THE KING’S BUSINESS
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not say a spiritual faculty, but a natural sense of beauty. The “sound” of the wind is perceived by the trained ear, by the liter ary taste, by the refinement, by the human ity of every ^generation of educated men. But, what beyond? What of its spiritual source, its spiritual drift and purpose, its half-concealed but profound unities, its " subtle but imperious relations to con science? Of these things, so precious to Christians, a purely literary ,appreciation of Scripture is generally ignorant; the sacred' Book, like the prophet of the Chebar, is only “as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can piay well on an instrument.” Or again, the “sound thereof” is heard in the admitted empire of the Bible over millions of hearts and con- sciences j an empire the ' evidences of which strike upon the ear in countless ways, and which is far too wide and too secure to be affected by the criticisms that might occasionally seem to threaten it. What is the secret of this influence of Scripture? Not simply that it is the Book of Revela tion; since it contains a great deal of mat ter which lay fairly within the reach of man’s natural faculties. The Word or eternal Reason of God is the Revealer; but Scripture, whether it is a record of divine revelations or of naturally observed facts, is, in the belief of the Christian Church, throughout “inspired” by the Spirit. In spiration is the word which describes the presence and action of the Holy Spirit everywhere in Scripture. We know not how our.own spirits, hour by hour, are acted upon by the eternal Spirit, though we do not question the fact; we content ourselves with recognizing what we can not explain. If we believe that Scripture is inspired, we know that it is instinct with the presence of Him whose'voice Ve might hear in every utterance, but of whom 'we cannot tell whence He cometh or whither He goeth. II. The history of the Church of Christ from the days o f the apostles has been a history of spiritual movements. Doubtless it has been a history of much else; the
Church has been the scene of human pas sions, human speculations, human errors. But traversing these, He - by whom the whole body of the Church is'governed and sanctified, has made His presence felt, not only in the perpetual proclamation and elucidation of truth, not only in the silent, never-ceasing sanctification of souls, but als6 in great upheavals of spiritual life, by which the conscience of Christians has been quickened,*^ their hold upon the truths of redemption and grace made more intelligent and serious, or their lives and practice restored to something like the ideal of the Gospels. Even in the apostolic age it was necessary to warn Christians that it was high time to awake out of sleep; that the night ■ of life was far 'spent, and the day of eternity was.at hand. And; ever since, from generation to generation, there has been, a succession of efforts within the Church to realize more'worthily the truth of the Christian creed, or the ideal of the Christian life. These revivals have been inspired or led by devoted men who have represented the highest conscience "of Christendom in their day. They may be" traced along the line of Christian history; the Spirit living in the .Church has by them attested His presence and His' will; and has recalled lukewarm generations, paral yzed by indifference or degraded by indul gence, to the true spirit and level of Chris tian faith and life. In such movements there is often what seems, at first sight, an element of caprice. They appear to contemporaries to be one- - sided, exaggerated, narrow, fanatical. They are often denounced with a passionate fer vor which is so out of proportions to the reality as to border on the grotesque. They are said to exact too much of us, or to con cede too much.^ They are too contempla tive in their tendency to be sufficiently practical, or too energetically practical to do justice to religious thought. They are too exclusively literary and academical, as being the work of men of books; o r they are' too popular and insensible to philo sophical considerations, as being the work
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