“Whether it could be ignorance and credulity on your theory,” retorted Harrington, “is to my mind very doubtful.  Whether any men can untruly affirm that they saw and did the things the Apostles say they saw and did, and yet be sincere fanatics, I know not; but even were it so, since it shows (as do also the mystical doctrines you reject as false) that they could be little less than out of their senses; and as you further say that the spiritual sentiments you retain in common with them were no gift of theirs, but are yours and all mankind’s, by original inheritance, uttered by the oracle of the human heart before any Testaments were written,—­why, speak your thoughts in your own language.”

“Ay, but how do we know that these original Christians said that they had seen and done the things you refer to? which of course they never did see and do, because they were miraculous.  How do we know what additions and corruptions as to fact, and what disguises of mystical doctrine, ‘the idealizing biographers and historians’ (as Strauss truly calls them) may have accumulated upon their simple utterances?”

“And how do you know, then, whether they ever uttered these simple ‘utterances’? or whether they are not part of the corruptions? or how can you separate the one from the other? or how can you ascertain these men meant what you mean, when you thus vilely copy their language?”

“Because I know these truths independently of Bible, to be sure.”

“Then speak of them independently of the Bible.  If you profess to have broken the stereotype-plates of the ‘old revelation’ and delivered mankind from their bondage, do not proceed to express yourself only in fragments from them; if you profess freedom of soul, and the possession of the pure truth, do not appear to be so poverty-stricken as to array your thoughts in the tatters of the cast-off Bible.”

“Ay, but the ‘saints’ of the Bible,” replied Fellows, “are, even by Mr. Frank Newman’s own confession, those who have entered, after all, most profoundly the truths of spiritual religion, and stand almost alone in the history of the world in that respect.”

“If it be so, it is certainly very odd, considering the mountain-loads of folly, error, fable, fiction, from which their spiritual religion did not in your esteem defend them, and which you say you are obliged to reject.  It is a phenomenon of which, I think, you are bound to give some account.”

“But what is there so wonderful in supposing them in possession of superior ‘spiritual’ advantages, with mistaken history and fallacious logic, and so forth?”