SPIRITUAL ILLUMINATION
BY REV. R. L. STANTON, D.D.
Taken in its true and full
meaning, no subject is more important to the people of God than spiritual
illumination. The Scriptures cannot be understood aright without light from the
Holy Spirit. “No man,” says St. Paul, “can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by
the Holy Ghost.” “The things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” The
Apostle, therefore, depended on the Spirit even for his words, in preaching:
“Which things we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which
the Holy Ghost teacheth.”
It is encouraging that people
and preachers alike have the promise of the Spirit to open to them the true
meaning of the Scriptures. Christ said of the Comforter: “He shall guide you
into all the truth.” “He shall teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I said unto you.”-(Revised
Version.)
The aid of the Holy Spirit, in
this office, has not always been sufficiently valued. Ponderous tomes,
sometimes the product of infidel learning and scholarship, have been given to
the world to elucidate God’s Word. The soil of the German Universities has been
very fruitful of this noxious growth. The land of Luther is today the source of
that “Higher Criticism” which is troubling the churches of England and
Scotland, and which seriously threatens the churches in our own country. Much
of this evil might have been avoided had these scholars laid their learning at
the feet of Christ, and earnestly and prayerfully implored the Spirit to “guide
them into all the truth.”
In the midst of this mournful
exhibition, it is refreshing to listen to words which have the true ring, from
the Rev. R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, England. He is a leader among the English
Congregationalists. A few years ago he delivered, by special invitation, a
course of “Lectures on Preaching,” before the faculty and students of Yale
College.
In a recent course of lectures on the Epistle to the
Ephesians, Mr. Dale refers to St. Paul’s prayer “That the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of Him.” -(Eph. i: 17.) Upon this he remarks: “In
kind, the illuminator of the Apostles was the same as that, which Paul prayed
might be grantee to the Christians at Ephesus, the same as that which we
ourselves may hope to receive from God. It will be granted, if we seek it, in
whatever measure the exigencies of our personal duties and of our work for
others require.” Mr. Dale then portrays a widespread delinquency of the Church:
“The authoritative teaching of the Christian Church has never recognized with
sufficient clearness and fairness this glorious prerogative of the Christian
life. Theologians and ecclesiastical rulers have dreaded the outbreak of
fanaticism if all Christian people were encouraged or permitted to hope for the
immediate illumination of the Holy Spirit. . Although
it has been acknowledged that individual Christians are taught of God, the anxiety
to defend the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures as the only authoritative source
of religious knowledge, has led to the virtual suppression of the truth that
the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation may come to be the commonalty of the
Church.”
Mr. Dale then says that “the real danger “from apprehended
fanaticism and superstitious “would have long ago disappeared bad the great
churches frankly received the definite teaching of the New Testament concerning
the illumination of the Spirit that is granted in varying measures to all
Christians.” He then declares this to be “a great truth which the leaders of
thought and faith of the Church quite too much refuse to acknowledge;” while he
emphasizes the all-important fact, that, “apart from this illumination no true
knowledge of God is possible to man.”
The special interest which attaches to Mr. Dale’s utterances
is not that there is anything new in them,
but that he is so pointedly declares a truth which the Church at large
most needs to hear and to heed. Spiritual illumination may almost be set down
as the “lost art” for interpreting the Scriptures. Our day is surfeited with
book, with papers, with “helps,” with expositions, with pictorial illustrations,
with blackboard exercises and other object lessons-with everything which the wit
of man and woman can invent-to aid our Sunday-schools, Bible-classes, and all
people to understand the Word of God. These all have their place, it may be;
but the Holy Spirit, as a “guide,” is in danger of being totally buried under
them. One clear ray of His illumination power, upon any given passage, is worth
more than all the stories of scholarship the world contains.
The chief point to bear in mind is, that Christ meant just
what He said when He declares that “the Spirit of truth” should “guide” His
people “into all the truth:” and He said this for each one of His people. The Spirit
is our “Helper.” This is the meaning of the name given him in St. John’s Gospel
(xvi: 13). What little need, then, have we to the “helps” which man can
furnish! How often does the faithful pastor find some poor woman in his parish,
“illiterate,” it may be, but who can instruct her official guide in “the things
of the kingdom,” because she has been taught of the Spirit. “But the anointing
which ye have received of Him abideth in you; and ye need not that any man
teach you.”-(I John ii:27.)
Washington, D.C.
