“It is so; and surely all history bears out the theory.”

“Many doubt it.  I will not venture to give any opinion, except that there are inexplicable difficulties, as usual, on both sides.  Just now I am quite willing to take his statement for granted, and suppose that man in the infancy of his race was, in spite of the aid of his very peculiar illumination,—­which seems to have ‘rayed out darkness,’ —­as very a Troglodyte in civilization and religion as you (for the special glory of his Creator, I suppose, and the honor of your species) can wish him to have been.  Well, man began by being a polytheist, and very gradually emerged out of that pleasant condition —­or rather an infinitesimal portion of the race has emerged out of it, into the better forms of idolatry—­(poor wretch!), and from thence to monotheism; that, in short, his polytheism is not the corruption of his monotheism, but his monotheism an elevation of his polytheism.  Yet it is, after all, a cheerless ‘progress,’ which often ‘advances backward.’  Mr. Newman says that ’the law of God’s moral universe, as known to us, is that of progress; that we trace it from old barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry, to the more flexible polytheism of Syria and Greece,’ and so forth; and so in Palestine, from the ’image-worship in Jacob’s family to the rise of spiritual sentiment under David, and Hezekiah’s prophets.’ (Phases, p. 223)

Yet he also tells us, ’Ceremonialism more and more incrusted the restored nation, and Jesus was needed to spur and stab the consciences of his contemporaries, and recall them to more spiritual perceptions.’  Well, thus came Christ to ‘stab and spur’; and faith, I think ’stab and spur’ were again needed by the end of the third century.  Successive reformers are needed to ‘stab and spur’ the thick hide of humanity, without which it will not, it seems, go forward, but perversely go backward; and even with this perpetual application of the goad of some spiritual mohoul, man crawls on at an intolerably slow pace.  However, ‘stab’ and ‘spur’ are needed which is all I am now intent upon.”

“Yes; but each of those great souls who have stimulated the dull mind of ordinary humanity derived from its own internal illumination that spiritual light which they have communicated to the rest of mankind!”

“For themselves, perhaps, my friend,” said Harrington, “and if they had kept it to themselves in many instances, probably the world would have been no loser.  That they had it from within, is true,—­if your theory is true.  But to others, to the bulk of mankind, they have imparted this light; it has been to mankind an ‘external revelation’; it is from without, not from within, that this light has been received, and that the boasted ‘progress’ of the race has been secured.  It remains, therefore, only for your Christian opponent to ask, how it should be impossible that mankind should be indebted to an external revelation by God, when