He who asks, Why did not Christ suppress evil? may naturally ask also, Why did not Christ sweep away all human error as to the relations of God with man? And why did He not so vouch for the authenticity of His communication that any doubt about it should be impossible? Now we believe, that God has revealed Himself to man, and yet has left men in some degree free as to what they will think about Him, and as fully at liberty to examine the credentials of those who have claimed to be His messengers, and to judge of their authenticity, as they would be in a purely human matter. We find, as a matter of fact, that men who have accepted Christ’s revelation are not fettered in mind by it; but are most often enterprising, energetic and bold searchers after truth. I believe that it would have been unfavourable to the preservation of this vigour of mind and to the temper which should “try all things and hold fast those which are good,” if the full and absolute revelation which some demand had been delivered to mankind, and all the problems which beset human life had thereby been settled once for all. To the questions “Why we are told what we are told?” “Why we are not told more?” and “Why doubt and ambiguities are not all cleared away?”—we cannot hope to give _answers_, but we may find ways of looking at them which shall help in some degree “To justify the ways of God to man.” It will be best to discuss this subject in a separate Chapter. CHAPTER III. OF REVELATION. If I took the word Revelation in its widest sense I should not attempt to treat of it here, for it would comprise nothing less than God’s education of the human race. We talk of Natural Religion and Revealed Religion, but all Religion has in it an element of revelation from God. If God had not provided man with a mind’s eye suited to see Him by, and also something that shadowed Him forth which that eye could behold, we could have no religion at all. Of the processes by which belief has come about in men not the least notable is this. Men have recognised in some new tidings what they seemed to have been looking for, without being aware of it. Some new teacher has become the spokesman of thoughts which were lying in them in a state too vague for utterance. Thus “thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.”(10) Now it is God who has planted these thoughts in men, and He brings about the occasions which reveal them.