Note 4 — Chapter II · THE INNER LIGHT.

I may, perhaps, here be allowed to point out the ambiguity of the expression “immediate inspiration.” The word “immediate” may be understood to mean direct, and in this sense it is, I think, superfluous; for it is surely impossible to conceive of inspiration as indirect, although revelation may easily be so. But it may also, in reference to any particular thought communicated, be understood as meaning “instantaneous;” and in this sense a special importance has been attached to it by some Friends, which is, I believe, deprecated by others, as restricting “ministry” to the utterance of words believed to be at the moment given for utterance, under what is called a “fresh anointing” from above. I would, therefore, rather avoid at present the use of the expression “immediate inspiration,” when speaking of our belief that there is in every heart a witness for the truth, which is, so to speak, radiated from the central truth. The “light” seems, on the whole, to be the figure least open to any possible misinterpretation.