But I proceed to ask my second question.  Is the “absolute religion” of Mr. Parker, or the “spiritual faculty” of Mr. Newman, of such singular use as to supersede all external revelation, since by the unfortunate “conceptions” of the one, and the “degraded types” of the other, it has for ages left man, and does, in fact, now leave him, to wallow in the lowest depths of the most debasing idolatry and superstition; since, by the confession of these very writers, the great bulk of mankind have been and are hideously mal-formed, in fact, spiritual cripples, and have been left to wander in infinitely varied paths of error, but always paths of error?—­for Judaism and Christianity, though better forms, are, as well as other forms, —­according to these writers,—­full of fables and fancies, of lying legends and fantastical doctrines.  Think for a moment of a “spiritual faculty,” so bright as to anticipate all essential spiritual verities, —­the universal possession of humanity,—­which yet terminates in leaving the said humanity to grovel in every form of error, between the extremes of Fetichism, which consecrates a bit of stone, and Pantheism, which consecrates all the bits of stone in the universe, in fact, a sort of comprehensive Fetichism;—­which leaves man to erect every thing into a God, provided it is none,—­sun, moon, stars, a cat, a monkey, an onion, uncouth idols, sculptured marble; nay, a shapeless trunk,—­which the devout impatience of the idolater does not stay to fashion into the likeness of a man, but gives it its apotheosis at once!  Think of the venerable, wide-spread empire of the infinite forms of polytheism, the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Chinese, and Hindoo mythologies; and then acknowledge, that, if man has this faculty, it is either the most idle prerogative ever bestowed on a rational creature, or that, somehow or other, as the Bible affirms, it has been denaturalized and disabled.  If, on the other hand, man has this faculty, and yet has never fallen, it can only be because he never stood; and then, no doubt, as John Bunyan hath it, “He that is down need fear no fall!”

There is an answer, indeed, but it is one which, in my judgment, covers those who resort to it with the deepest shame.  It is that which apologizes for all these abominations,—­so humiliating and odious, by representing them as less humiliating and odious than they are.  It is true that Mr. Parker, when it is his cue, is most eloquent in his denunciations of the infinite miseries and degradation which have followed the exorbitancies of the religious principle.  Thus he says of superstition (and there are other innumerable passages to a similar effect), “To dismember the soul, the very image of God,—­to lop off the most sacred affections,—­to call Reason a liar, Conscience a devil’s oracle, and cast Love clean out from the heart,—­this is the last triumph of superstition, but one often witnessed in all the three forms of Religion, Fetichism, Polytheism, Monotheism; in all ages before Christ,