ARTICLE III.—PROFESSOR JOHN F. WEIR ON "THE The Way: The Nature and Means of Revelation. By JOHN F. WEIR, M.A., N.A., Dean of the Department of Fine Arts in Yale University. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1889. THIS volume is evidently the result of much earnest thought; it evinces great familiarity with the Bible to which it continually and reverentially appeals as of decisive authority; and it breathes throughout a devout and Christian spirit. It makes a profound impression on the reader of the truths that the most fundamental reality in the universe is Spirit; that God is very near to man, immanent and active in the material universe and in the soul of man and in the spiritual system to which man belongs; and that no man can realize his true end, his normal condition, and his real well-being without union with God. Thus its doctrine is at the extreme opposite of the Sadduceeism of this day which acknowledges no reality except what is perceivable by the senses. And it reaches the conclusion that miracles, instead of implying a violation of law and being contrary to reason and so a burden oppressive to Christian faith, come from the sphere of deepest reality, the spiritual, and are accordant with the real constitution of the universe, with its most fundamental and comprehensive laws and with its highest ideal and end. Thus the volume aims to remove the practical unreality to many minds of God and the spiritual world, in which the seeds of skepticism find the soil for rank and prolific growth. In seeking these practical results the author takes untenable positions. Positions resembling these have been held at different times in the history of the church. But the author of the volume before us has evidently worked them out afresh by his own thinking. The criticism of his work must be that all the truth and all the good practical results which it presents are better secured by other lines of thought more accordant with sound philosophy and the true meaning of the Scriptures. 66 The author conceives of man as body, soul, and spirit; the physical, the psychical, and the spiritual man. Man is born into a natural life, including both the physical and the psychi cal. By virtue of his psychical endowments he is capable of moral consciousness and judgment. But his spirit is divine, imparted in regeneration. "Through a natural birth man is but an existing soul, half created, not yet 'made alive:' he is organically prepared for life, but not really quickened until he receives the Spirit which is of God.' By this means a 'new man' is formed in the soul; it is not the old man made over, but a distinct creation ensues to which the old is 'conformed' or 'conjoined,' as its outward or natural personality. . . . . It is not a human spirit that is quickened into life, but the one only Spirit is imparted to the soul, being individualized in man as it was in Christ; and this individualized or human Spirit is divine." (pp. 42, 43.) "For there is one only Spirit, which is God." Man was not created a spiritual being and is not so at birth; he is then "merely a psychic vessel, prepared for the reception of the Spirit when imparted by Christ; and they shall be filled like bowls.'. . . . The soul is the human ego, the basis of the natural man; and the natural man is wholly an 'unsanctified vessel.'" (pp. 25, 49.) A somewhat similar view was held by Rothe, from which he inferred the doctrine of conditional immortality. .... But if man is not endowed with the attributes of a personal spirit before regeneration, if he is only the natural man, but half-created, he cannot be a free-agent; he cannot be on probation; he has not the powers essential to know God, to choose between God and self as his supreme object. He is no more a factor in the new creation or new birth than he was in his first creation or his natural birth. The conception is also tinctured with Pantheism. The one and only Spirit that is God individualizes itself in a man; "and this individualized spirit in man is of one substance with the Father" (p. 256). The personal ego of the man is lost in God. This is also a common characteristic of mysticism. Even Mohammedism, which by its barrenness is a religion least of all fitted to nourish mys ticism, has its mystics. A Sufi, after long meditation and selfabnegation, awakes in rapture in the thought that he himself is God. The same tincture of pantheism appears in the mysticism of the Middle Ages. But all which is true and of good practical influence in this doctrine is equally attained in the doctrine that a man is born with all the powers of a personal spirit potential in him; that these as he grows are developed in conscious action; that thus he is a free agent able to do right or to do wrong, to accept God's grace or to refuse it; that the Holy Spirit comes to him. from the Father and the Son, and compasses him with the gracious influences of God's redeeming love; and that the man may accept the proffered grace, may open his heart to receive and bow his will to obey the heavenly influence. Thus he comes, not into identity of being with God, but into a moral and spiritual union by God's grace laying hold of him and his laying hold of God's grace in faith. Thus he comes into his normal condition of union with God, through which all his powers and susceptibilities are normally developed. Thus the distinct personality of the man is retained, yet God dwells and works in him and he is a worker together with God. The threefold distinction of body, soul, and spirit is used to explain what Paul calls the spiritual body. As the psychical man is in the physical body, so the spirit is in the psychical body, using the psychical powers of reflection and action, as the psychical soul in life had used the senses and powers