such “spiritual and moral truth” as is “elementary” indeed—­does Harrington declare that he finds unverified by his own consciousness, and needing, if true, an authority to confirm them far more weighty than theirs!  As to the terms of access to the Supreme Being,—­his aspects towards man,—­man’s duties towards him,—­the future destinies, even the future existence, of the soul (a point on which these writers are themselves divided),—­the boasted “progress” of the race, which they “prophesy,” indeed, but without any credentials of their mission,—­you see how on all these points Harrington maintains—­and oh! how many, if the Bible be untrue, must maintain with him—­that he is in total darkness!

III.  But I must proceed to show yet further, if you will have patience with me, that, supposing a divine external revelation to be given, it is in striking analogy, not only with the primary laws of development of our whole intellectual and spiritual being, but with the fact—­ undeniable, however unaccountable—­that our subjection to external influence does, in truth, not only mould and modify, but usually determine, our intellectual and religious position.  We see not only some external influence is necessary to awaken activity at all, but that it is actually so powerful and so inevitable from the manner in which man enters the world, and is brought up in it,—­his long years of dependence, absolute dependence, on the education which is given him (and what an education it has ever been for the mass of the race!),—­that it makes all the difference, intellectually and morally, between a New Zealand savage and an Englishman,—­between the grossest idolater and the most enlightened Christian.  This fact affects alike our intellectual and spiritual condition.  The savage can use his senses better than the civilized; but the interval is trifling compared with that between the intellectual condition of a man can appreciate Milton and Newman, and that of our Teutonic ancestors.  Its the sentiments of a nature there is the same wide gulf—­or rather wider—­between a Hottentot and a Paul.  Yet the same “susceptibilities” and “potentialities” are in each human mind.  The same remark applies to the sense of the beautiful and sublime; the characteristic faculties are in all mankind; it is education which elicits them.  Nay, would you not stare at a man who should affirm that education was not itself a species of “revelation,” simply because the truths thus communicated were all “potentially” in the mind before?  The fact is, that education is of coordinate importance with the very faculties without which it cannot be imparted.