Page:The Bible- Its True Character and Spiritual Meaning.djvu/20

10 to himself; the universal intuition of God, which no man loses till it is blanketed by his own fallacious reasonings; these two felt facts call for revelation from God to man concerning himself, and God's will with respect to him. There are powers and faculties of the human mind which are not brought into exercise by an exclusive determination of thought to this world of the senses, which will exercise themselves with the problems of existence, and duty, and destiny. These faculties may be more or less developed, but at every stage of their activity they demand a knowledge different from that which the senses can give. They feel their fitness for a world of thought which the senses do not dirctly open, and they crave its revelation. The skeptic as to the inspiration of the Scriptures, if he have still preserved the intuition of God and the hope of immortality, will tell you how much he desires a revelation in which heart and mind may repose, with confidence and certainty. Many a mind chased by the phantoms of doubt; many a heart tired of following after the fantasies of sense, is crying to-day in your very midst: "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Even atheism acknowledges the want in ceaseless