Nor do I think that the invectives of the modern spiritualists on this point are particularly becoming, when we reflect not only that they freely give mankind what Harrington declares to be to him, and I must say are equally to me, their “book-revelations,” but in very deed, as he truly affirms, have given us nothing else.  It has been much the same with all who have rejected historical Christianity, from Lord Herbert’s time downwards.

I paused, and Fellowes mused.  At last he said, “I cannot feel convinced that the ‘absolute religion’ is (as Mr. Parker says) essentially the same in all men, and internally revealed.  The want exists in all, and there must, according to the arrangements of universal nature, be the supply; just as the eye is for the light, and the light is for the eye.  As he says, ‘we feel instinctively it must be so.’”

“Unhappily,” said Harrington, “Mr. Parker says that many things must be which we find are not, and this among the number.  At least I, for one, shall not grant that the sort of spiritual ‘supply’ which is to the Calmuck, or the savage ’besmeared with the blood of human sacrifices,’ at all resembles that uniform light which is made for all people’s eyes.”

Fellowes seemed still perplexed with his old difficulty.  “I cannot help thinking,” he began again, “that the ‘spiritual faculty’ acts by immediate ‘insight,’ and has nothing to do with ’logical processes’ or ‘intellectual propositions,’ or the sensational or the imaginative parts of our nature; that it ’gazes immediately upon spiritual truth.’  Now in the argument you have constructed, you have expressly implied the contrary.  You have said, you know, that, even if you granted men to be in possession of ’spiritual and moral truth,’ there might still be large space for a divinely constructed book from the reflex operation of the intellect, the imagination, and so forth, upon the products of the spiritual faculty; both directly, and also indirectly, inasmuch as external influences modify or stimulate them.”

“But,” said I, “does not Mr. Newman himself, in the first part of his Treatise on the Soul, admit the reciprocal action of all these on the too plastic spiritual products; and as to ’logical and intellectual processes,’ does he not continually employ them—­for his system of opinions, though he will not allow them to be employed against it?  And by what other means than through the intervention of your senses, by which you read his pages,—­your imagination, by which you seize his illustrations,—­your intellect, by which you comprehend his arguments, did he reclaim you, as you say he has done, from many of your ancient errors?  How else, in the name of common sense, did he get access to your soul at all?”

“I cannot pretend to defend Mr. Newman’s consistency,” said he, “in his various statements on this subject.  I acknowledge I am even puzzled to find out how he did convince me, upon his hypothesis.”