He uses all the faculties
that God has given him to understand the great divine law; but he
perpetually looks to God for instruction, and whatever else may be said
of that instruction his experience tells him that his advance in
spiritual knowledge is in proportion to his nearness in thought and
feeling to God Himself. That the progress of the human race in spiritual
knowledge, unlike progress in scientific knowledge, should be due not to
thinkers intellectually gifted, but to Prophets and Apostles inspired by
God, thus exactly corresponds with what the spiritually-minded man finds
within his own soul. And so too does it correspond with what he sees in
others. Often and often the unlearned and untrained by sheer goodness of
life attain to wonderful perception of spiritual truth, and the holiness
of the unlettered peasant reveals to his conscience the law of right
conduct in circumstances which perplex the disciplined and well
informed. As the human race has learnt the highest spiritual truth by
direct communication from God, so too on communion with God far more
than on intellectual power, depends the progress of spiritual knowledge
in every human soul.
But though the hold of the Bible on the faith of believers
unquestionably depends on its satisfying the conscience in every stage
of its enlightenment, it is equally certain that those who gave the
messages recorded in the Bible claimed something more as proof of their
authority than the approval of the conscience of their hearers.
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