THE HOLY SPIRIT AND DEVELOPMENT.

The doctrine of an uniquely-inspired and therefore authoritative Scripture, produced and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, has several modern bearings of great importance. One of these is concerned with the doctrine of Development. As the true view of Scripture is to regard it as embodying an unique Divine revelation of God in Christ, mediated by the Holy Spirit, it is not surprising that in St. Jude's Epistle we read of ' the faith once for all delivered ' (ver. 3), and in St. Paul of ' the deposit,' which Christians are to guard by the Holy Ghost (1 Tim. vi. 20; 2 Tim. i. 14). There was a definite deposit at a definite time in history, a revelation and bestowal of Christian truth from Christ to His Apostles, and then to the whole body of believers. This apostolic deposit of doctrine is now enshrined for us in the New Testament.

' The Holy Spirit that made them Apostles could but go on in the Church to open up their Word; there was no idea of a later and parallel revelation, to say nothing of a superior, by which their Gospel could be judged and outgrown.... There was a close of strict Revelation, a specific revelationary period, outside which the Word revelation takes another sense, inferior and expository.... The New Testament, taken as a whole, is perpetually and exclusively canonical for conscience, sanctity, guilt, and grace. It does not form just the first stage of patristic literature, and of the whole classic literature projected from Christianity, but it is the authentic revelation of revelation, and projected with it as its penumbra from God. It is the revelation as truth of that revelation which appeared in Christ as historic fact and personal power. The whole issue of the Reformation is bound up with the view that there we have deposited with us an authentic but indirect interpretation from Christ Himself of the revelation direct in Him, and one final, though germinal and not statutory.'1

To this deposit there can be no additions, for it was ' once for all ' given. Fuller and richer interpretations there may and will be, but they will be interpretations of already-existing truth. Astronomy is continually learning of new bodies, but these have been in the heavens all through the ages. Music cannot add one single note to the scale, for the octave is the final measure of all possible tones. There can be new combinations and new melodies, but they will be produced from the existing tones. In the same way, we believe with John Robinson of Leyden that ' the Lord hath yet more light and truth to break forth from His Holy Word '; but it will be ' from His Holy Word,' from the already-existing embodiment of the faith once delivered. Theology, History, Philosophy can present new combinations, fresh interpretations, and additional applications, but they cannot produce new additions. Inspiration, in the unique sense of the Holy Spirit conveying a Divine revelation, ceased when the last uniquely-qualified medium delivered his last contribution to the faith of Christ. After and since then, we have illumination, but not inspiration. The New Testament is therefore unique as enshrining the absolute, final truth of Christianity once for all delivered by the Spirit to the saints.

This ' faith ' as a ' deposit ' of truth needs to be guarded, because, as then, so now, dangers imperil the integrity and reality of the deposit. One peril is that associated with the doctrine of Development, now so well known in connection with the name of Newman. His theory was set forth in support of the distinctive positions of Rome, which he claimed were the legitimate development and outcome of apostolic teaching. He laid down certain general principles by means of which development was to be tested. His requirements are seven:

1. Preservation of Type. 2. Continuity of Principle. 3. Power of Assimilation. 4. Logical Sequence. 5. Anticipation of the Future. 6. Conservative action in the Past. 7. Chronic Vigour.2

These are all as true as they are admirable, but everything depends upon their application. We readily admit the truth of development of doctrine, whether we use the figure of an oak developing from an acorn, or the simile of a case unpacked as needed, though the former is probably more correct. But all true development will bear at least two marks: (a) Continuity, (b) Progress. There will be a clear continuity from the original germs, and an equally clear progress in harmony with those germs, and if we test the distinctive doctrines developed in Roman Catholicism by the principles laid down by Newman, it would not be difficult to see the entire baselessness of the Roman position. There is in fact a real danger of confusing between legitimate development and growth by accretion. Development from apostolic germs is as undeniable as it is necessary, but the result must bear a true relation to the germs without any admixture of foreign elements.3 Anything else would mean growth from alien germs, planted side by side with the apostolic deposit, and this is really parasitic in tendency and inevitably means the destruction of the original germs. Herein lies the danger of the theory of Newman, as applied to Roman Catholicism, for it represents a development which is not legitimate and involves the peril of changing the apostolic deposit by addition. If we take any distinctive doctrine of Roman Catholicism, and compare it with the corresponding germinal doctrine in the New Testament, we see that the apostolic deposit has become so overlaid with erroneous additions that it has lost its true character. We can compare the teaching of Scripture with that of Rome on such subjects as the Church, the Ministry, the Sacraments, and the Mother of our Lord in order to see the vital and fundamental differences. To take two instances only: a ministry to-day which finds its essence in a sacerdotal priesthood cannot possibly be derived from an apostolic ministry which never uses the term ' priest,' and never prescribes any essentially priestly functions. So a religion which speaks of the Mother of our Lord as ' the Queen of Heaven,' addresses her in prayer, and pleads for her interposition with her Son, cannot find its origin in the simple statements of the New Testament concerning the Virgin Mary. The fact is that in the Church of Rome Scripture is no longer the sole fount of truth and the supreme authority, but, as the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Gore) has said, it has become ' merged in a miscellaneous mass of authorities.'4

