can conceive of a stick with only one end. When he thinks of one end, he sets it over against another end. So when I think of a finite being like myself, by the very necessity of thought I set finitude over against infinitude.

The fact that I have to think of the infinite in terms of the finite does not mean that the conception of the infinite is completely false. All knowledge must be expressed in terms of my own experience; and while that experience may be relatively incomplete, it is, nevertheless, true so far as it goes. Take this away from me, and I can have no knowledge whatever. I could not even know that I do not know. It is not only religion, but all knowledge, which is of necessity anthropomorphic.

Herbert Spencer recognized the inconsistency of his thesis, for he acknowledges: "Though the absolute cannot in any manner or degree be known in the strict sense of knowing, yet we find that its positive existence is a necessary datum of consciousness and that so long as consciousness continues we cannot for an instant rid it of this datum."

The real thing which men mean when they say that we cannot know God is that we cannot handle him or see him or demonstrate his existence as we deal with scientific facts. Neither can I see or feel or demonstrate your personality nor my own. No man can prove his own existence, for the first step in the proof would be to assume his personality as the tool with which he would set to work to make the proof. But, although I cannot see your personality, I can know it. Every man does know his friends, and to try to argue him out of his belief in this knowledge is the sheerest folly. He knows them, not by scientific experiment, but by personal association. I know a person, not by finding out where he was born or how old he is, not by facts about him, but by living in the presence of his spirit. This is the one way of knowing a person; and this way is just as trustworthy, just as real, just as certain as is science in its own field.

God being a Person, we must know him through personal association. This method is as vital, as real, as trustworthy as any scientific method. God can be known. He can communicate himself to me, just as my friend can make his impress on me.

1Spencer, "First Principles," page 29.

STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.

"Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." (Matt. v. 6-8.)

"My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I also will forget thy children." (Hos. iv. 6.)

"If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from myself." (John vii. 17.)

PART VI. CONDITIONS OF KNOWING GOD.

IF it is reasonable to believe that God can make himself known, then we cannot escape the conviction that he will make himself known to his children. No good and loving father would refuse to speak to his children. "Self-expression is of the essence of personality." It is impossible to think of personality separated from a desire to make itself known. At least one of the great activities of God's life is that of self-expression. This is not an abstract term. A person cannot express itself in vacuo. Real expression means revelation; it means communication of self to some one else. We must conclude, therefore, that God is continually trying to reveal himself to all men. If men have not heard his voice, it is because their ears are dull. That all men have heard something of God's message is proved by the fact of universal religion. All religions, however perverted, are the standing proof that men have caught some faint message from God; for religion, as Dr. Tiele puts it, springs from the consciousness of God within the human soul.

What, then, are the conditions of God's message being heard? What is inspiration? Inspiration is man's side of the process of intercommunication, of which revelation is God's side. The first condition of a moral revelation must be moral character. There must be likeness of character in order that there may be intercommunication. A man who

is reeking with crime can scarcely understand the speech of a pure man who talks of unselfish love, much less can he fully understand God. All men have some moral impulse in them; and it is by the cultivation of this, through response to God's will, that a man grows in capacity to understand God. Revelation is a growth; it is progressive. The more I give myself to God, the more is he able to make himself known to me; and the more he makes himself known to me, the more am I willing to give myself to him. It is reciprocal action.

Inspiration may, therefore, be described as the process of character growth, by which a man becomes capable of receiving messages from God. Revelation is the message which comes to man in consequence of this process of preparation.

If we are not hearing God's voice progressively, it is because we are not progressively preparing to hear it and listening to it. The law of all thought growth is that we shall act on what we know. We must live to our best daily in order that to-morrow there may be a better knowledge possible. God can speak only to those who are willing to hear and who by habitual hearing have prepared themselves to hear more clearly.

A so-called special revelation would, therefore, not be miraculous. It would follow the normal law of preparation. It would mean that one person or one group of persons had lived in such harmony with God that they were able to catch more of God's message than others. Why should we think this strange or impossible? We accept this in every other realm of knowledge. The artist grows by attention and interest. He gives himself to beauty, as it were. He, therefore, sees more beauty than others. When the artist Turner was showing a lady one of his landscapes, she remarked: "Mr. Turner, I have never seen such high coloring in nature." "No," said the artist; "but don't you wish you could?"

Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God," and this is the law of revelation. Growing likeness of character is the basis of a growing clearness of revelation.

STUDY VI. A PERSONAL GOD.

"Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work." (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17.)

"And we have the word of prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts: knowing this first, that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation. For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit." (2 Pet. i. 19-21.)

"Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me.” (John v. 39.)

PART VII. WHAT IS THE BIBLE?

THE Bible does not claim to be a textbook of science, history, or literature. Neither is it a fetish to drive off evil and bring good. It is not a book of holy riddles. It does not even claim to be the only revelation of God's will. John says distinctly that his record of Jesus is only a partial record and that if all were written down the world could scarcely hold the written records. (John xxi. 25.) The Bible is and claims to be a record of man's progressive growth toward God. It is a record of man's age-long search for and his experience with God. It is, therefore, a record of what God has been able to make known to men in past ages and through a specific race. It is, as it were, the laboratory book of that part of humanity which was most alert to the sense of God. The Jews went into the great laboratory of personal forces; and, finding God, they wrote down their experience for us, just as a scientific student writes in his laboratory book the experience he has with certain physical forces.

It is evident, therefore, that the Bible will be a progressive revelation. Many students have asked me how I could explain for them the seemingly incomplete morals of the Old Testament. It must be explained on the basis of progressive revelation. What Moses heard God say was of necessity colored by the content of his own mind. He did not have the fully developed, pure soul of Paul or Jesus, and he must of necessity fail to catch the full meaning of God's message.

Revelation is not a miraculous something that has no reference to man's intelligence. It must come through the medium of man's person and hence must take on to some extent the color of the medium. It is for that reason that all revelation is incomplete, save that which comes in the perfect person, Christ. He is final, but it must not be forgotten that we have not fathomed all that finality yet. Every century finds new meaning in Christ, because no previous century has had people capable of understanding that side of Christ's life. We are just now beginning to catch the meaning of Christ's social message. The message has always been there, but we are just now becoming able to interpret it.

The Bible, therefore, is a progressive revelation fitted to man's capacity. God is wiser than a kindergarten teacher, and no such teacher would begin her six-year-old children in the abstractions of mathematics or astronomy. Or, to put it differently, I have a friend. After I have known him a month, I think his character is one thing. After I have known him a year, I see new depths in his life. After I have known him intimately ten years, I am sure that I did not know him at all at the end of the first year. This is progressive revelation. Now, the Bible is just the report that some of the world's greatest souls have given us of their growing friendship with God. Since we can know God only through personal association with him, this is the only way that the world's stock of knowledge about God can grow. Our knowledge must be the sum total of available experiences which men have had with God. These great hungry souls went in search of God, and they found him in ever-increasing measure. Or, if we turn it around, the eager, loving soul of God yearned to make himself known to his children, and he has progressively been able to make them understand. If man is a person and God a loving Person, we cannot doubt that somehow they may come to know each other. The Bible, therefore, is the record of these supreme meetings of the soul of man with the soul of God. It is the record of the supreme experiences of the race and will ever remain a sacred book. That section of the Bible which records Christ's consciousness of God must be our highest and our final standard of truth, for Christ met God as no other man may ever hope to meet him,