dispute never leaves his rational creatures
unaided by some sort of guiding light, some manifestation of himself so
needful to their happiness, some sure word of consolation in sorrow, or
of brighter hope in persecution. That it must have been thus an _a
priori_ probability, has been all along proved by the innumerable
pretences of the kind so constant up and down the world: no nation ever
existed in any age or country, whose seers and wise men of whatever name
have not been believed to hold commerce with the Godhead. We may judge
from this, how probable it must ever have been held. The Sages of old
Greece were sure of it from reason: and not less sure from accepted
superstition those who reverenced the Brahmin, or the priest of
Heliopolis, or the medicine-man among the Rocky Mountains, or the Llama
of old Mexico. I know that our ignorance of some among the most
brutalized species of mankind, as the Bushmen in Caffraria, and the
tribes of New South Wales, has failed to find among their rites any
thing akin to religion: but what may we not yet have to learn of good
even about such poor outcasts? how shall we prove this negative? For
aught we know, their superstitions at the heart may be as deep and as
deceitful as in others; and, even on the contrary side, the exception
proves the rule: the rule that every people concluded a revelation so
likely, that they have one and all contrived it for themselves.

Thus shortly of the first: and now, secondly, how should God reveal
himself to men? In such times as those when the world was yet young, and
the Church concentrated in a family or an individual, it would probably
be by an immediate oral teaching; the Lord would speak with Adam; He
would walk with Enoch; He would, in some pure ethereal garb, talk with
Abraham, as friend to friend. And thereafter, as men grew, and
worshippers were multiplied, He would give some favoured servant a
commission to be His ambassador: He would say to an Ezekiel, "Go unto
the house of Israel, and speak my words to them:" He would bid a
Jeremiah "Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words
that I have spoken to thee:" He would give Daniel a deep vision, not to
be interpreted for ages, "Shut up the words, and seal the book even to
the time of the end:" He would make Moses grave His precepts in the
rock, and Job record his trials with a pen of iron. For a family, the
Beatic Vision was enough: for a congregated nation, as once at Sinai,