i8 7 o] PROPHECY AND PERSONALITY 99 



being omniscient knew exactly what recollections were 

 running through my mind, he might though no doubt 

 the skill required would be infinite so arrange his 

 colours that the impression they produced plus what my 

 own mind added would give me exactly the image he 

 desired. 



To apply this to the case of Revelation. The objective 

 nature of the vision seems to have been postulated as a 

 security for the infallibility of the Revelation. But if 

 nothing can be apprehended as objective in the first 

 instance, since the vision must anyhow be first broken 

 down into subjective feelings and built up again by the 

 person affected before he can apprehend it, this being 

 so, it is clear that no absolute security can be given that 

 the prophet will not add elements of his own. The 

 amount of such addition might be indefinitely reduced by 

 a great vividness of the vision, or by the lengthened 

 presence thereof, to the eye of the prophet ; but no 

 complete freedom from admixture would be possible unless 

 all the prophet s previous recollections were for the time 

 cancelled, i.e. unless he lost his self-consciousness, which 

 we know he never did. After all, this would not matter 

 practically if all revelation were, like that on Sinai, an 

 actual vivid spectacle before the eye of sense and real 

 words directed to the bodily ear, but no one will maintain 

 that the objectivity of the prophetic revelation was of 

 the nature of material externality to the body. On the 

 contrary, we have reason to suppose that the outward 

 senses were generally closed and the vision seen, or 

 words heard, presented within. And in this case all talk 

 of an objective vision is absurd. When the external 

 senses are closed to the world without, nothing can remain 

 but certain subjective feelings succeeding and mingling 

 with one another, from which objective images or ob 

 jective thoughts are produced by the pure activity of 

 the mind. Now suppose that some of these feelings are 

 directly excited by the action of the Spirit, yet if self- 



