“That,” said Fellowes, laughing, “would indeed be a novelty.  Miracles would hardly prove that.”

“I think not,” said Harrington.  “But, as the poet says, ’some god or friendly man’ may show the way.  Pray, permit me to ask, did you always believe that a book-revelation was impossible?”

“How can you ask the question?—­you know that I was brought up, like yourself, in the reception of the Bible as the only and infallible revelation of God to mankind.”

“To what do you owe your emancipation from this grievous and universal error, which still infects, in this or some other shape, the myriads of the human race?”

“I think principally to the work of Mr. Newman on the ‘Soul,’ and his ‘Phases of Faith.’”

“These have been to you, then, at least, a book-revelation that a ‘divine book-revelation is impossible’; a truth which I acknowledge you could not have received by divine book-revelation, without a contradiction.  You ought, indeed, to think very highly of Mr. Newman.  It is well, when God cannot do a this that man can; though I confess, considering the wide prevalence of this pernicious error, it would have been better, had it been possible, that man should have had a divine book-revelation to tell him that a divine book-revelation was impossible.  Great as is my admiration of Mr. Newman, I should, myself, have preferred having God’s word for it.  However, let us lay it down as an axiom that a human book-revelation, showing you that ‘a divine book-revelation is impossible,’ is not impossible; and really, considering the almost universal error of man on this subject,—­now happily exploded,—­the book-revelation which convinces man of this great truth ought to be reverenced as of the highest value; it is such that it might not appear unworthy of celestial origin, if it did not imply a contradiction that God should reveal to us in a book that a revelation in a book is impossible.”

Fellowes looked very grave, but said nothing.

“But yet,” continued Harrington, very seriously, “I know not whether I ought not, upon your principles, to consider this book-revelation with which you have been favored, about the impossibility of such a thing, as itself a divine revelation; in which case I am afraid we shall be constrained to admit, in form, that contradiction which we have been so anxious to avoid, by making ’possible with man what is impossible with God.’”

“I know not what you mean,” said Fellowes, rather offended.

“Why,” said Harrington, quite unmoved, “I have heard you say you do not deny, in some sense, inspiration, but only that inspiration is preternatural; that every ‘holy thought,’ every ’lofty and sublime conception,’ all ‘truth and excellence,’ in any man, come from the ‘Father of lights,’ and are to be ascribed to him; that, as Mr. Parker and Mr. Foxton affirm on this point, the inspiration of Paul or Milton, or even of Christ and of Benjamin Franklin, is of the same nature, and