This question of the relation of Holy Scripture to the Church and of the Church to Scripture is of supreme importance. We fully believe that it is impossible to ignore Christian history and to start our consideration of doctrine de novo.5 But we also believe in the essential identity between the product of to-day and the germ of the first days, our criterion of this being the litera scripta of the New Testament. We believe that Holy Scripture, as therein found, constitutes the title-deeds of the Church, the law of the Church's life, the test of its purity, the source of its strength, and the spring of its progress.

But it may be said, How can this be when the Church existed many years before a line of the New Testament was written? This is historically true. But if we are intended to learn from it the supremacy of the Church, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. At any rate we must examine the position somewhat carefully. It is assumed that the Church had no Bible in the Apostolic Age, and that the Bible came historically after the Church, authorised by the Church. But the Church had a Bible from the outset, the Old Testament Scriptures, and such was their power that St. Paul could say that with the single but significant addition of ' faith in Christ Jesus ' these Old Testament Scriptures were ' able to make wise unto salvation ' (2 Tim. iii. 15).

' It is sometimes said, and an important truth lies concealed under the phrase, that the Church existed before the Bible. But a Christian of the earliest days, if you had used such words to him, would have stared at you in undisguised amazement. He would have explained to you that in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms the Christian possessed all the Scriptures he could want, for they all spoke of Christ.'6

But leaving this aside, the argument that because the Church was before Scripture, therefore it is above Scripture, is really fallacious. It is perfectly true that the Church existed before the written Word of the New Testament, but we must remember that first of all there was the spoken Word of God through Christ and His inspired Apostles. On the Day of Pentecost the Word of God was spoken, the revelation of God in Christ was proclaimed, and on the acceptance of that Word the Church came into existence. The Word was proclaimed, the Word was accepted, and so the Church was formed on the Word of God. As long as the Apostles were at hand the spoken Word sufficed, but as time went on and the Apostles travelled and afterwards died, there sprang up the need of a permanent embodiment of the Divine Revelation, and this was given in the written Word. From that time forward, in all ages, the written Word has been the equivalent of the original spoken Word. The Church was created by the Word of God received through faith. The Word created the Church, not the Church the Word.

We see the very same process in the mission field. There was a Church in most places through the spoken Word long before the written Word could be given, but now the written Word is at once the foundation and guarantee of the Church's existence and progress,

' In the history of the world the unwritten Word of God must of course be before the Church. For what is a Church (in the wider sense of the word) but a group of believers in God's Word? And before the Word is spoken, how can there be believers in it? " Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." Therefore the Word of God must be before faith. It is only of the Bible, or written volume of God's oracles, assuredly not of God's spoken Word, that we assert it to have been brought into existence later than the Church.'7

The Apostles may be regarded as representatives of Christ or as members of the Church. It was in the former, not the latter aspect that they conveyed first the spoken Word, and then the written Word of God which has ever been the source of all Christian life.

' Our authority is not the Church of the first century, but the apostles who were its authority. The Church does not rest on its inchoate stages (which would poise it on its apex) but on its eternal foundation — a Christ Who, in His apostolic Self-Revelation, is the same deep Redeemer always.'8

' We have a variety of opinions and sections in the first Church, but I am speaking of the representative apostles, and of the New Testament as their register and index. The Church of the ages was not founded by the Church of the first century, but by the apostles as the organs of Christ. We are in the apostolic succession rather than in the ecclesiastic. It is not the first Church that is canonical for us Protestants, but the apostolic New Testament.'9

The function of a Rule of Faith is the conveyance of the Divine authority to men, and this Rule of Faith existed in the mind of Christ and His Apostles long before it existed as a written work. Accordingly it precedes and conditions the existence of the Church. The Church is to the Word a witness and a keeper. The Church bears testimony to what Scripture is, and at the same time preserves Scripture among Christian people from age to age.

