which my soul and heart have been to so great an
extent moulded. In my early boyhood, it was my private delight and
daily companion; and to it I owe the best part of whatever wisdom
there is in my manhood." (Soul, pp. 241, 242.)

I only doubt whether even this testimony, strong as it is, fully
represents the power which the Book has had in modifying his interior
life, though he would now fain renounce its proper authority; whether
it has not had more to do than he thinks in originating his
conception of such "moral and spiritual" truth as he still recognizes.
Its very language comes so spontaneously to his lips, that his dialect
of "spiritualism" is one continued plagiarism from David and Isaiah,
Paul and Christ. Nay, I may well be doubted whether the entire substance
of his spiritual theory be any thing else than a distorted and mutilated
Christianity.

Some of the previous observations apply to the possibility and utility
of a divinely originated statement of "ethical truth"; nor will they
be neutralized by an objection which Mr. Newman is fond of urging,
--namely, that a book cannot express (as it is freely acknowledged
no book can) the limitations with which maxims of critical truth are
to be received and applied; that all it can do is to give general
principles, and leave them to be applied by the individual reason and
conscience. Such reasoning is refuted by fact. The same thing precisely
is done, and necessarily done, in every department in which men attempt
to convey instruction in any particular art or method. It is thus with
the general principles of mechanics, of law, of medicine. Yet men never
entertain a notion that the collection and inculcation of such maxims are
of no use, or of little, merely because they must be intelligently
modified and not blindly applied in action. If indeed there were any
force in the objection, it would put an end to all instruction,--that
of Mr. Newman's "spiritual faculty" amongst the rest, for that too can
only prompt us by general impulses, and leaves us in the same ignorance
and perplexity how far we are to obey them. That is still to be
otherwise determined. The genuine result of such reasoning, if it were
acted upon, would be that we need never, in any science or art whatever,
trouble ourselves to enunciate any general principle or maxim, because
perfectly useless! Similarly, we need never inculcate on children the
duty of obeying their honoring their superiors, of being