I do not dispute it. There still remain one or two
difficulties on which I should like to have your judgment towards
forming an opinion: and they are on the very threshold of the subject.
And, first, I suppose you do not mean to restrict your term of a
'book-revelation' to that only which is literally consigned to a
book in our modern sense. You mean an external revelation?"

"Certainly."

"If, for example, you could recover a genuine manuscript of Isaiah
or Paul, you would not think it entitled to any more respect, as
authority, than a modern translation in a printed book,--though it
might be free from some errors?"

"I should not."

"You would not allow that parchment, however ancient, has any
advantage in this respect over paper, however modern?"

"Certainly not."

"Nor Hebrew or Greek over English or German?

"No."

"All such matters are in very deed but 'leather and prunella'?"

"Nothing more."

"And for a similar reason, surely, you would reject at once the oral
teaching of any such man as Paul or Matthew, or any body else, if
he professed that what he said was dictated by divine inspiration,
concurrently or not with the use of his own faculties? You would
repudiate at once his claims, however authenticated, to be your
infallible guide; to tell you what you are to believe, and how you
are to act? For surely you will not pretend that there is any
difference between statements which are merely expressed by the
living voice, and those same statements as consigned to a book;
except that, if any difference be supposed at all, one would, for
some reasons, rather have their in the last shape than in the first."

"Of course there is no difference: to object to a book-revelation
and grant a 'lip-revelation' from God, or to deny that lip-revelation
(when it is made permanent and diffusible) the authority it had when
first given, would be a childish hatred of a book indeed," answered
Fellowes.

"I perfectly agree with you," replied Harrington.

"I understand you, then, to deny that any revelation professedly
given to you or to me does, or ever can, come to us through any
external channel, printed or on parchment, ancient or modern, by the
living voice or in a written character; and that this is a proper
translation, in a generalized form, of the phrase 'a book-revelation'?"

"I admit it. For surely, as already said, it would be truly ridiculous
to allow that Paul, if we could but hear his living voice, was