to supersede all external revelation, since by the
unfortunate "conceptions" of the one, and the "degraded types" of the
other, it has for ages left man, and does, in fact, now leave him,
to wallow in the lowest depths of the most debasing idolatry and
superstition; since, by the confession of these very writers, the
great bulk of mankind have been and are hideously mal-formed, in
fact, spiritual cripples, and have been left to wander in infinitely
varied paths of error, but always paths of error?--for Judaism and
Christianity, though better forms, are, as well as other forms,
--according to these writers,--full of fables and fancies, of lying
legends and fantastical doctrines. Think for a moment of a "spiritual
faculty," so bright as to anticipate all essential spiritual verities,
--the universal possession of humanity,--which yet terminates in
leaving the said humanity to grovel in every form of error, between
the extremes of Fetichism, which consecrates a bit of stone, and
Pantheism, which consecrates all the bits of stone in the universe, in
fact, a sort of comprehensive Fetichism;--which leaves man to erect
every thing into a God, provided it is none,--sun, moon, stars, a cat,
a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a shapeless
trunk,--which the devout impatience of the idolater does not stay to
fashion into the likeness of a man, but gives it its apotheosis at
once! Think of the venerable, wide-spread empire of the infinite forms
of polytheism, the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, and Hindoo
mythologies; and then acknowledge, that, if man has this faculty, it
is either the most idle prerogative ever bestowed on a rational
creature, or that, somehow or other, as the Bible affirms, it has
been denaturalized and disabled. If, on the other hand, man has this
faculty, and yet has never fallen, it can only be because he never
stood; and then, no doubt, as John Bunyan hath it, "He that is down
need fear no fall!"

There is an answer, indeed, but it is one which, in my judgment,
covers those who resort to it with the deepest shame. It is that
which apologizes for all these abominations,--so humiliating and
odious, by representing them as less humiliating and odious than
they are. It is true that Mr. Parker, when it is his cue, is most
eloquent in his denunciations of the infinite miseries and degradation
which have followed the exorbitancies of the religious principle.
Thus he says of supersti