In considering the spiritual illumination of the race one is confronted by two very distinct and essentially contradictory views or explanations,—one, the traditional, regards the process as paroxysmal—that revelation has been made only at intervals and through chosen media. The other regards the process as continuous, as the expression of a Divine appeal, an entrance-seeking which is universal, constant, and unvarying.
The climaxes of religious history certainly suggest intermittence; that, in keeping with human conditions, or with His unapprehended determinations, God has, at certain times, revealed the Truth through prophets and seers, whose wisdom and inspiration are to be thought of as miraculous impositions rather than normal realizations. This was the Levitical, as it is very largely the present orthodox apprehension, and it readily affiliates with those ideas of foreordination and predestination which have dominated Calvinistic theology. The absence of greater lights in a period of history is regarded as an evidence of a pause in revelation, their disappearance, proof of its consummation.
In this view, also, emphasis is naturally laid upon literal interpretation, and the "thus saith the Lord" of some Scripture declarations is given supreme authority as the final court of appeal.
