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says Neander, "instead of endeavoring to prove the existence of God by logical inference, appealed to that which is most immediate in the human spirit, and is antecedent to all proof. They appealed to the originally implanted consciousness of God which human nature cannot deny. They appealed to an original revelation of the One God, made to the human spirit, on which every other revelation of God is founded. Clement appealed to the fact, that every scientific proof presupposes something which is not proved, which can be conceived only through an immediate agency on the spirit of man. To the Supreme Being the Being elevated above all matter

faith alone can raise itself. There can be any knowledge or perception of God, only in as far as he himself has revealed himself to man. God cannot be conceived by means of demonstrative knowledge, for this proceeds only from things previously acknowledged, and from the more known to other things that are less known; but nothing in this way can be a prior premise in which the Eternal is included; and it is only by Divine grace, and by the revelation of his eternal Word, that we can. recognize the unknown God." There is another passage from one of the Fathers, given by Neander, which illustrates what St. Paul here intended by immediate revelations to the spiritual element in man:

*

"Just as the tarnished mirror will not receive an image, so the unclean soul cannot receive the image

* "The Training and Planting of the Christian Church."— Cabinet Library.

of God. But God has created all things in order that he may be known by his works, just as the invisible soul is known by its operations. All life reveals him; his breath animates all things; without him all would again sink back into nothingness; man cannot speak without revealing him, and only in the darkening of his own soul lies the cause of his being unable to perceive this revelation. He says, therefore, to man, Give thyself to the physician who is able to heal the eyes of thy soul; give thyself to God."

Again, to show the connection of all this with that subject of which St. Paul never for a moment loses sight: how can Christian unity be violated in relation to things which are only spiritually discerned? With these things the discursive and speculative faculties, which present various views, and create divisions, are not concerned; only the holy heart that is kept pure for God, only the divine eye of the mind, perceives them; and since it is God's spirit in us that makes us capable of discerning God, a moral sentiment of the Godlike in Christ must be the same in all souls, and the Divine Image in our Lord can leave but one impression on the hearts that are capable of taking the imprint.

And so, when we reach to any personal communion with God and Christ, to the deep utterances of the spiritual nature, controversy disappears. Our differences all arise out of our logical and argumentative faculties; but the revelations of the Spirit, that which the diviner mind approves, are in fact not ours as individuals, they are derived from the spirit

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of our Father who is in us, and in all men they are the same. Within that Holy of Holies, where the spirit alone speaks, where, beneath all the errors and mistakes of feeble reason, there flow from a divine source, in the deep wells of the soul, the living waters of Conscience, in that religious shrine of our nature, whenever they penetrate to it, there is harmony among all men. From this centre of communion with God, and from this alone, can the mind rightly discern the system which Providence has spread around it, and the attitudes of things; and the spirit that lives in communion with God cannot be judged, cannot be known, by the worldly mind.* In itself is the Holy Spirit, which no one can know, except those who have it, and they are one family in God. "Now we Christians," says St. Paul, "inasmuch as we are Christians, have this spirit, for it is the spirit that dwelt in Christ."

With regard to this divine element in Man, which is the principle to which all Religion is addressed, which is the source of immediate revelations in every holy heart unstained by sin, - which recognizes God in his works, not by a logical, but by a moral or kindred perception, and which, by the divine attraction of the Image of God in Christ held before it, may be lifted to holier and diviner revelations than the unassisted spirit could have reached, -I entreat you to remember that I am not offering to you views of my own,- that if I have but rightly read him, St. Paul is their Preacher.

* ii. 15.

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I entertain, indeed, a profound conviction of their truth, and that this is the only view of Man that does justice to the glorious nature that God has given us, and that appeals with fitting power to the divine affinities, to the solemn responsibilities, of children of God. One thing is obvious, in consistency with St. Paul's use of them in the maintenance of the inviolable nature of Christian unity,

that only from the rejection of these views, from substituting a speculative orthodoxy for a spiritual discernment, are still derived all the seeds of relig ious strife.

SECTION III.

DISSENSIONS, ARISING FROM THE PRETENSIONS AND VULGAR

PASSIONS OF INDIVIDUALS.

CHAP. III. 1-23.

1 AND I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual 2 men, but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not with meat, for not yet were ye 3 able, nor even now are ye able, to bear it. For still ye are carnal for since there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, walking 4 after the fashion of men? For while one saith, "I am of Paul," and another, "I am of Apollos," are ye 5 not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos? Ministers through whom ye believed, even as the 6 Lord gave to each. I have planted: Apollos watered: 7 but God gave the increase. So that neither he that planteth is any thing, nor he that watereth, but God 8 that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one; and each shall receive his 9 own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow-laborers: ye are God's husbandry, God's 10 building. According to the grace of God given unto. me, as a wise master-builder I laid the foundation, and another buildeth up: but let each take heed how he 11 buildeth up. For another foundation can no man lay

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