WE BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, Minister of the Free Church at Lynn, Mass. II. REAL AND IMAGINARY AUTHORITY. E have urged that the Fountainhead of Religion is not Tradition, but a present and constant Inspiration. Original Authority in matters of Belief therefore resides in the testimony of the Spiritual Consciousness. It is by this term that we designate the knowledge we possess concerning spiritual things, through the present operation of our natural faculties. We are immediately conscious of all the Essential Realities to which we stand related of Deity, of Duty, of Immortality. In some form or other, we do, as spiritual beings, see these directly, as the eye sees objects distant or near. And this is our real ground of belief in them. Each person, moreover, believes in them not primarily because every one else does, but for the same reason that every one else does, namely, the prodigious force of the evidence which resides in his individual consciousness. This testimony cannot be supplanted, nor even approached in value, by any of those forms of reasoning from analogy or traditional belief or special revelation, which are so commonly appealed to as conclusive evidence of the truths in question. They are all comparative failures; and to resort to them where some exceptional cause for a time interferes with the natural sight, is more apt to weaken belief than to strengthen it; as would any attempt to demonstrate the existence of the visible world which ignored the evidence of the senses. Such is the authority of the Spiritual Consciousness through its intuition of our Essential Realities. But it is more than the basis of Intuitive Belief. It is the primary 114 ground of assurance in reference to those highest products of Religious Reflection, to those noblest ideas concerning God, Duty, and Immortal Life, which comparatively few have reached, as well as to those Intuitions which are common to all mankind. An implicit trust in the present testimony of our natural faculties, in Consciousness, whether intuitive or reflective, is the first, indispensable condition of all knowledge whatsoever, from the least to the greatest, from physical to celestial. And of this primal foundation here is the inevitable law. In any given age or individual, the Spiritual Consciousness is according to the moral, intellectual, spiritual status which that age or individual has attained. It testifies only of the actual condition of the inward life. It is the witness on which we necessarily rely, as it is the inevitable court of final appeal: but its law is that we shall judge according as we are. Does not then this sole and inalienable authority turn out to be incapable of teaching anything with certitude, in other words, to be no authority at all? Not, we reply, unless our spiritual organization is inherently a fraud. The eye may see imperfectly; but if really an organ of vision, it must see at least the general forms of things as they are, and we are safe in relying on its testimony as to these. And so the Spiritual Consciousness cannot become so disorganized but that it sees in some way, worthy or unworthy, the essential spiritual relations of Human Nature. In all times the Soul has borne witness of Deity, of a Law of Duty, of an invincible need of Immortality, as positive Facts. And in perceiving these, it perceives the foundation of all higher spiritual knowledge. As the authority on which these fundamental truths are accepted, it must be adequate to accredit the truth into which these unfold. And so it is as certain as it is indispensable, that the natural faculties can be so enlightened, purified, and matured that the Spiritual Consciousness shall become clear and healthful: able to apprehend God, Duty, Immortality, in their nobler meanings, and through a natural intimacy between these and the inmost personality recognize their unquestionable truth by a kind of intuition, appropriate to this higher sphere. In these maturer stages of Religious Belief, the Soul also makes good its claim as the ultimate and adequate Court of Appeal: ultimate, because we cannot possibly go behind the testimony of those natural organs through which truth is apprehended; and adequate to certify truth, if certitude be not impossible in the nature of things. And in its maturer experience it is fully aware of this its jurisdiction, and asks no confirmation from sources external It knows that it cannot stand outside its own nature, nor to itself. receive light from above except under the conditions of human vision; and it respects these conditions as legitimate and trustworthy. The laws of our Nature are the voice of God. There is a natural Inspiration, and there is no other. Even if the Soul could not yield certitude, we should gain nothing by the attempt to put a higher authority in its place. God has enthroned it and made it alone His viceregent and interpreter, by irreversible law. All Bibles, traditions, creeds, all Persons or performances claimed to be 'supernatural,' all assumed Infallibilities of speech or record, must commend themselves to the natural faculties, be judged by them, fall under their limitations and their laws, be lost in them altogether as respects authority, before they can be accepted. They are accepted, if at all, only in such shape as the Spiritual Consciousness gives them; accepted, in other words, on its authority. And this is true of every individual to whom they are presented, let it be ever so vehemently denied. The Religious Books, by which whole races have supposed their faith divinely guaranteed of old, are really but threads on which they have strung their own inspirations, imaginations and desires, as age after age evoked these out of present needs. Not the thread, but that which was hung upon it, was after all the substance of belief. And the authority on which belief reposed, resided not in those Gods of the Past who were supposed to have let down the sacred chain from their thrones ages ago, but in these living hands of the believer, which, inspired from above or from beneath, were daring to hang image after image upon it after the likeness of the hour's wisdom or folly; daring, not because they were overbold, but because they had no other choice; because man cannot live by the dead Past; because he is a living Soul, and his God is a God of the living present Consciousness. The Code of Manu never really formed the practical rule of East Indian jurisprudence. Hindu law was the ever changing creation of Hindu character and circumstances, and the Law Book was read in the light of these. The oldest Veda, whose every syllable has been sacred for thousands of years, has never spoken its original meaning to a single generation since it was made into a Book. A thousand sects have been founded on its readings; every sacred syllable has hundreds of glosses; every age and school has had its own interpretation, claiming absolute authority. Hindu Law, Science, Philosophy, Ethics, Life, all profess to be but expansions of that Divine Text. Yet in itself the simple old Hymn-and-Prayer Book is mainly innocent of them all. The so called 'Law of Moses' was, in all probability, never practically carried into effect. As soon as it had been brought together out of many ages, elaborated and enlarged by priestly |