“For that does not affect the principles we are agreed upon?”

“No,”—­not seeming, however, perfectly satisfied.

“Very well,” resumed Harrington, “that is what I call a plain answer to a plain question.  I fancy (waverer that I am!) that I should believe the man’s claims.  I should be even greatly tempted to think that those things which I could not entirely see ought to be contained in the said revelation, were to be believed.  But all that is doubtless only because I am much weaker in mind and will than either Mr. Newman or yourself.  You must pardon me; it will in no degree practically affect the question, except on the supposition that the same infirmity is also a characteristic of man in general; that not I, from my weakness, am an exception to rule; but you, in your strength.  But to dismiss that.  You have agreed that a book-revelation is impossible, and not to be believed, even if avouched by miracles.  Have men in general been disposed to believe a book-revelation impossible? for if not, I am afraid they would be very liable to run into error, if they share in my weaknesses.”

“Liable to run into error!” said Fellowes.  “Man has been perpetually running into this very error, always and everywhere.”

“If it be true, as you say, that man has always and everywhere manifested a remarkable facility of falling into this error, many will be tempted to think that the thing is not so plainly impossible.  It seems so strange that men in general should believe things to be possible when they are impossible.  However, you admit it as a too certain fact.”

“I do, for I can not honestly deny it; but it has been because they have confounded what is historical or intellectual with moral and spiritual truth.”

“I am afraid that will not excuse their absurdity, because, as you admit, all book-revelation is impossible.—­But further, supposing men to have made this strange blunder, it only shows that the ’moral and spiritual’ could not be very clearly revealed within; and no wonder men began to think that perhaps it might come to them from without!  When men begin to mistake blue for red, and square for round, and chaff for wheat, I think it is high time that they repair to a doctor outside them to tell them what is the matter with their poor brains.  Meantime an external revelation is impossible?”

“Certainly.”

“But men, however, have somehow perversely believed it very possible, and that, in some shape or other, it has been given?”

“They have, I must admit.”

“Unhappy race! thus led on by some fatality, though not by the constitution of their nature (rather by some inevitable perversion of it), to believe as possible that which is so plainly impossible.  O that it did not involve a contradiction to wish that God would relieve them from such universal and pernicious delusions, by giving them a book-revelation to show them that all book-revelations are impossible!”