ht of an
object surrounded with vivid associations, the sudden suggestion of
a half-forgotten strain of poetry or song,--what power have these to
stir its stagnant depths, and awaken "spiritual" and every other
species of emotion, as well as intellectual activity! The lightning
does not more suddenly cleave the cloud in which it slumbered, the
sleeping ocean is not more suddenly ruffled by the descending tempest,
than the soul of man is thus capable of being vivified and animated
by the presentation of appropriate objects,--nay, often by even the
most casual external impulse. If this be so, is it not possible that
an external instrument for thus stimulating and vivifying spiritual
life might be given us by God; which, if not, in literal strictness,
a "revelation," would virtually have all the effect of one, as
rekindling the dying light, reillumining the fading characters, of
spiritual truth?

Nor, surely, is there much presumption in supposing that the appropriate
influences of such an instrumentality may be brought to bear upon us
with infinite advantage by Him who alone possesses perfect access to
all the avenues of our spirits; a perfect mastery of our whole nature;
of intellect, imagination, and conscience of those laws of association
and emotion which He himself has framed. If Shakspeare and Milton can
daily exercise over myriads of minds an ascendency which makes their
admirers speak of them almost with the "Bibliolatry" with which Mr.
Newman makes Christian speak of the Bible, I apprehend God could
construct a "book," even though it told man nothing which was strictly
a revelation, which might be of infinite value to him; simply from
the fact that the modes in which truths operate upon us, and by which
our faculties are educated to their perfection, are scarcely less
important than either the truths or the faculties themselves.

But I need say the less upon this point, inasmuch as Mr. Newman has
spoken of the New Testament, and its influence over his mental history,
in terms which conclusively show that, if it be not a "revelation,"
ample space is left for such a divinely constructed book, if God were
pleased to give one.

"There is no book in all the world," says he, "which I love and esteem
so much as the New Testament, with the devotional parts of the Old.
There is none which I know so intimately, the very words of which
dwell close to me in my most sacred thoughts, none for which I so
thank God, none on