s it is called, has recognized in
some shape or other (for it has varied not a little),--it would leave
the chief reasons for imparting an external revelation just where they
were. I, at least, should never contend that the sole or even chief
object of an external revelation is to impart elementary moral or
spiritual truth, however possible I may deem it. On the contrary, I am
fully persuaded that the great purpose for which such a revelation has
been given is to communicate facts and truths many of which were quite
transcendental to the human faculties; which man would never have
discovered, and most of which he would never have surmised. All this
your favorite Mr. Newman perceived in his earlier days clearly enough,
and has recorded his sentiments held at that period in his "Phases."(p.42)
If I were to grant you, therefore, your proposition, it would leave the
question of an external revelation untouched; your hasty inference from
it, that every book-revelation is to be rejected, is perfectly gratuitous.

But I am thoroughly persuaded that the notion of the impossibility of all
external revelation of moral and spiritual truth, even of the elementary
form already referred to, is a fallacy.

Whether the religious faculty in men be a simple faculty, or (as Sir
James Mackintosh seemed to think might possibly be the case with
conscience) a complex one, constituted by means of several different
powers and principles of our nature, is a question not essential to the
argument; for I frankly admit at once, with Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker,
that there is such a susceptibility (simple or complex), and not a mere
abortive tendency, as Harrington seems to suppose possible. Otherwise
I cannot, I confess, account for the fact (so largely insisted upon by
Mr. Parker) of the very general, the all but universal, adoption by man
of some religion, and the power, the prodigious power, which, even when
false, hideously false, it exerts over him. But then I must as
frankly confess, that I can as little account for all the (not only
terrible but) uniform aberrations of this susceptibility, on which
Harrington has insisted, and which, I do think, prove (if ever truth
was proved by induction) one of two things; either that, as he says,
this susceptibility in man was originally defective and rudimentary, or
that man is no longer in his normal state; in other words, that he
is, as the Scriptures declare, depraved. I acknowledge I accept
this las