But I am thoroughly persuaded that the notion of the impossibility of all external revelation of moral and spiritual truth, even of the elementary form already referred to, is a fallacy.

Whether the religious faculty in men be a simple faculty, or (as Sir James Mackintosh seemed to think might possibly be the case with conscience) a complex one, constituted by means of several different powers and principles of our nature, is a question not essential to the argument; for I frankly admit at once, with Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker, that there is such a susceptibility (simple or complex), and not a mere abortive tendency, as Harrington seems to suppose possible.  Otherwise I cannot, I confess, account for the fact (so largely insisted upon by Mr. Parker) of the very general, the all but universal, adoption by man of some religion, and the power, the prodigious power, which, even when false, hideously false, it exerts over him.  But then I must as frankly confess, that I can as little account for all the (not only terrible but) uniform aberrations of this susceptibility, on which Harrington has insisted, and which, I do think, prove (if ever truth was proved by induction) one of two things; either that, as he says, this susceptibility in man was originally defective and rudimentary, or that man is no longer in his normal state; in other words, that he is, as the Scriptures declare, depraved.  I acknowledge I accept this last solution; and firmly believe with Pascal, that without it moral and religious philosophy must toil over the problem of humanity in vain.

If this be so, we have, of course, no difficulty in believing that there may be, in spite of the existence of the religious faculty in man, ample scope for an external revelation, to correct its aberrations and remedy its maladies.

But you will say that this fact is not to be taken for granted.  I admit it; and therefore lay no further stress upon it.  I go one step further; and shall endeavor, at least, to prove, that, supposing man is just as he was created, yet also supposing, what neither Mr. Parker nor Mr. Newman will deny, (and if they did, the whole history of the world would confute them,) that man’s religious faculty is not uniform or determinate in its action, but is dependent on external development and culture for assuming the form it does, ample scope is still left for an external revelation.  I contend that the entire condition of this susceptibility (as shown by experience) proves that, if in truth an external revelation be impossible, it is not because it has superseded the necessity for one; and that the declaration of the elder deists and modern “spiritualists” on this in the face of what all history proves man to be, is the most preposterous in the world.

Further; I contend that all the analogies from the fundamental laws of the development of man’s nature,—­from a consideration of the relations in which that nature stands to the external world,—­from the absolute dependence of the individual on external culture, and that of the whole species on its historic development,—­are all in favor of the notion both of the possibility and utility of an external revelation, and even in favor of that particular form of it which Mr. Newman and you so contemptuously call a “book” revelation.