The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 101

THE SCRIPTURE A NECESSITY

6i

While Eve was fully herself, Satan began to discuss the matter He wrought upon her consciousness with words and representations, and she, allowing this, drank the poison, fell, and dragged her husband with her. Had not God thus foretold it? Man's fall was to be known neither by his recognized nor by his unrecognized emotions, but by the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge that caused his fall was not merely abstract, intellectual, but vital. Of course the operating cause was external, but it wrought upon his consciousness and bore the form of knowledge. And as his fall, so also must be his restoration. Redemption must come from without, act upon our cotisciousness, and bear the form of knowledge. To affect and win us in our personality we must be touched in the very spot Avhere sin first wounded us, viz., in our proud and haughty self-consciousness. And since our consciousness mirrors itself in a world of thought thoughts expressed in words so intimately connected as to form, as it were, but one word therefore it was of the highest necessity that a new, divine world of thought should speak to our consciousness in a Word, i.e., in a Scripture. And this is the work of Holy Scripture. Our thought-world is full of falsehood, and so is the outer world. But one thought-world is absolutely true, and that is the world of God's thoughts. Into this world we must be brought, and it into us with the life that belongs to it, as brightness to light. Therefore redemption depends upon faith. To believe is to acknowledge that the entire world of thought within and around us is false, and that only God's world of thought is true and abiding, and as such to accept and confess it. So it is still the Tree of knowledge. But the fruit now taken and enjoyed grows upon the inward plant of selfemptying and self-denial, whereby we renounce our own entire world of thought, no longer judging between good and evil, but faithfully repeating what God teaches, as ever little children in His school. with her.

—

—

But

this

would not avail us if God's thoughts came in unintelliwould have been the case if the Holy Spirit had

gible words, which

used mere words.

We know how hopeless Every

the felicities of heaven.

That

bliss passes

concerning

it is

our imagination.

couched

it is

effort has

And

far

a

failure.

the Scripture revelation

imagery — as — which, beautiful as

in earthly

salem, or a wedding-feast

to try to describe

been so

it

a Paradise, a Jeru-

may

be, leaves

no

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