AT the late National Reform convention in Boston, one speaker said:—
“I see little difference between what Israel was and our nation should be except this: when difficulties arose God’s will was sought through the prophets, while we have the completed revelation, the Bible, to solve our problems, and the Holy Spirit to guide us into the truth.”
That is all right if it is only left to the Bible and the Holy Spirit to guide people into the truth; but this is not what the “reform” party wants. That would leave them out of the matter, and they do not mean to be left out. They believe themselves to be the successors of the prophets.
They want o be empowered to solve the religious problems for the nation; they want to be interpreters of the Bible to the nation, and have the will of God, as they state it, enforced upon the nation b law.
The National Reform party and their religious allies never spend any time advocating a scheme of government in which religion is to be applied only by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. But as certainly as the [228] Holy Spirit is the guide into all spirit truth, and free to all, so certainly is any human interpreter of the will of God superfluous, anti-biblical, and blasphemous.