such is the organ of religious truth. He insists on speaking of the
Scriptures in formally theological terms. That the Scripture writers
employed theological terms there can be no doubt, but they did not speak
as systematic theologians. And always they brought their theology to the
test of actual life. The writer of these lines once knew a student who
had read enough of psychology to enable him to reason himself into a
belief that he was the only person in existence; that is to say, he
declared that he himself was the only one of whose existence he was
infallibly certain. Does not all knowledge of an external world come as
a report through a sensation aroused by stimulus? If the appropriate
stimulus could be kept up an external world might fall away and I would
still think it was there. The bell might ring at the door and might be
nobody there. And so on and on, through steps familiar enough to the
student of philosophy. When a friend made a quick appeal to life with
the question: "If you are the only one alive, why do you bring your
troubles to me?" the amateur philosopher came to earth with a sense of
jar. But the jar is no greater than that when we pass from the plane of
dogmatic theology to that of reading the Scriptures for their own sake.
The old scholastics said that in God there are three substances, one
essence, and two processions. How does this sound as compared with the
statement of Jesus that he and his Father are one, and that he would
send the Comforter? This is not to decry theology; but is nevertheless
to discriminate between theology and scripture.

Some one will object, however, that the scriptural truths take their
start in large part from the visions of mystics--of men who brood long
and patiently until they behold realities not otherwise discernible.
Some students will urge upon us that such mystic revelations are granted
peculiarly to the mystic temperament as such, and they often come
regardless of the quality of life that the seers themselves may be