heism. Yet it is, after all, a cheerless 'progress,' which often
'advances backward.' Mr. Newman says that 'the law of God's moral
universe, as known to us, is that of progress; that we trace it from
old barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry, to the more flexible
polytheism of Syria and Greece,' and so forth; and so in Palestine,
from the 'image-worship in Jacob's family to the rise of spiritual
sentiment under David, and Hezekiah's prophets.' (Phases, p. 223)

Yet he also tells us, 'Ceremonialism more and more incrusted the
restored nation, and Jesus was needed to spur and stab the consciences
of his contemporaries, and recall them to more spiritual perceptions.'
Well, thus came Christ to 'stab and spur'; and faith, I think 'stab
and spur' were again needed by the end of the third century. Successive
reformers are needed to 'stab and spur' the thick hide of humanity,
without which it will not, it seems, go forward, but perversely go
backward; and even with this perpetual application of the goad of some
spiritual mohoul, man crawls on at an intolerably slow pace. However,
'stab' and 'spur' are needed which is all I am now intent upon."

"Yes; but each of those great souls who have stimulated the dull mind
of ordinary humanity derived from its own internal illumination that
spiritual light which they have communicated to the rest of mankind!"

"For themselves, perhaps, my friend," said Harrington, "and if they
had kept it to themselves in many instances, probably the world would
have been no loser. That they had it from within, is true,--if your
theory is true. But to others, to the bulk of mankind, they have
imparted this light; it has been to mankind an 'external revelation';
it is from without, not from within, that this light has been received,
and that the boasted 'progress' of the race has been secured. It
remains, therefore, only for your Christian opponent to ask, how it
should be impossible that mankind should be indebted to an external
revelation by God, when it is plain that they are indebted for the
like from man! And whether it is not conceivable that, if Moses and
Socrates and Paul could do so much for them, God could do a trifle
more? You will say, perhaps, on the old plea, that these profounder
spirits only made articulate that which already existed inarticulately
in the hearts of those whom they addressed; that they only chafed into
life the marble statue of Pygmalion,--the dormant principles an