362 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1874- 



from the New Testament, is that they give body to this 

 faith in the forms of the Old Testament dispensationin 

 earthly forms which are inadequate and which have fallen 

 away. They always speak of God s righteousness as 

 finally manifested in the land of Canaan. And they could 

 not do otherwise, because God had not revealed to them 

 the inadequacy of the national covenant of Israel as the 

 sphere for the final realisation of His purpose. But how 

 does this limitation affect the truth that it was from God 

 Himself that they derived the knowledge of His righteous 

 ness and grace which they rendered articulate by express 

 ing it under these forms ? 



It appears, then, that the arguments on which Kuenen 

 relies to disprove the supernatural inspiration of the 

 prophets are only valid against a purely mechanical 

 doctrine of revelation. It is plain that the revelation 

 given to the prophets had limitations. But these limita 

 tions are of a kind inseparable from the conception of a 

 truly ethical dealing of God with men. Now this we 

 know is the conception on which the prophets themselves 

 found. We find that prophecy is represented in the Old 

 Testament itself as the realisation of God s personal 

 guiding presence to His people. God receives the prophet 

 into personal confidence with Himself, dealing with him, 

 and with the people through him, on the analogy of 

 human intercourse. The very idea of such converse 

 implies that in the prophetic word something of the full 

 splendour of God s absolute knowledge is veiled. The 

 prophetic word is a limited revelation ; but to say that it 

 is necessarily no revelation at all is possible only upon 

 a priori assumptions which would be equally valid to 

 destroy the idea of conversion, the idea of prayer, and all 

 the other facts of personal religion which the Christian 

 Church does not receive from tradition, but realises in its 

 daily spiritual life. 



But there is another point of view from which we may 

 look at Kuenen s arguments. We find him defining the 



