it was to convey, like the eye, specific
intelligence, it would not account for the first tendencies of man
to disown its authority in favor of an absurd and uniform submission
to the usurpations of tradition and priestcraft. The faculty is
universally feeble against this influence; it staggers; whether
from weakness or drunkenness little matters, except that the last
is the viler infirmity of the two. If we find a river turbid, it
is of no consequence whether it was so as it issued from its
fountain, or from pollutions which have been infused into its
current lower down,--it is a turbid river still.

On the whole, so far from admitting the principle of Mr. Newman,
that a "book-revelation" of moral and spiritual truth is unnecessary,
I should rather be disposed to infer the very contrary, from the
uncertainty, vacillation, and feebleness of man's spiritual nature.
I should be disposed to infer it, whether I look at the lessons
which experience and history teach, or those taught by my own anxious
and sincere scrutiny of my own consciousness. If it be, on the other
hand, as he says, "impossible," mankind are in a very hopeless
predicament, since it only proves that, the "spiritual insight" of
man having unhappily failed the great majority of our race, it cannot
be supplied by any external aid; that the malady, which is but too
apparent, is also as apparently without a remedy.

For myself, I must say that I find myself hopelessly at issue with
him in virtue of the above axiom, whether I receive or reject his
theory of religious truth; for, if that axiom be true, I must
reject his theory of religion,--since it is nothing but a
book-revelation to me,--issued by Mr. Newman, instead of the Bible
or the Koran. On the other hand, if that theory be true, and I accept
it, his maxim must be false, for the very same reason; since he
himself will have given me a double book-revelation,--a revelation
at once of the theory and of the genesis of religion, both of which
are in many respects absolute novelties to my consciousness.

But further; if we take the genesis of religion as described by
either of these writers, and consider the infinite corruptions to
which they both acknowledge a perverted, imperfect "development" of
the "religious sentiment" and the "spiritual faculty" has led, one
would imagine that an external communication from Heaven might be
both very possible and very useful; useful, if only by cautioning
men against t