ho would boldly touch. What is
present here speaks of love to man; what is apparent, of the Divine
compassion." (Methodius _De Sym. et Anna_, vii.)

But we must remember that the Epistle to the Hebrews regards the second
manifestation as the more solemn of the two, for this very reason: that
we have not come to a burning mountain, or to mortal penalties for
carnal irreverence, but to the spiritual mountain Zion, to countless
angels, to God the Judge, to the spirits of just men made perfect, and
to Jesus Christ. If they escaped not, when they refused Him Who warned
on earth, much more we, who turn away from Him Who warneth from heaven
(Heb. xii. 18-25).

There is a question, lying far behind all these, which demands
attention.

It is said that legends of wonderful appearances of the gods are common
to all religions; that there is no reason for giving credit to this one
and rejecting all the rest; and, more than this, that God absolutely
could not reveal Himself by sensuous appearances, being Himself a
Spirit. In what sense and to what extent God can be said to have really
revealed Himself, we shall examine hereafter. At present it is enough to
ask whether human love and hatred, joy and sorrow, homage and scorn can
manifest themselves by looks and tones, by the open palm and the
clenched fist, by laughter and tears, by a bent neck and by a curled
lip. For if what is most immaterial in our own soul can find sensuous
expression, it is somewhat bold to deny that a majesty and power beyond
anything human may at least be conceived as finding utterance, through a
mountain burning to the summit and reeling to the base, and the blast of
a trumpet which the people could not hear and live.

But when it is argued that wondrous theophanies are common to all
faiths, two replies present themselves. If all the races of mankind
agree in believing that there is a God, and that He manifests Himself
wonderfully, does that really prove that there is no God, or even that
He never manifested Himself wondrously? We should certainly be derided
if we insisted that such a universal belief proved the truth of the
story of Mount Sinai, and perhaps we should deserve our fate. But it is
more absurd by far to pretend that this instinct, this intuition, this
universal expectation that God would some day, somewhere, rend the veil
which hides Him, does actually refute the narrative.

We have also to ask for the production of those other narratives,