226 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870- 



&quot; Let us open our eyes,&quot; says Luther at another time, 

 &quot; and learn to look at the word more than the sign, at the 

 faith more than the work.&quot; You see, then, how Luther 

 conceives of Christianity : on the one side God pouring 

 out his whole heart, revealing the inmost treasures of his 

 righteousness and love in Christ the incarnate Word; 

 on the other side, the believing soul looking straight 

 through all works and all symbols to Christ Himself, and 

 united to Him by faith in the closest personal union. 



Such was the blessed consciousness to which the 

 Reformation awoke the consciousness of direct fellow 

 ship between the believer and God incarnate in Christ- 

 not an impersonal unio mystica such as the middle ages 

 sighed for, but such a personal union as there is between 

 loving human souls, mediated by the twofold stream of 

 God s personal Word coming down to man, and man s 

 personal faith going up to God. 1 



Now we see at once that in this new conception of the 

 correlation of word and faith is given implicitly an entire 

 new theory of revelation. The pre-Reformation definition 

 of the inner word is, to speak with Thomas, 2 &quot; intellectum 

 prout est in intelligente,&quot; while, by the outer word, 

 &quot; hoc significamus quod interius in intellectu compre- 

 hendimus.&quot; And so, as we have already seen, Christ 

 was conceived above all things as a Teacher, and revelation 

 as the imparting of speculative truth. But to the 

 Reformers the Word of God is the direct personal message 

 of God s love to me ; 3 not doctrine but promise, not the 

 display of God s thoughts, but of His loving purpose, in a 

 word, of Himself as my God. &quot; The Word of God,&quot; says 



1 Very notable in this connection is an argument of Zwingli s in the 

 Sermon &quot; Von klarheit und gewiisse des worts Gottes.&quot; The image of 

 God in man must be something much more special than the possession 

 of intellect, will, and memory ; it must lie mainly in a regard to God 

 and to His Word. The great mark of our creation in the likeness of God 

 is the desire that all men have after fellowship with God (Werke, i. pp. 58, 

 60). The whole development of the thought is well worth attention. 



z Compendium Theologiae, cap. 37. 



3 Freiheit ernes Christenm., 6th head of Pt. I. 



