eet of Jesus. This is the first step in
Christian experience. To put my doctrine unmistakably and in a nutshell,
deduction from the existence of God normally precedes and insures the
acceptance of Christ. The sinner comes to have personal knowledge of One
who has atoned, and therefore can forgive. But to him who has accepted
Christ, his Lord is more than a historical Redeemer, he is a present
Saviour from both the penalty and the power of sin. Without this
personal knowledge of Christ, we might think of him as only one of many
human examples or teachers, like Confucius or Buddha. Now, he is nothing
less than God manifest in the flesh, omnipresent, omniscient,
omnipotent, whom having seen we have seen the Father.

But there is a second step in Christian experience, which I wish also to
describe in a nutshell and to define as unmistakably as I described and
defined the first. I claim that deduction from the existence of Christ
normally precedes and insures the acceptance of Scripture. Our Lord
himself has said, "My sheep hear my voice." The Christian recognizes in
Scripture the voice of Christ. No change in his experience is more
marked and wonderful than the change in his estimate of the Bible. A
little time ago, Scripture was commonplace and unmeaning. Now it speaks
to him with a living voice such words of instruction and comfort, of
warning and promise, that his soul is filled alternately with sorrow and
with joy. He wonders that he never saw these things before. He perceives
for the first time that he has been in an abnormal condition of mind,
and that condition has been due to his own perversity of will. But now
the prodigal has "come to himself." Only the Holy Spirit could have made
possible this new and normal exercise of his powers. The change is not
in the Scripture, it is in himself. He has come in contact with a word
of God that "liveth and abideth." He sees in it the divine workmanship.
He can no longer regard Scripture as merely the work of man; it is also
the work of the same Spirit who has transformed him, namely, the eternal
Christ. Christ is the author and inspirer of Scripture, even though
imperfect human agents have been employed to communicate his revelation.
In spite of the rudeness and diversity of the instruments, there
breathes through them all a certain divine melody and harmony. While the
inductive and horizontal method would give us only finite and earthly
truth, the deductive and vertical can gi