insight with which she was familiar in her daily contemplations and
prayers. How far, then, her own mind may have supplied the material from
which the tissues were woven, or lent the colours with which the
pictures were painted, or supplied the music to which the words were
set, is what we must now try to determine.


II.

Taking the terms "revelation" and "inspiration" in the unsophisticated
sense which they have borne not only in the Judaeo-Christian tradition,
but in almost all the great ethnic religions as well, we may inquire
into the different sorts and degrees of the control exercised by the
presumably supernatural agents over the recipient of such influence. For
clearness' sake we may first distinguish between the control of the
cognitive, the volitional, and the executive faculties. For our present
inquiry we may leave aside those cases where the control of the
executive faculties, normally subject to the will and directed by the
mind, seem to be wrested from that control by a foreign agent possessed
of intelligence and volition, as, for example, in such a case as is
narrated of the false prophet Balaam, or of those who at the Pentecostal
outpouring spoke correctly in languages unintelligible to themselves, or
of the possessed who were constrained in spite of themselves to confess
Christ. In these and similar cases, not only is the action involuntary
or even counter to the will, but it manifests such intelligent purpose
as seemingly marks it to be the effect of an alien will and
intelligence. Of this kind of control exercised by the agent over the
outer actions of the patient, it may be doubted if it be ever effected
except through the mediation of a suggestion addressed to the mind, in
such sort that though not free, the resulting action is not wholly