inculcation of just maxims of duty fell to be a great auxiliary to its performance in the circumstances in which it is necessary to apply them?  Is not the possession of a general rule, with the advantages of a clear and concise expression,—­in the form of familiar proverbs, or embodied in powerful imagery,—­a potent suggestive to the mind; not only whispering of duty, but, by perpetual recurrence, aiding the habit of attending to it?  Is not the early and earnest iteration of such sententious wisdom in the ears of the young, —­the honor which has been paid to sages who have elicited it, or felicitously expressed it,—­the care with which these treasures of moral wisdom have been garnered up,—­the perpetual efforts to conjoin elementary moral truth with the fancy and association,—­is not all this a standing testimony to a consciousness of the value of such auxiliaries of virtue and duty?  Is it not felt, that, however general such truths may be, the very forms of expression,—­the portable shape in which the truth is presented,—­have an immense value in relation to practice?  Admitting, therefore, as before,—­but, as before, only conceding it for argument’s sake (for the limits of variation, even as regards the elementary truths of morals, are, as experience shows, very wide),—­that each man in some shape could anticipate for himself the more important ethical truth, there would be yet ample scope left for the utility of a divinely constructed instrument for its exhibition and enforcement, in perfect harmony with the modes in which it is actually exhibited and enforced by man, in close analogy with the form in which he attempts the same task, whenever he teaches any practical art or method whatever.

Only may it not be again presumed here, that He who knows perfectly “what is in man” would be able to perform the work with correspondent perfection?  Whether He has performed it in the Bible or not, that book does, at all events, contain not merely a larger portion of pure ethical truth than any other in the world, but ethical truth expressed and exhibited (as Mr. Newman himself, and most other persons, would admit) in modes incomparably better adapted than in any other book to lay hold of the memory, the imagination, the conscience, and the heart.

Even then, if we conceded that elementary “spiritual and moral truth” is not only congruous to man’s faculties, but in some shape universally recognized and possessed, it might yet be contended, from the manner in which such truth is dependent for its power and vitality on the forms in which it comes in contact with the human spirit and stimulates it, that ample space is left for such a divine instrument as the Bible; and that it would be in perfect conformity with the laws of our nature, —­in analogy with the known modes in which external aids give efficacy to such truth.  At the same time, be pleased once more to remember, that I concede so much only for argument’s sake; I contend that in the stricter