Page:Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology.djvu/24



Individual, and of Growth in both. And if this be so, how can it be otherwise than that the Spiritual Education of both should proceed on the same principles? And in such case must we not expect to find in the earliest Revelations of the Divine Nature and of Human Duty the same kind of condescending adaptations to infantine incapacity which we know to be indispensable in our own individual experience? The fact is, that in all communication of knowledge, the mind of the Recipient must be as much considered as the truth which is to be taught. In order to secure the greatest power of vision the Light must be accommodated to the Eye. The brightest Light will not necessarily enable every man to see the best. Adaptation to the organ is a greater requisite in the medium of vision than intrinsic brightness. Thus if Revelation be considered as spiritual light, and man be considered as in a good measure spiritually blind, it could hardly be wisely otherwise than that the transition from blindness to sight and from darkness to light, should be gradual. And consider well what the Problem (if it may be so said with reverence) of a gradual Revelation must ever be—how Progression must involve Accommodation. To make a communication of Truth and Duty which shall satisfy the highest culture of any age, and shall at the same time be intelligible to the rudest ages, it must of necessity be one which shall be universal and unchangeable only in its spirit, and not in its form. It is scarcely possible—at least it is scarcely conceivable by us—that it should be made in so general and inflexible a form as that it should never be interfered with in the process of the ages by that universal change and development which uninterruptedly goes on in everything elsewhere with which man is conversant and concerned. Such an utterance of Truth would, as far as we can see or judge by any analogies of nature or of history, be out of keeping with our present condition in the flesh, and is certainly contrary to any experience which we have hitherto had.

Truly to some minds the process of a gradual and growing Revelation seems no matter of wonder or apology, but rather to be so reasonable and so wise as to make the fact that the Bible