But though the Church is a ' witness and keeper,' it is not the author or maker of Scripture, and the reasoning employed in support of the latter contention is fallacious. It seems to be as follows:

* The Apostles were the authors of Holy Scripture.'

' But all Apostles are members of the Church of Christ.'

' Therefore, the Church of Christ is the author of Scripture.'

This has been well compared to the following:

' Mr. Balfour wrote a book on The Foundations of Belief.

' Mr. Balfour is a member of the Privy Council.'

' Therefore, the Privy Council is the author of the book called The Foundations of Belief.''10

The mistake of course lies in attributing to a body in its collective capacity certain acts of individual members of the body. The Church is not, and never was, the author of Scripture. The Scriptures are the law of God for the Church, delivered to her by the Apostles and Prophets. We must ever distinguish between the record of God's revelation in the Bible and the witness to that revelation as seen in the fact and history of the Church of Christ. The function of the Christian Church as the ' witness and keeper of Holy Writ ' is exactly parallel to that of the Jewish Church in relation to the Old Testament. The Prophets who were raised up from time to time as the messengers and mouthpieces of Divine Revelation delivered their writings of the Old Testament to the Jews, who thereupon preserved them, and thenceforward bore their constant testimony to the reality and authority of the Divine Revelation embodied in the books.

And so the Church of Christ, whether regarded in her corporate capacity or in connection with individual members, is not the author of Holy Scripture. The Church received the Scriptures from the Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit through His Apostles and Prophets, and now the function of the Church is to witness to the fact that these are the Scriptures of the Apostles and Prophets which she has received and of which she is also the keeper and their preserver through the ages for use by the people of God. We could not wish for anything clearer than the statement of the Anglican Article XX. as to the relation of the Bible and the Church.

It will help our thought if we ever keep in view that strictly speaking it is the Lord Jesus Christ Who is our Authority, and that we accept the Bible because it enshrines the purest, clearest form of our Lord's Divine Revelation. What we mean is that the Church is not our highest authority because it is not our highest authority for the revelation of Christ. And we say the Bible is our supreme authority, because it is our highest authority for the historic revelation of Christ. If Christ is the Source of our religious knowledge, then the condition of our knowing Him centuries after His historical appearance is that we must know of Him, and for this perpetuation and transmission we must have an objective body of historical testimony. The superiority of the Bible is due to the fact that it gives this fixed, objective, final revelation of Christ. This is the sum and substance of the Gospel, the Person of Christ. The great outstanding objective fact of history is the supernatural, superhuman, unique. Divine Figure of Christ, and this Figure is enshrined for us in the written word. We cling to Scripture ultimately on this ground alone. Take away Christ from the Bible and it ceases to be an unique Book and our authority in religion. In view of the history of the Church, it is impossible to maintain that the authority of the Church can ever be identified with Christ's. We can identify Christ's authority with God's, but not the Church's with Christ's, and it is nothing less than a Divine authority that we need for life.

This question of the Bible and the Church has a special application in regard to what is known as Church Tradition. The Church of Rome puts Tradition, that is. Church beliefs, customs, usages, on a level with Scripture as the Rule of Faith. But the Church of England, while valuing such testimony in its proper place, refuses to co-ordinate the two. The moral authority of the universal Church is of course weighty and powerful, and when the whole Church through the ages testifies to doctrines like the Godhead of Christ, no individual Christian can lightly reject them. But this after all is only the work of a witness to an ultimate and original authority. We put the Bible high above all else as our supreme authority in things essential, and as the Bishop of Birmingham (now of Oxford) said at the Bristol Church Congress (1903), ' the Word of God in the Bible is the only final testing-ground of doctrine.'

The Anglican Article XX. tells us that the Church has ' power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith.' The word ' power ' (Latin, jus), implies full legal right to appoint and order any ceremonies or methods of worship that may be regarded as fitting and appropriate, so long as nothing is ordained contrary to Holy Scripture. In Controversies of Faith, however, it is to be noticed that the Church has not this full legal right, but only ' authority ' (Latin, auctoritas), which means the moral authority arising out of the testimony of the Church as a whole throughout the ages. The ultimate court of appeal must of necessity be the spiritually enlightened judgment of the individual Christian with reference to any and every matter of truth and conscience. This is the inalienable right of the individual, whether like the Protestant he exercises it continually and directly from the Bible, or whether like the Roman Catholic he exercises it once for all in deciding to submit himself to an external organisation which he believes to be an infallible guide. But the individual judgment of a believer must continually be checked and safeguarded by the continuous consensus of Christian opinion and practice, and it is part of our Christian discipline to combine properly the spiritual right of the individual believer and the moral authority of the Christian community. For all practical purposes very little difficulty will be found in this connection.

