and
difficult task.

The principle, "Cuique in sua arte credendum est," applies to those
who have been eminent for personal holiness as much as to the leaders
in any other branch of excellence. Even in dealing with arts which
are akin to each other, we do not invite poets to judge of music, or
sculptors of architecture. We need not then be disturbed if we
occasionally find men illustrious in other fields, who are as
insensible to religion as to poetry. Our reverence for the character
and genius of Charles Darwin need not induce us to lay aside either
our Shakespeare or our New Testament.[405] The men to whom we
naturally turn as our best authorities in spiritual matters, are those
who seem to have been endowed with an "anima naturaliter Christiana,"
and who have devoted their whole lives to the service of God and the
imitation of Christ.

Now it will be found that these men of acknowledged and pre-eminent
saintliness agree very closely in what they tell us about God. They
tell us that they have arrived gradually at an unshakable conviction,
not based on inference but on immediate experience, that God is a
Spirit with whom the human spirit can hold intercourse; that in Him
meet all that they can imagine of goodness, truth, and beauty; that
they can see His footprints everywhere in nature, and feel His
presence within them as the very life of their life, so that in
proportion as they come to themselves they come to Him. They tell us
that what separates us from Him and from happiness is, first,
self-seeking in all its forms; and, secondly, sensuality in all its
forms; that these are the ways of darkness and death, which hide from
us the face of God; while the path of the just is like a shining
light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. As they have
toiled up the narrow way, the Spirit has spoken to them of Christ, and
has enlightened the eyes of their understandings, till they have at
least _begun_ to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and
to be filled with all the fulness of God.

So far, the position is unassailable. But the scope of the argument
has, of course, its fixed limits. The inner light can only testify to
spiritual truths. It always speaks in the present tense; it cannot
guarantee any historical event, past or future. It cannot guarantee
either the Gospel history or a future judgment. It can tell us that
Christ is risen, and that He is alive for evermore, but not that He
rose ag