ellectual, moral, and religious.
If, then, an external instrument of moral and religious culture were
Given by God to man, would it not be in strict analogy with this
tremendous and mysterious law of human development?

IV. I must be permitted to proceed yet one step further, and affirm
that the very form in which this presumed revelation has (as we say)
been given--that of a Book--is also in strict analogy with the law
by which God himself has made this an indispensable instrument of all
human progress. We have just seen that man is what he is, as much
(to say the least) by the influence of external influence as by the
influence of the internal principles of his constitution; it must be
added, that to make that external influence of much efficiency at all,
still more to render it either universally or progressively beneficial,
the world waits for a--BOOK. Among the varied external influences
amidst which the human race is developed, this is incomparably the
most important, and the only one that is absolutely essential. Upon
it the collective education of the race depends. It is the sole
instrument of registering, perpetuating, transmitting thought.

Yes, whatever trivial and vulgar associations may impair our due
conceptions of this grandeur of this material and artificial organon
of man's development, as compared with the intellectual and moral
energies, which have recourse to it, but which are almost impotent
without it. God has made man's whole career of triumphs dependent
upon this same art of writing! The whole progress of the world he
has created, he has made dependent upon the Alphabet! Without this
the progress of the individual is inconceivably slow, and with
him, for the most part, progress terminates. By this alone can we
garner the fruits of experience,--become wise by the wisdom of
others, and strong by their strength. Without this man everywhere
remains, age after age, immovably a savage; and, if he were to lose
it when he has once gained it, would, after a little ineffectual
flutter by the aid of tradition, sink into barbarism again. Till
this cardinal want is supplied, all considerable "progress" is
impossible. It may look odd to say that the whole world is dependent
on any thing so purely artificial; but, in point of fact, it is
only another way of stating the truth that God has constituted the
race a series of mutually dependent beings; and as each term of
this series is perishable and evanescent,