All such truths are analytic, that is, they are true, not merely for a given time or place, but at all times and places conceivable, or, time and space out of the question, they still remain formally true. Of course, therefore, they cannot refer to historic occurrences nor phenomena. The modern position, that truth lies in facts, must be forsaken, and with the ancients, we must place it in ideas. If we define inspiration as that condition of mind which is in the highest degree sensitive to the presence of such truth, we have of it the only worthy idea which it is possible to frame. The object of scientific investigation is to reach a truth which can neither be denied nor doubted. If religion is willing to content itself with any lower form of truth, it cannot support its claims to respect, let alone reverence. It may be said that the subjects with which the religious sentiment concerns itself are not such as are capable of this absolute expression. This is, however, disclaimed by all great reformers, and by none more emphatically than by him who said: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my statements (λογοι) shall not pass away.” There is clear reference here to absolute truths. If what we know of God, duty and life, is not capable of expression except in historic narrative and synthetic terms, the sooner we drop their consideration the better. That form sufficed for a time, but can no longer, when a higher is generally known. As the mathematical surpasses the historic truth, so the former is in turn transcended by the purely logical, and in this, if anywhere, religion must rest its claims for recognition. Here is the arena of the theology of the future, not in the decrees of councils, nor in the records of past time. Inspiration, in its religious sense, we may, therefore, define to be that condition of mind in which the truths relating to deity and duty become in whole or in part the subjects of immediate perception. That such a condition is possible will be granted. Every reformer who has made a permanent betterment in the religion of his time has possessed it in some degree. He who first conceived the Kosmos under logical unity as an orderly whole, had it in singular power; so too had he who looking into the mind became aware of its purposive laws which are the everlasting warrants of duty. Some nations have possessed it in remarkable fulness, none more so than the descendants of Abraham, from himself, who left his kindred and his father’s house at the word of God, through many eminent seers down to Spinoza, who likewise forsook his tribe to obey the inspirations vouchsafed him; surpassing them all, Jesus of Nazareth, to whose mind, as he waxed in wisdom, the truth unfolded itself in such surpassing clearness that neither his immediate disciples nor any generations since have fathomed all the significance of his words.