3 oo LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1870- 



is different. In teaching from the pulpit and to this 

 kind of teaching I confine myself the object of the speaker 

 is to stimulate and guide devotional feeling in his hearers, 

 in whom as professing Christians he must in the judgment 

 of charity assume a certain measure of grace, a certain 

 degree of capacity to discern spiritual things, but who as 

 sinful and imperfect men fall far short of such a normal 

 spirit of devotion as breathes in the Bible. 



Now this comparative dullness and imperfection in the 

 spiritual life must, in so far as the true notion of Christian 

 life is that of fellowship and converse with God through 

 Christ, have two sides a dullness to hear what God says 

 to us, and an unreadiness or want of faith to make right 

 answer to Him. How then can the Word of God taught 

 be made instrumental in remedying these two defects? 

 The principle of such a use of the word seems to be this 

 Whatever God speaks to me He speaks to me, not as an 

 individual, but as a member of His Church, as one of His 

 own elect. And thus, while on the one hand I have no 

 right to seek for myself with the mystics a private revela 

 tion in which others have no share, I have the much 

 nobler right of taking to myself every manifestation 

 of God s love and grace made to any part of His Church 

 in any age. And so, on the other hand, to answer God s 

 message aright is not to make some private answer for 

 myself alone, but to take up with full personal appropria 

 tion the one great answer of faith and hope, of praise and 

 prayer, which goes up in all ages from the Church Uni 

 versal. Now, in both respects the Bible has normative 

 authority. It contains the true message of God to His 

 Church, the true answer of the Church to God, not in the 

 way of bare abstract statement, but in a living picture, 

 of which one side is the gradual development of God s 

 plan of redemption, while the other side shows us from 

 age to age the faith and answer of the Church. To get 

 into fellowship and sympathy with these two sides of the 

 Bible is, therefore, the true way to the elevation of our 



