ish to contend are these: (1) that
Revelation is a matter of degree; (2) that no Revelation can be
accepted in the long run merely because it came to a particular person
in a peculiarly intuitive or immediate way. It may be that M. Auguste
Sabatier is right in seeing the most immediate contact of God with the
human soul in those intuitive convictions which can least easily be
accounted for by ordinary psychological causes; in those new departures
of religious insight, those unaccountable comings of new thoughts into
the mind, which constitute the great crises or turning-points of
religious history. But, though the coming of such thoughts may often
be accepted by the individual as direct evidences of a divine origin,
the Metaphysician, on looking back upon them, cannot treat the fact
that the psychologist cannot account for them, as a convincing proof of
such an origin, apart from our judgement upon the contents of what
claims to be a revelation. Untrue thoughts and wicked thoughts
sometimes arise equally unaccountably: the fact that they do so is even
now accounted for by some as a sufficient proof of direct diabolic
suggestion. When we have judged the {148} thought to be true or the
suggestion to be good, then we, who on other grounds believe in God,
may see in it a piece of divine revelation, but not till then.

From this point of view it is clear that we are able to recognize
various degrees and various kinds of divine revelation in many
different Religions, philosophies, systems of ethical teaching. We are
able to recognize the importance to the world of the great historical
Religions, in all of which we can acknowledge a measure of Revelation.
The fact that the truths which they teach (in so far as they are true)
can now be recognized as true by philosophic thought, does not show
that the world would ever have evolved those thoughts, apart from the
influence of the great revealing personalities. Philosophy itself--the
Philosophy of the professed philosophers--has no doubt contributed a
very important element to the content of the historical Religions; but
it is only in proportion as they become part of a system of religious
teaching, and the possession of an organized religious community, that
the ideas of the philosophers really come home to multitudes of men,
and shape the history of the world. Nor in many cases would the
philosophers themselves have seen what they have seen but for the great
epoch-making