1874] WHAT TO SEEK IN THE BIBLE 225 



real meaning of every true heart-spoken word is just the 

 opening up of the heart of him who speaks it ; and only 

 he understands the word aright who pierces through 

 the expression and sees in the word this and this alone. 

 To possess such an understanding is the mark of a full- 

 grown man. Where the meaning is confounded with the 

 mere outer impersonal expression, there we may be well 

 assured the understanding is that of a child ; and there, 

 too, the word must be rested on, not with a full self- 

 conscious personal trust in the speaker, but, in so far at 

 least, with a reliance on the magical power of the symbol. 

 So it was in the old Church. Whether in the intellec- 

 tualism that viewed the Aoyos merely in correlation to 

 the rational faculty, or in the sacramentalism that 

 supplemented the defects of the former conception by 

 ascribing a magical power to the &quot; natural body of 

 Christ,&quot; * the Christian consciousness of the middle ages 

 fell far short of grasping the personality of God s Word. 

 It was still the consciousness of the child, who does not 

 fully understand either his own life or the life of those 

 around. But with the Reformation begins a great 

 awaking into new self-conscious personal life. Luther 

 saw that the Word of God, in which he had learned to 

 live, and in which the Church too must live, was not an 

 outward letter, but a deep personal thing. &quot; Neither 

 in heaven nor on earth hath the soul any other thing in 

 which to live pious, free, and Christian, save the holy 

 gospel; the word of God preached of Christ, as He Himself 

 says, I am the Life and the Resurrection, whoso believeth 

 on me liveth for ever/ &quot; As the word is, so the soul 

 becomes thereby ; even as iron becomes red and glowing 

 like fire, by union with the fire.&quot; And then &quot; not only 

 does Faith give so much that the soul becomes like the 

 Divine Word, full of all grace, free and blessed, but it 

 unites the soul to Christ as a bride to her bridegroom.&quot; z 



1 Luth. Sermon v. d. Sacrament, 2oth head. 



2 Freiheit eines Christenmenschen, Th. i. 



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