Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE AUTHORITY OF TRUTH FOUND IN THE HUMAN SOUL. And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at his doctrine. For He taught them as one having authority and not as the Scribes.—Matthew VII; 28 and 29. It is the instinct of mind to require authority. Sayings of any sort, whether they be propositions or fact, or of philosophy, to be believed must be supported by some sort of authority. , There are two kinds of authority by which truth is supported, viz: External and internal. Questions of fact, principles of science, laws ofeconomy, knowledge of things in general effect the minds of men according to the weight of external evidence by which they are supported. Questions of moral right and duty are enforced by authority internal to the mind itself. The law that says thou shalt not kill is binding, not only because God proclaimed it openly; it is binding by a law internal to the mind; the authority that enforces the law is within the man himself. God transcribed the formula from His own mind and gave it to Moses, but man made in the image of God, had the law written in his heart independent of the formula. It was in man, as it was in God, before it was written on stone. Hence the written formula finds its authority no less in the convictions of men than in the behest of God. Jesus spake with authority, and not as the Scribes. As much as to say the Scribes had no authority. Externally the Scribes were supported by an array of highest authority. The letter of the law, the traditions of the elders, the authority of the government, the wisdom of the schools, the power of the priesthood, and the precedents of the church, all combined to reinforce the authority of the Scribes. And yet it is said that Jesus, an obscure man, without ...