but
then it must have verifications connecting it with the other senses.
Thus, a particularly vivid sort of dream recurring with special marks,
and communicating at once heavenly and earthly knowledge, of which the
latter was otherwise verified, would probably be admitted as a valid
sort of evidence: but so intense would be the interest and duty to
have all unravelled and probed to the bottom, that we should think it
impossible to verify the new sense too anxiously, and we should demand
the fullest particulars of the divine transaction. On the contrary,
it is undeniable that all such severity of research is rebuked in the
Scriptures as unbelief. The deeply interesting _process_ of receiving
supernatural revelation.--a revelation, _not_ of moral principles,
but of outward facts and events, supposed to be communicated in a mode
wholly peculiar and unknown to common men,--this process, which ought
to be laid open and analyzed under the fullest light, _if we are to
believe the results at second hand_, is always and avowedly shrouded
in impenetrable darkness. There surely is something here, which
denotes that it is dangerous to resign ourselves to the conclusions of
the apostles, when their logical notions are so different from ours.

I farther inquired, what sort of miracle I could conceive, that would
alter my opinion on a moral question. Hosea was divinely ordered to go
and unite himself to an impure woman: could I possibly think that God
ordered _me_ to do so, if I heard a voice in the air commanding
it? Should I not rather disbelieve my hearing, than disown my moral
perceptions? If not, where am I to stop? I may practise all sorts of
heathenism. A man who, in obedience to a voice in the air, kills his
innocent wife or child, will either be called mad, and shut up for
safety, or will be hanged as a desperate fanatic: do I dare to condemn
this modern judgment of him? Would any conceivable miracle justify my
slaying my wife? God forbid! It _must_ be morally right, to believe
moral rather than sensible perceptions. No outward impressions on the
eye or ear can be so valid an assurance to me of God's will, as my
inward judgment. How amazing, then, that a Paul or a James could look
on Abraham's intention to slay his son, as indicating a praiseworthy
faith!--And yet not amazing: It does but show, that apostles in former
days, like ourselves, scrutinized antiquity with different eyes from
modern events. If Paul had been ordered