This position of the supreme authority of the Bible over Tradition is the assertion of the historic basis of Christianity. Sabatier truly says:

' It is a historic law that every tradition not fixed in writing changes in the process of development.'11

The Bishop of Oxford points this out in connection with the history of the Jews.12 He shows that the lesson we ought to learn from the Jewish Church is that a real religious authority can be so seriously misused as to become misleading. Further, that this failure in the old covenant ought to have been a warning to those in authority in Christianity. They ought to have been more thoroughly on their guard against anything that would tend to detract from the constant appeal to Scripture and the supreme and unique model of Christian truth.13 Dr. Gore believes that the ancient Church did on the whole faithfully recur to Scripture in this way, but that everything became changed in the mediaeval Church.

' The specific appeal to the Scriptures of the New Testament to verify or correct current tendencies is gone.... The safeguard has vanished.'14

There is perhaps nothing more patent or certain in the progress of history, whether secular or sacred, than the untrustworthiness of Tradition without some historic and literary safeguard.

' Tradition is utterly unsafe. The Roman Catholic doctrine of tradition is the concrete proof of the assertion. Unwritten tradition is always coloured and transformed by the medium through which it passes. An unwritten Gospel would be subject to all the fluctuations of the spiritual life of man and most likely to gravitate downward from the spiritual to the carnal and formal. Institutions may symbolize or embody truth, but without a written standard they always tend to become external means of grace, or sacraments. They are ladders on which we may climb up or down. Without a corrective it is usually down.'15

This position of the supremacy of the Bible is the charter of spiritual freedom. It would seem as though some believe that the function of the Church is to settle definitely every question of difficulty as it arises, but no trace is found of any such view, whether in Scripture or in the Creeds, or in early Church history. It would have been perfectly easy for the Church to summon a Council when any dispute arose and settle the question by a majority, but no hint of such action can be found. On the contrary, we know that after the Council of Nicaea, a struggle went on for many years before the decisions of that Assembly were thoroughly accepted. The great authority of the first four General Councils is acknowledged by all, and their doctrinal standards are the heritage of the Christian Church to-day. Yet even their decisions were accepted only because they immediately and readily commended themselves to the judgment of the whole Church as in accordance with Divine revelation. It cannot be questioned that it was not the simple decision of a Council, but its subsequent endorsement by the whole Christian world, that constituted the real test of universality. Besides, the Councils were not so much intended to settle what belief ought to be, as what it had been from the beginning. The Councils were landmarks rather than goals. It is along this line that the Church of England accepts the authority of General Councils, for ' things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture.' General Councils, however, have expressed themselves on a few matters only, and do not offer any help on the many problems of life on which the soul needs guidance. It is hardly realised how little we should know for certain, if we were strictly limited to these Conciliar judgments. Consequently, the final decision must be made by the spiritually illuminated Christian consciousness guided by the Word of God, and advised by every possible channel of knowledge available.

While, therefore, we cannot for a moment co-ordinate tradition with Scripture, we do not hesitate to appeal to it whenever possible and necessary. The testimony of the primitive Church is in many ways valuable, but there is a wide difference between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant appeals to tradition.

' Leibnitz, at the end of the seventeenth century, asked if the Catholic dogma of tradition rested on the notion of a complete revelation of truth, exceeding what was in Scripture and was conveyed to the apostolic age, or upon the hypothesis of a continuous inspiration of the Church in regard to such Scripture truth. In the latter case he said it would be very hard to define the features required in such an infallible organ of tradition; in the former case all the traditions of the Church could not be traced to an apostolic authority. Tradition is either an exposition of apostolic doctrine or an addition to it. If an exposition, how is it to be shown that the Reformation branch of the Church was wrong; if an addition, what becomes of the claim for the apostolicity of all Catholic doctrine? Since the time of Leibnitz papal infallibility has been defined indeed; but in the forty years since 1870 it has never been exercised. It is an invention that is specified and patented, but does not work.'16

Rome appeals to tradition for official sanction; we appeal for information on questions of fact. Rome appeals to tradition as to a judge for authoritative decisions on questions which the individual is unable or unwilling to decide for himself; we appeal to tradition as to a witness for evidence which is regarded as credible and which we can weigh for ourselves. Rome asks for the opinion of the Church in order to make it hers; we seek for information from which to form our own opinion. It is evident, therefore, that to accept decision without weighing it is really to surrender our judgment, while to require evidence is to assert our judgment. We are always grateful if we can obtain the consensus of Church opinion, but its use is as historical evidence, and not as that which settles the matter apart from consideration.

