formers were not always logical in their reasonings, and
have left an unfinished task for the present day. Man arrives at a
knowledge of the truth by the Holy Scriptures, but they must not be
understood as containing the only revelation from God; He also reveals
himself to the world through the hearts of all believers. The Bible is
the source of the original religion. There is a difference between the
Scriptures and the word of God. The latter is what God reveals in the
human spirit concerning his will and himself. The writing down of the
communication is purely human; therefore, the Bible cannot be called a
revelation. We know, by the testimony of the Spirit, that God's word in
the Scriptures is truth. But Scriptural authority must not be
accepted,--a liberty which would apply to a Jewish but not to a
Christian age. Jesus and the apostles did not compel men to accept truth
by a proclamation of authority, but by an irresistible moral power. Even
in times when the liberty and individuality of faith have been lost in
the Church, there were men who did not answer the question, "Why do you
believe?" by saying, "Because the Church has spoken;" but by appealing
to their interior consciousness.

Historical criticism must be called in, Scholten further holds, to prove
the certainty of the facts of revelation. But the truth of the Christian
religion cannot be established on this plan. With Rousseau, Lessing, and
others, he opposes any attempt to make the best historical grounds the
basis of a religious conviction. The truth of Scripture is testified by
human nature itself, which, educated by Christianity, recognizes freely
and personally the truth of the gospel. The natural faculty that
performs this high office is reason, not feeling. Scripture is the
touchstone of the Christianity of a conviction, but not of its truth.
The Reformers very properly distinguished between a first and secondary
authority, and allowed themselves complete liberty in their search after
the origin of the books of Scripture. This was not a dangerous
experiment, for he who has once come to know Christianity as the highest
form of religion, can never fall into a negative criticism. If the
religious contents of the Bible find their justification in the interior
consciousness of man, then the question arises, "Can human reason attain
to the supersensual, or is it limited to the sensuous experience?" The
organ of all natural knowledge of God is reason; while