species of mankind, as the Bushmen in Caffraria, and the tribes of New South Wales, has failed to find among their rites any thing akin to religion:  but what may we not yet have to learn of good even about such poor outcasts? how shall we prove this negative?  For aught we know, their superstitions at the heart may be as deep and as deceitful as in others; and, even on the contrary side, the exception proves the rule:  the rule that every people concluded a revelation so likely, that they have one and all contrived it for themselves.

Thus shortly of the first:  and now, secondly, how should God reveal himself to men?  In such times as those when the world was yet young, and the Church concentrated in a family or an individual, it would probably be by an immediate oral teaching; the Lord would speak with Adam; He would walk with Enoch; He would, in some pure ethereal garb, talk with Abraham, as friend to friend.  And thereafter, as men grew, and worshippers were multiplied, He would give some favoured servant a commission to be His ambassador:  He would say to an Ezekiel, “Go unto the house of Israel, and speak my words to them:”  He would bid a Jeremiah “Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken to thee:”  He would give Daniel a deep vision, not to be interpreted for ages, “Shut up the words, and seal the book even to the time of the end:”  He would make Moses grave His precepts in the rock, and Job record his trials with a pen of iron.  For a family, the Beatic Vision was enough:  for a congregated nation, as once at Sinai, oral proclamations:  for one generation or two around the world, the zeal and eloquence of some great “multitude of preachers:”  but, indubitably, if God willed to bless the universal race, and drop the honey of his words distilling down the hour-glass of Time from generation to generation even to the latter days, there was no plan more probable, none more feasible, than the pen of a ready writer.

Further:  and which concerns our argument:  what were likely to be the characteristic marks of such a revelation?  Exclusively of a pervading holiness, and wisdom, and sublimity, which could not be dispensed with, and in some sort should be worthy of the God; there would be, it was probable, frequent evidences of man’s infirmity, corrupting all he toucheth.  The Almighty works no miracles for little cause:  one miracle alone need be current throughout Scripture:  to wit, that which preserves it clean and safe from every perilous error.  But, in the succession of a thousand scribes each copying from the other, needs must that the tired hand and misty eye would occasionally misplace a letter:  this was no nodus worthy of a God’s descent to dissipate by miracle.