of the physical body. Hence the psychical body separated from the physical acquires a relative independence of space, so that the rapidity of its motion is analogous to the swiftness of thought. "For the natural man is a personal manifestation of the soul in a natural world, clothed in a physical body; but the spiritual man, whose destiny it is to become an angel of God, is a personal manifestation of the Spirit in a spiritual realm, clothed in a psychical body. The physical body is a key to the forces and substances of the natural world, while the psychical body bears a similar relation to the spiritual world. . . . . At dissolution the former falls away from the latter and reveals a corresponding organism invisible to the physical eye, but of which the Scriptures abound in illustration; the 'opening of the eyes' of seers and prophets, enabling them to discern the forms of a spiritual realm, is the uncovering of the psychic senses of this interior organism in man." (pp. 48, 49.) As to God's revelation of himself to man, as recorded in the Bible, the author recognizes it as having its basis in God's action upon and among men, the historical record of which begins with Abraham. But it is no part of the plan of this volume to discuss the history. This certainly would be a great omission, if the aim had been to discuss God's revelation of himself in its full significance. For God's historical action in the providential and moral government of the world, and preeminently in the redemption of men from sin, culminating in Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit and in the establishment of his kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost, is God's revelation of himself in its primary and deepest significance. But the author in treating of revelation confines himself to the supernatural disclosure of moral and spiritual truths which he regards as constituting distinctively the Word of God. For this he finds three modes of operation. The first is revelation: things seen and heard from a spiritual or heavenly realm; visions and the like direct communications. The second is inspiration: the communication of the divine word or teaching through the mind of a prophet. The third is illumination: this simply raises the human mind to appre hend as of itself things which may be expressed in terms of natural thought (p. 64). He thinks the tendency of the present time is to recognize the third of these, as the only means of prophetic operation acceptable to the natural understanding. As a basis for accepting and interpreting the Bible as the revelation of God, he regards it necessary to presuppose a vivid sense of God's continuous action in the universe and of his continuous presence and action in human history and human life. And "the revelation has in view the gradual unfolding of a higher consciousness in man; it marks the passage of the soul from a carnal through a moral to a spiritual state, which is the 'kingdom of God." (p. 104.) In this way man's receptivity of spiritual communications is quickened and he becomes capable of receiving larger revelations of God. At the same time in the exercise of this higher spiritual sense he can see a deeper spiritual significance underlying the form of the revelation. Therefore "revelation being ever in advance of the human understanding, it is a matter of necessity that its truths should be veiled in symbols having an outward or natural sense, as well as an inward or spiritual meaning." (p. 4.) "The faith of the multitude ever moves forward on a lower plane where truth is gauged by the natural understanding and is outwardly sustained by dogma." (p. 113.) Therefore "Allegory and parable are popular forms of expression by which the truths of revelation are tempered, as it were, to the natural understanding in the earlier stages of man's enlightenment. In them the spiritual intention lies hid until, in the fulness of time, it is brought to light in an awakened spiritual consciousness. . . Thus under the figure of familiar things moral and spiritual truths, which constitute the word of God, lie hid." (p. 4.) All the history of Israel before Christ "may be regarded as one vast representative symbol of the moral redemption of the soul, preparatory to its being quickened by the Spirit imparted through Christ." (p. 104.) Thus the author admits the principle of allegoric interpretation which from Origen's time onward has occasionally made its appearance in the church. He seems to assume something like Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences as underlying the true spiritual interpretation of the Bible. He fails to give the full significance of the fact that underlying all special communications of truth to individuals is God's revelation of himself in his grand course of historical action in the redemption of man from sin and the establishment of his kingdom, culminating in Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as recorded in the Bible. Through this action God was revealing himself, his own character, plan, and design, as a man reveals himself, his character and aims through his action. And in this action he was educating and developing man in preparation for the coming of Christ. Hence the significance of the revelation might not have been adequately understood at the time. But it was not of the nature of symbol or allegory, but of historical action, the fuller meaning of which is unfolded in the progress of the action, as the significance of an acorn is unfolded in the growth of the oak. In connection with this revelation of himself in historical action, he directly communicated truth through visions, through the inspiration of prophets, and the illumination of human minds, thus throwing light on the significance of his historical |