“They would do so,” cries Mr. Parker; but unhappily, though the “idea” of God is “one and the same, and perfect” in all “when the proper conditions” are complied with, yet practically, if, in the majority of these proper “conditions are not observed”; (Discourses, p. 19) “the conception, which men universally form of God is always imperfect, sometimes self-contradictory and impossible”; “the primitive simplicity and beauty” of the “idea” are lost.  And thus it is, he tells us, that, owing to this awkward “conceptions” the vast majority of the human race have been, and are, and for ages will be, sunk in the grossest Fetichism,—­Polytheism,—­and every form of absurd and misshapen Monotheism;—­the horrors of all which he proceeds faithfully, but not too faithfully, to describe, and sometimes, when he is in the mood, to soften and extenuate; in order that he may find that the “grim Calmuck,” and even the savage, “whose hands are smeared over with the blood of human sacrifices,” are yet in possession of the “absolute Idea” and the “absolute religion.”

And what must we infer from Mr. Newman?  The unanimity anticipated would, doubtless, be obtained, only that, unfortunately, there are various principles of man’s nature which traverse the legitimate action and impede the due development of the “spiritual faculty”; and so man is apt to wander into a variety of those “degraded types” of religious development, which the dark panorama of this world’s religions has ever presented to us, and presents still.  “Awe,” “wonder,” “admiration,” “sense of order,” “sense of design,” may all mislead the unhappy “spiritual faculty” into quagmires; and, in point of fact, have wheedled and corrupted it ten thousand times more frequently than it has hallowed them.  This all history, past and present, shows.

It is certainly unfortunate, and as mysterious, that those unlucky “conceptions” of God should have the best of it,—­or rather, that the “idea” of God should have the worst of it; nor less so that Awe, Reverence, and so forth, should thus put the “spiritual faculty” so hopelessly hors de combat.

Nevertheless, two questions naturally suggest themselves.  Since the destructive “conceptions” have almost everywhere impaired the “Idea,” and the “degraded types” seduced the “spiritual faculty,”—­1st.  What proof have we that man has an original and universal fountain of spiritual illumination in himself? and 2dly.  If he have, but under such circumstances, is its utility so unquestionable that no space is left for the offices of an external revelation?

First.  What is the evidence of the uniform existence in man of any such definite faculty?