When this is clearly realised it removes all objections to what is often scornfully described as ' private judgment.' It is this, but it is very much more. It is the decision of the judgment, the conscience, and the will of the man who desires to know and follow the truth, who finds the source and embodiment of truth in the Scripture, and bows in submission to it. He does not separate himself from or set himself above the corporate Christian consciousness of his own and previous ages, so far as he can determine what that corporate consciousness teaches, but while welcoming and weighing truth from all sides, he feels that Scripture is the supreme and final authority for his life.

' As a matter of fact, the unlimited right of private judgment is not a fruit of the Reformation but of the Renaissance and of the Revolution with their wild individualism. It is Socinian and rationalist, it is not Protestant. The Reformation certainly made religion personal, but it did not make it individualist. The Reformation, if it destroyed the hierarchy of the Church, did not destroy the hierarchy of competency, spiritual or intellectual. In a political democracy we speak of one vote, one value; but in the intellectual and spiritual region all opinions are not of equal worth; nor have they all an equal right to attention. What the Reformation said was that the layman with his Bible in his hand had at his side the same Holy Spirit as the minister. Each had the testimony of the Spirit as the supreme religious Expositor of Scripture.'17

This position is abundantly justified on several grounds. It comes to us with the example of our Lord, Who constantly appealed to the Scriptures as the touchstone of truth. It is that which is the most consonant with the nature of our personality and its responsibility to God. It is the assertion of our indefeasible right to be in direct personal relation to God, while welcoming all possible light from every available quarter as helping us to decide for ourselves under the guidance of God's Word and Spirit. This position has also ever been productive of the finest characters, and the noblest and truest examples of individual and corporate Christian life. We have only to compare those countries like South America and Spain, where the opposite principle of Church authority and supremacy has had undisputed sway for centuries, to see the truth of this statement.

Once again let it be said that we do wisely and well in giving to the universal voice and testimony of the Church (wherever and in so far as it can be discovered), the utmost possible weight, for no individual will lightly set aside such united and universal belief; but the last and final authority must be the Word of God illuminating, influencing, and controlling the human conscience and reason through the presence and power of the Spirit of God.

The warrant for regarding this authority as sufficient is that we base it, first, on the claim of Scripture itself. The Old Testament could not of course claim finality for itself as a whole, because of its gradual growth from separate authors, but we can see throughout the process the claim of the prophets to authority and inspiration, and the New Testament certainly sets its seal retrospectively on the finality of the Old Testament. Similarly the New Testament could not claim final authority for itself as a whole, but we can see clearly from the words of Christ and His Apostles that they claimed this for themselves. Indeed, the finality of the New Testament is implicit throughout in its whole matter and manner. The general tone and attitude of a parent are much more effective for authority than any number of specific reminders by verbal assertions. No one can doubt the claim of Scripture to finality by its whole attitude to man's life.

We base it, next, on the testimony of Church History. The general tenor of Patristic Testimony is in this direction.

' The ancient Church did faithfully and continually recur to this pattern, and faithfully recognised the limitation of its function. It is evident how constant is the effect of the scriptural pattern, on which they are mainly occupied in commenting, in moulding and restraining the teaching of Origen and Chrysostom and Augustine. The appeal to Scripture is explicit and constant. These fathers knew that they existed simply to maintain a once-given teaching. and that the justification of any dogma was simply the necessity for guarding the faith once for all delivered and recorded. There can be no doubt of their point of view.'18

Every heresy in the early Church claimed to be based on Scripture. The most severe attacks of opponents were always directed against Scripture. The ancient liturgies are saturated with Scripture. Indeed, the whole history of the Church tells the same story. If there is one fact plainer than another in Christian history it is that Christ does not fully reveal Himself apart from and independent of knowledge and study of Holy Scripture. Whenever the Bible has been neglected, the reality of Christ's presence has been obscured, and as often as men have come back to Scripture, Christ has again become real. It is sometimes said that Protestantism substituted the idea of an infallible Book for the older Roman dogma of an infallible Church. But the antithesis though clever is fallacious. The idea of Scripture is, as we have already seen, not younger, but older than Romanism. It is not a late invention of Protestantism, but the original idea which is found in Scripture itself, and which was acted on by the Church from the first. As a body of Divinely authoritative writings the books of the Old and the New Testaments were accepted by the post-apostolic age, and the writings of the early Fathers are full of examples of the way in which they used these writings as the ultimate authority on the matters of which they speak.

