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If we accept this idea of the common knowledge possessed by believers in Christ who receive the promised Spirit, what will be our attitude towards the Bible, the Church, the Christian teacher, and all those forms of religious authority so jealously upheld in the past? Does not this idea of common knowledge introduce a competing authority, and bid fair to prove a solvent of ecclesiastical rule and prerogative, and produce a new confusion of tongues? The Churches of the Reformation rightly make the Bible a test of faith, and bring all teaching to the tribunal of its impartial balances. The New Testament is mainly a statement of historical facts from the lips or pens of eye-witnesses, to which there can be no addition by subsequent revelation. In so far as it is a statement of the doctrinal interpretations identified with those facts, it furnishes a permanent record of what was taught by the Spirit to the first generation of believers, and of what was approved and attested in their own experiences by those representatives of the early Churches who received the component parts of the New Testament into the canon. It gives absolutely trustworthy notes of the work of the Spirit in saving and instructing and sanctifying men. The unchanging Spirit is not likely to contradict Himself now, and teach divergent doctrines to a docile recipient of His ministries; and the Church whose members are inwardly led to the acceptance of the truths which accord with the original standards of the Bible proves itself so far a recipient of the same inspiration. The Bible is the seal by which we are to measure our own inspiration and spiritual insight; but it will not do our seeing for us, and each man must perceive for himself and acquire by the use of his spiritual senses this common knowledge.

2. But some tell us that the Church is the assay-house of religious thought, and that all statements of doctrine must be weighed in the scale of ecclesiastical balances. What have the early councils said? What does the congregation of cardinals or the House of Convocation say to-day? Our reply is that the spiritual discernment of the rulers of a Church must be tested by the scale or standard presented in the Bible and handed down from those who were themselves both personal followers of Christ and the first recipients of Pentecostal gifts. A Church may fall and grope in darkness as woefully as an individual, and then its authority ceases. The mere shell of a Church corporation cannot possibly be a centre of authority, for its directing personnel is ever changing, and if it be found in conflict with the primitive revelations of the Spirit, the very sanctity of the Church is lost and its right to teach forfeited.

3. It is sometimes argued that the teacher duly certified by the Christian Church is a specialist, and that we must give ourselves implicitly into his hands, just as we give ourselves into the hands of any other professional man who has the technical Knowledge we lack. Well, we may recognize that within certain limits he who has not yet received the Spirit must be indebted for such second-hand knowledge as he possesses to the Church and its ministries. But, after all, there is no. specialism in connection with the truths which concern the daily life and experience of believers. All specialism is in non-essentials, and the cry for the specialist not only reflects on the impartiality of the Spirit, and implies that His illumination is particular rather than universal, but assumes that religion is a thing of intermittent rites and functions rather than a daily life in which the humblest is schooled to knowledge and insight.

(T. G. Selby.)

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KJV: And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children.

WEB: All your children shall be taught of Yahweh; and great shall be the peace of your children.