troduction of
this idea in the teaching of Schleiermacher, and to protest against the
use which he proposed to make of it as a source of truth, independently of
the Christian consciousness of the apostles and first teachers; as the
gradual source of doctrinal progress, the oracular utterance to this age,
as the apostolic consciousness was to the first age.

But there is a deep truth in it, if we use the Christian consciousness,
not to supersede scripture, but as the living corroboration and
interpreter of it. The Spirit of God still works on the hearts of men
morally, as upon the apostles of old; not by conferring the intellectual
gift of inspiration, but in the moral gifts of penitence, of conversion,
of pardon, of holiness. Holy men now feel the Spirit of God striving with
them as the apostles did, and appropriate the excellence of Christianity,
and feel its renovating power now as then. Therefore the attestation of
these men, such as is collected by an induction founded on their
biographies, to the fact that when they analyse their secret feelings with
the most exact care, they recognise that the pardon which they receive is
through the mercy of Christ; that their moments of most hallowed communion
with the Father-spirit are when they approach the throne of mercy through
the mediation and intercession of another, Christ Jesus; that the victory
vouchsafed to them over temptation, is by His merits; that their heart
finds no Father for one moment except through him;--this evidence, if it
can be accepted, is an independent corroboration of dogmatic truth. It may
be explained away, by denying the truth of their analysis, or by referring
their feeling to mental association; but it cannot fail to have a
persuasive force for those who have faith in the instinctive utterances of
the human soul: and the reliance upon it is not more extraordinary than
that on which we depend in cognate subjects like aesthetics, where the
taste of practical skill is trusted. Christian consciousness thus becomes
a new source of facts in theological study; the living voice of the church
for illustrating and confirming in some degree the utterance of men of
old, who spake that which was revealed to their souls by the inspiring
Spirit.

Such are the chief steps which the history of evidences, in the contest
with early heathenism, as well as in the recent struggle in Germany, seems
to point out as the most likely to lead a doubter to Christ; and such