CHAPTER II.

Christianity inseparable from the Voice of the Spirit.

66 BLESSED ART THOU, SIMON BAR-JONA: FOR FLESH AND BLOOD HATH NOT REVEALED IT UNTO THEE, BUT MY FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN. AND I SAY ALSO UNTO THEE, THAT THOU ART PETER, AND UPON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH ; AND THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST IT."Matth. xvi. 17, 18.

It is undoubtedly a striking fact, that the first formal assertion by the first believer among the disciples of our Lord of the fundamental truth of our holy religion, should have been followed by the two-fold declaration,-first, that the truth so asserted was not a conclusion drawn by the mind of him who asserted it, from any extraneous grounds of knowledge, which were not wanting to the individual in question, but that it was the result of a divine operation upon his mind; and secondly, that the man who, under the influence of this divine operation, asserted that truth, was, upon the very ground of that assertion, and in his character as the first confessor of Christ, appointed to the leadership of a body of men, a corporation, whose

future position and destiny, to be both militant and triumphant, is at the same time pointed out with as much clearness as conciseness. If the case of St. Peter, whose confession that Jesus was "the Christ, the son of the living God," proved him to be inspired of God, and fitted him to be a foundation stone of the church, is at all to be taken as a precedent for the case of those whose sameness of faith is witnessed by the same indispensable confession, it follows that, in the economy of grace, a self-taught Christian, or an isolated Christian is as impossible, as is, in the economy of nature, a self-procreated animal, or the existence of a member independently of the body, of the organization of which it forms a part. If this two-fold proposition can be satisfactorily established, two important steps in our inquiry will have been secured; we shall have ascertained that a merely external possession and knowledge of the revealed word, a merely human apprehension of its contents, cannot bring any one acquainted with that Gospel which was preached by the Apostles, the faith once delivered unto the saints, but that a correct view and vital reception of divine truth, consequently a right interpretation of the records in which that truth is laid down, can only be obtained by the aid of a revelation from God to the mind of the believer; and we shall have further ascer

tained, that as the divine truth which by such revelation only can become known to man, has in its very origin a reference to a body of men incorporated together, no individual who keeps aloof from the general body of believers can have any reasonable hope of obtaining that divine assistance, through which alone, and the faith which it begets, the Scriptures are said to be "able to make us wise unto salvation." The importance of these two fundamental propositions, and the obvious facility with which a number of other propositions most essential to our inquiry flow from them, demand a most accurate examination of the grounds on which their truth is founded and may be demonstrated; and accordingly we proceed to consider them separately.

As regards then, in the first place, the necessity of a special divine assistance to the believer's mind for the right understanding of God's truth, it may easily be made apparent, both by inference from the nature of the truth to be apprehended by man, and by the direct testimony of Scripture on this particular point. The knowledge of God in the abstract, that is to say, a mere mental recognition of the fact of his existence and of his attributes, is conceivable without revelation either by means of a word preached or spoken, or by

2 Tim. iii. 15.

This is the

means of spiritual illumination. ground which St. Paul takes in reference to the Gentiles, whom, although they had not the oracles of God committed, much less any supernatural spiritual aid vouchsafed to them, he yet impeaches for their ignorance of God, "because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath shewed it unto them; for the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful." Now if the truth which the Apostles preached, had been confined to the knowledge of God as the great and sovereign Creator of heaven and earth, who as such ought to be glorified by us, and as the giver of every good gift, to whom as such we are bound to be thankful, a mere external publication of certain propositions concerning him,. recounting the greatness of his power, the wonders of his creation, and the goodness of his gifts, might have sufficed to dispel the vanity of men's "imaginations," and the darkness of "their foolish heart." If, as the Apostle evidently intimates, a proper use of the human faculties in the con

h Rom i. 19-21.

templation of the created universe would have sufficed to establish, undoubtedly it would also have sufficed to restore a pure deism, if, after it had been lost through folly and forgetfulness, the considerations arising out of the spectacle presented by the works and daily acts of God, had been subsequently, by some means or other, called to remembrance and pressed upon men's attention. But the knowledge of God, with which we as Christians have to deal, is far from being comprehended within the narrow limits of deism; and even a slight glance at its nature and extent will make the necessity of a revelation for its apprehension at once apparent. Leaving for a moment out of the question the fact of man's disobedience, whereby the mystery of reconciliation becomes an indispensable part of Christian truth, the relation between God and man established at the creation of the latter, and which constituted the very design of that creation, could not have been realized, nor man brought to a knowledge of God as standing in that relation to himself, without the aid of a revelation. Let us suppose the case of any creature, created as man was, in the image and likeness of the creator, with an intellectual and moral nature bearing a certain relation to the nature of God himself, to the intent that it should serve as a vessel of the divine life,