s
power. Because we assert that all moral and spiritual truth comes to
men by {142} Revelation, it does not follow that there are not degrees
of Revelation. And it is one of the special characteristics of
religious and moral truth that it is in a peculiar degree dependent
upon the superior insight of those exceptional men to whom have been
accorded extraordinary degrees of moral and spiritual insight. Even in
Science, as we have seen, we cannot dispense with genius: very ordinary
men can satisfy themselves of the truth of a hypothesis when it is once
suggested, though they would have been quite incompetent to discover
that hypothesis for themselves. Still more unquestionably are there
moral and spiritual truths which, when once discovered, can be seen to
be true by men of very commonplace intellect and commonplace character.
The truths are seen and passed on to others, who accept them partly on
authority, by way of social inheritance and tradition; partly because
they are confirmed in various degrees by their own independent
judgement and experience. Here then--in the discovery of new spiritual
truth--we encounter that higher and exceptional degree of spiritual and
ethical insight which in a special and pre-eminent sense we ought to
regard as Revelation or Inspiration. Here there is room, in the
evolution of Religion and Morality, for the influence of the men of
moral or religious genius--the Prophets, the Apostles, the Founders and
Reformers of Religions: and, since {143} moral and spiritual insight
are very closely connected with character, for the moral hero, the
leader of men, the Saint. Especially to the new departures, the
turning-points, the epoch-making discoveries in ethical and religious
progress connected with the appearance of such men, we may apply the
term Revelation in a supreme or culminating sense.

It is, as it seems to me, extremely important that we should not
altogether divorce the idea of Revelation from those kinds of moral and
religious truth which are arrived at by the ordinary working of the
human intellect. The ultimate moral judgements no doubt must be
intuitive or immediate, but in our deductions from them--in their
application both to practical life and to theories about God and the
Universe--there is room for much intellectual work of the kind which we
commonly associate rather with the philosopher than with the prophet.
But the philosopher may be also a prophet. The philosophical