rce of revelation is that Volume of
Nature, which, operating in perfect analogy with the aforesaid
conditions of the soul's development, awakens, though imperfectly,
the dormant elements of religious and spiritual life? So far from
its being true in any intelligible sense that an external revelation
of moral and spiritual truth is impossible, it is absolutely
necessary, in some form, as a condition of its evolution; so far from
its being true that such revelation is an absurdity, it is in strict
analogy with the fundamental laws of our being. Whether, if this be so,
the express external presentation of such truth in a book constructed
by divine wisdom and expressed in human language,--this last being
the most universal and most appropriate instrument by which man's
dormant powers are actually awakened,--may not be a more effective
method of attaining the end than any of man's devising, whether
instinctive or artificial; or than the casual influences of external
nature, well or ill deciphered;--all this is another question. But
some such external apparatus--applied to the faculties of men--is
essential, whether it be in the Volume of Nature, or in the "Bible"
or in a book of Mr. Newman or Mr. Parker. All that makes the difference
between you and a Hottentot (to recur to that illustration which
Harrington, I really think, fairly employed) depends on external
influences, and the consequent development of the spiritual and
religious faculties.

And this very fact--the unspeakable differences between man and man,
nation and nation, as regards recognition the conscious possession
of even elementary "moral and spiritual truth" (varying, as it
perpetually does, as those external influences vary, and more or
less perfect, according as that external "revelation," which, in
some degree, and of some species, is indispensable, more or less
perfect)--affords another indication of the ample utility of an
external divine revelation, as well as of its possibility; and a
proof that, if there be one, it is in harmony, again, with the
conditions of human nature. And here I may employ, in further
illustration, one of the analogies I adverted to a little time
ago. Not only is the flower never independent of external influences
for its actual development,--not only would it remain in the germ
without them,--but we see that within certain limits, often very wide,
the kind of external influence operates powerfully on the species,
and on the i