this is nothing but one form of the development of humanity and shows no proof of a Divine Ruler, we have a right to ask what then could be the source of such a development, and how is it that so great a power should always have worked in the name of God and should have always referred everything to His command?  That fanaticism should plead God’s authority without any right to do so is intelligible.  But is it intelligible that all this truth and justice and purity and self-sacrificing love, all this obedience to the Supreme Law, should be the fruit of believing a lie?  If there be a God, it is to be expected that He would communicate with His creatures if those creatures were capable of receiving the communication; and if He did communicate with His creatures it is to be expected that His communication would be such as we find in the Bible.  The purpose of the Bible, the form of it, the gradual formation of it, the steadily-growing Revelation contained in it, these harmonise with the moral law revealed originally in the conscience.  And the effect which the Revelation has produced on human history is real and great.  The power which God’s Revelation has exerted on the world is an undeniable fact among phenomena.  It is not a demonstration of His existence; but it is a full answer to those who say, ’If God made and rules the world why do we find no signs of His hand in its course?’

And thirdly, this Revelation has not merely taken the form of a message or a series of messages, but has culminated in the appearance of a person who has always satisfied and still satisfies the conception formed by our spiritual faculty of a human representation of the divine law.  Our Lord’s life is that law translated into human action, and all the more because human faculties had not first framed the conception which He then came to fulfil, but He exhibited the ideal, and our conception rose as it were to correspond to it.  And, as He includes in Himself all the teaching, so does He give from Himself all the power of the Revelation which He came to crown.  And every true disciple of Christ can bear witness to the reality of that power in sustaining the soul.

Thus has the God, whom our spiritual faculty commands us to worship and to reverence, shown Himself in the world of phenomena.  And He has given proofs of His existence and His character precisely corresponding to the conception which He has enabled, and indeed commanded, us to form of Him.  And it is because the proofs that He has given are of this nature that we are tempted to ask for more proofs of a different kind.