded to the Christian consciousness only.

[Footnote 2: Cf. Denney.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. Denney.]

[Sidenote: Natural Ethical Canon.]

Yet, let us remember that below this Christian consciousness lie the
substrata of reason and ethical canon common to all men. Religious truth
rests on these in its first revelations. Above the first and simplest
revelation,