It is incorrect, therefore, to say that we are shut up to the Roman Catholic view of supreme authority, or to pure subjectivity.19 On the contrary, we believe that there is a real and constant authority in Scripture to which Christian men can make an appeal.20 The effects of Scripture on human life are ample proofs of this contention. There is nothing required for the spiritual life of all men, at all times, in all places which is not found in Scripture. There is enough in Scripture to guide every honest soul from time to eternity. There is an answer in Scripture to every vital and essential question of the soul regarding salvation, holiness, and immortality. Even its accessibility can be adduced in evidence. Here is a Book, easily obtained, quickly read, and adequate to every conceivable circumstance, and to the soul that receives it, it affords its own blessed and satisfying proofs. Surely there is something remarkable in the simple fact that the soul needs nothing that is not derived thence for spiritual life and power. We say, therefore, that the Bible is adequate as a spiritual authority; that it is neither insufficient nor obscure; that it is not necessary to go to the early Church to clear it of obscurity, or to supplement its inadequacy. It is not to be supplanted by any organisation or personage, and is not to be supplemented by tradition, whether primitive or current.

It might seem at first sight that this discussion of the relations between the Church and the Bible has very little to do with our present subject of the Holy Spirit. But in reality the two questions bear directly on each other and are inextricably bound up together. This consideration of the supreme place of the Bible presupposes and demands the presence and power of the Holy Spirit as the Author of God's revelation for human life. In the light of what has been said 21 of the special and unique work of the Holy Spirit in the provision of Scripture as the inspired Word of God, it is clear that the Bible constitutes the primary, fundamental and constant test of all development which claims to be Christian. If the Holy Spirit so inspired the writers of the Bible as to give for all ages an unique expression of the will of God, it necessarily follows that the Divine will embodied in Holy Scripture is the final court of appeal and rules out everything that is regarded by any Church as ' requisite or necessary to salvation ' if it is ' not read therein nor may be proved thereby' (Anglican Article VI.). In every aspect of Church life, either of thought or of practice, which may be considered as vital and essential, the Scripture inspired by the Spirit is supreme, and it is therefore the constant remembrance of the unique work of the Holy Spirit in inspiration that alone can prove an adequate protection and safeguard against the errors and dangers connected with ecclesiastical and all other forms of development. As we shall see still more clearly in the next chapter, on an allied subject, the root of many of our troubles is the practical severance of the Holy Spirit from the Scriptures, and the virtual ignoring of the presence and power of the Spirit as the Revealer and Interpreter of spiritual truth. When the two are kept together, the Spirit using the Word and speaking through It, the result is assured and authoritative for all Christian life. This great truth of the supremacy and sufficiency of Holy Scripture may be summed up in the words of the Apostle Paul, who, speaking of the Old Testament (though the words are still truer of the New Testament books), says ' All Scripture is given by inspiration of God (lit. God-breathed), and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works ' (2 Tim. iii. 16f.).

1 Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, pp. 156, 157.

2 Doctrine of Development, ch. v.

3 Orr, Progress of Dogma, ch. i.

4 Gore, The Body of Christ, p. 223.

5 Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church, p. 4.

6 C. H. Turner, The Journal of Theological Studies, October, 1908, p. 14.

7 Goulburn, Holy Catholic Church; quoted in Four Foundation Truths, p. 13.

8 Forsyth, op. cit. p. 96.

9 Forsyth, op. cit. p. 142. See also pp. 146-155.

10 Rev. C. H. Waller. D.D.

11 Sabatier, The Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit, p. 40.

12 Gore, The Body of Christ, p. 220.

13 Gore, op. cit. p. 222.

14 Gore, op. cit. p. 223.

15 Mullins, Freedom and Authority in Religion, p. 349.

16 Forsyth, op. cit. p. 359, note.

17 Forsyth, op. cit. p. 320.

18 Gore, op. cit. pp. 222, 223.

19 Mullins, op. cit. pp. 31, 41.

20 Mullins, op. cit. pp. 370-375.

21 Ch. XX. The Spirit of Truth, p. 147.