ndividual itself;--according as it is in one climate
or another,--in this soil or that,--submitted to culture or suffered
to grow wild. It is needless to apply the analogy. While we see
that the moral spiritual faculties of man no more than his other
faculties can attain their development except in cooperation with
some external influences, we also see that they exhibit every degree
and variety of development according to the quality of those external
influences. Is there then not even a possibility left for an external
revelation? If the actual exhibition of any spiritual and religious
phenomena in man not only depends on some external influences and
culture, but perpetually varies with them, what would such a
revelation be but a provision in analogy with these facts? But it is
sufficient to rebut this gratuitous dictum, of an external revelation
of "spiritual and moral truth being impossible," that some external
influence is necessary for any development of the religious faculty
at all. If the last be necessary, I cannot conceive how the other
should be impossible.

Nor is it any reply to say,--as I think has been abundantly shown in
your debates with Harrington,--that any such external influences only
make articulate that which already existed inarticulately in the heart;
that they only chafe and stimulate into life "the ivory of Pygmalion's
statue," to use his expression,--the dormant principles and sentiments
which somehow existed, but were in deep slumber. That which makes them
vital, active, the objects of consciousness and the sources of power,
may well be called a "revelation." Nay, since it seems that, in some
way, this outward voice must be heard first, I think it is more properly
so called than the internal response of the heart. That is rather the echo.

It may be admitted that the elementary truths of religion, once
propounded, are promptly admitted, but still in some external shape
they require to be propounded. There is such a thing in the human
mind as unrealized truth, both intellectual and spiritual; the
inarticulate muttering of an obscurely felt sentiment; a vague
appetency for something we are not distinctly conscious of. The clear
utterance of it, its distinct proposition to us, is the very thing
that is often wanted to convert this dim feeling into distinct vision.
This is the electric spark which transforms two invisible gases into
a visible and transparent fluid; this is the influence which ev