faculty uniformly yields,--goes into shivers in the
encounter! I, at least, will grant to Mr. Parker all he says of the
pernicious and detestable character of the infinite variety of "false
conceptions of God," and to Mr. Newman all he says of the "degraded
types" of religion; but then it was Man himself that framed all
those "false conceptions," and all those "degraded types." How came
he thus universally to triumph over that divinely implanted faculty
of spiritual discernment, which, if it exist, must be the most
admirable feature of humanity; which these writers tell us anticipates
all external truth, but which, it seems, greedily swallows all
external error? It almost universally submits to the most
contemptible pretensions of a revelation, and acknowledges that it
dares not to pronounce on that, even when false, of which, even
when true, it is to be the sole source! There never was an
"historical" religion, however contemptible, that did not make
its thousands of proselytes. Man has been easily led to embrace
the most absurd systems of mythology and superstition, and is
willing even to go to death for them.

So far from venturing to set up the claims of the internal oracle
in competition, man all but uniformly takes his religion from his
fathers (no matter what), just as he takes his property; only the
former, however worthless, he holds as infinitely the more precious.
Even when he surrenders it, he still surrenders it to some other
"historical" religion: it is to that he turns. Such men as Mr. Newman
and Mr. Parker--though every one can see that their system too has
been derived from without, that it is, in fact, nothing but a
distorted Christianity--may be numbered by units. The vast bulk of
mankind are unresisting victims of the "traditional" and
"historical"; nay, rather eagerly ask for it, and willingly submit
to it. What, then, can I infer, but either, 1st, that this vaunted
internal faculty which supersedes all necessity of an external
revelation is a delusion, and exists only as a vague and imperfect
tendency; or, 2dly, that, as Christians say, it lies in ruins, and
needs that external revelation, the possibility of which is denied;
or, 3dly, that God has somehow made a great mistake in mingling the
various elements of man's composition, and miscalculating the
overmastering power of the "historical" and "traditional "; or,
4thly, that man, having the original faculty still bright and strong,
and that bri