IT remains, however, after we have fully appreciated the faculty of reason, and have vindicated its proper function in the sphere of religion, that we must join with one heart in thanking God for the revelation of Jesus Christ. As there can be no conflict between reason and faith, since they have different functions, so there can be nothing but harmony between reason and Christ, because Christ is the answer and fulfilment of reason. What the light is to the eye, Christ is to human reason. He reveals that perfect image of God and of man, and that perfect rule of life and character, after which the human mind by many sages and saints has been earnestly seeking, and which in the words and work of Christ it recognizes and welcomes. If human reason be the dim shadow of the divine reason, then Christ, who is the Logos of God, by virtue of His deity, is also the supreme reason of man, by virtue of His humanity, and in Christ reason, divine and human, meet and blend. Christ becomes therefore to us the standard of thought in religion, not by the imposition of God, but by the constitution of our nature.
He only thinks rightly who thinks with Christ. He who commits his mind as a docile disciple to the Spirit of Christ is delivered from the bondage of error, and brought into the liberty of truth, and the highest point of religious certitude is reached when the Christ within the Bible speaks to a man and is answered by the Christ within the man. While apart from Christ—
“The intellectual power through words and things
Went sounding on a dim and perilous way.”
Since the true Light has shined, it is our duty, our wisdom, our salvation, to follow Him till every thought be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, to whom with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one holy and undivided Trinity, be glory, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”—Ian Maclaren.