For twenty-five hundred years, until the time of Moses, tures com mence with Moses, Written Scrip- religious light was diffused and faint, kindled by direct communications of God to favored individuals; but in his day God began to cause permanent lights, in the form of written Scriptures, to take their lasting places in the moral firmament, to shed their divine beams upon human hearts, and to "divide the light from the darkness." Like the sun and stars, they have held their places unmoved, These lights constantly shedding forth their light over the origin, decay, and destruction of human governments and the proudest works of man: "Heaven and earth shall pass away," but these "words" of divine revelation "shall not pass away." are perma nent. same illus The 99 5 After the same analogy, the Scriptures of the New Testament were given. God spake first by inspired men and by direct communications. The promise of the former covenant was, "In the last days (the times of the Messiah) I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your Prophecy of old men dream dreams; and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy;" that is, they shall declare the revelations of God—the Gospel-under the immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost." This promise was literally fulfilled. At first, upon all that believed, the Messiah's times. Matt. xxiv, 35. • Acts ii, 17, 18. See Introduction to Study of Holy Scriptures, by Dr. Goulburn, Article B, in Appendix. miraculous powers of speaking or specific revelations of truth from the Holy Ghost were bestowed indiscriminately, as upon the company of believers 8 This proph ecy fulfilled. at Pentecost, and afterward upon the Roman centurion and the company collected in his house; upon the disciples scattered by persecution from Jerusalem,10 and apparently wherever the apostles first introduced the preaching of the Gospel. The virgin daughters of Philip the evangelist were endowed with this divine gift," and Priscilla united with her husband Aquila, then in Athens, driven by persecution from Rome, in expounding "the way of God more perfectly" to the eloquent Apollos, a Jew of Alexandria, himself mighty in the Hebrew Scriptures.12 Collected in a permanent form. But by divine inspiration this diffused light was collected into permanent orbs. God no longer made personal revelations of truth to individuals' minds, but directed his chosen instruments to embody, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit," such an expression of his truth as he desired to have made to the world. He closed himself the work of inspired revelation with the solemn words, "If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written The Holy Spir it closed the canon. in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” 14 In overlooking this truth, so in harmony with the divine Acts ii, 4; iv, 31. Acts x, 44-46. 10 Acts xi, 19, 21. 13 John xiv, 26. 11 Acts xxi, 2 14 Rev. xxii, 18, 19. Error of Edward Irving. processes in the natural world, taught in the Scriptures themselves, and confirmed by the history of the Church, the eloquent and devoted Edward Irving, and his sincere but misguided followers, in England, turned the worship of the sanctuary into a babel of unmeaning sounds, and blasphemously attributed to that Spirit who brought order out of chaos, the awful and insane jargon of tongues which drove every rational worshiper from the house of God. Folly of" Spiritualists The same condemnation must be declared against those in modern times, of a coarser mold, less scholarly, and far less pious, (however sincere some may be, and however bewildered by strange physical phenomena, the laws of which are not clearly understood,) who suppose that they have, or pretend that they have, communication with the world of spirits. They are self-deceived, or their minds are perverted by the devil. God does not reveal his truth in this way, "for God is not the author of confusion, but of peace." 15 This view of divine truth is opposed to the doctrine of The "inner those who hold that any "inner light" with light" above Bible. not which they are favored can take the place of the Bible as a rule of life. The Holy Spirit cannot deny himself; and having spoken harmoniously through a long line of chosen men, and having himself closed the canon of inspiration, he will not contradict this revelation in the hearts of believers. "Thy word," said the Psalmist more than twenty-eight hundred years ago, before even the Old Testa181 Corinthians xiv, 38. ment Scriptures had been closed, "is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."1 16 The Bible, not as explained by commentators, or held by any particular branch of the Church, or illus The Bible the alone rule of faith and practice. trated by tradition, or confirmed by human reason, but as given by God through the holy men that wrote its pages, and truthfully interpreted from their lips, is our infallible rule of faith and practice. Necessity for this infallible rule. Of the necessity of this great superhuman orb of light, Dr. Goulburn remarks that it arises from man's "utter mental darkness as to his destiny, as to his duties, and as to his dangers; above all, as to the method in which he must be saved. A revelation upon these points must be made to him by God if his feet are to be set upon the way that leadeth unto life. That need is represented by imagining men in a state of natural darkness, unrelieved save by a few twinkling stars. Let the faint and feeble ray of these stars represent all the aid which man can get from what is proudly called the moral sense; that is, his innate notions of right and wrong. Can you see objects by starlight in their true colors? Can you avoid pitfalls and marshes and stumbling-blocks by starlight? Can you do any work effectually by starlight? or is it not rather true that we must work while we have sunlight; and that when the night cometh no man can work? In a similar manner we see not good and evil in their true colors; we are ignorant of the tremendous danger of sinful courses, ignorant of the traps which Satan sets in our way, ignorant of how to 10 Psalm cxix, 105. serve God properly, and as he would be served, without instruction from above on these and similar points. We must have light, and this light is called revelation, the revelation under which we live (or Christian revelation) being the clearest and best ever yet vouchsafed to the world." 17 17 Devotional Study of the Scriptures, p. 184. |