in an intelligible sense from the same source,—­differing only in degree.  Can you deem less, then, of that great conception by which Mr. Newman has released you, and possibly many more, from that bondage to a ‘book-revelation’ in which you were brought up, and in which, by your own confession, you might have been still enthralled?  Can you think less of this than that it is an ‘inspired’ voice which has proclaimed ‘liberty to the captive,’ and made known to you ‘spiritual freedom’?  If any thing be divine about Mr. Newman’s system, surely it must be this.  Ought you not to thank God that he has been thus pleased to ‘open your eyes,’ and to turn you from ’darkness to light,’—­to raise up in these last days such an apostle of the truth which had lain so long ‘hidden from ages and generations’?  Can you do less than admire the divine artifice by when it was impossible for God directly to tell man that he could directly tell him nothing, He raised up his servant Newman to perform the office?”

“For my part,” said Fellowes, “I am not ashamed to say, that I think I ought to thank God for such a boon as Mr. Newman has, in this instance at least, been the instrument of conveying to me:  I acknowledge it most momentous truth, without which I should still have been in thraldom to the ‘letter.’”

“Very well; then the book-revelation of Mr. Newman is, as I say, in some sort to you, perhaps to a divine ‘book-revelation.’”

“Well, in some sense, it is so.”

“So that now we have, in some sense, a divine book-revelation to prove that a divine book-revelation is impossible.”

“You are pleased to jest on the subject,” said Fellowes.

“I never was more serious in my life.  However, I will not press this point any further.  You shall be permitted to say (what I will not contradict) that, though Mr. Newman may be inspired, for aught I know, in that modified sense in which you believe in any phenomenon,—­inspired as much (say) as the inventor of Lucifer matches,—­yet that his book is not divine,—­that it is purely human; and even, if you please, that God has had nothing to do with it.  But even then I must be allowed to repeat, that at least you have derived from a ‘book-revelation’ what it would not have been a unworthy of a divine book-revelation to impart, if it could have been imparted without contradiction.  Such book-revelation, in this case, must be of inestimable value to man, because, without it, he must have persisted in that ancient and all but inveterate and universal delusion of which we have so often spoken.  There is only one little inconvenience, I apprehend, from it in relation to the argument of such a book; and that is, that I am afraid that men, so far from being convinced thereby that a divine revelation is impossible, will rather argue the contrary way, and say, ’If Mr. Newman can do so much, what might not God do by the very same method?’ If he can thus break the spiritual yoke of his fellow-men by only teaching them negative truth,