I cannot help remarking here, that it is a most suspicious circumstance, if there be, indeed, any universal and sufficient “internal revelation,” that these writers find every memorable advance of what they deem religious truth in unaccountable connection either with the happy “religious organization of one race,” according to Mr. Parker, or in equally strange connection with the records of “two books” originating among that race; according to Mr. Newman.  “The Bible,” says the latter, “is pervaded by a sentiment which is implied everywhere, namely, the intimate sympathy of the Pure and Perfect God with the heart of each faithful worshipper.  This is that which is wanting in Greek philosophers, English Deists, German Pantheists, and all formalists.  This is that which so often edifies me in Christian writers and speakers, when I ever so much disbelieve the letter of their sentences.” (Phases, p. 188.)

It is unaccountably odd that the universal spiritual faculty should act thus capriciously, and equally odd that Mr. Newman does not perceive, that, if it were not for the “Bible,” his religion would no more have assumed the peculiar task it has, than that of Aristotle or Cicero.  Sentiments due to the still active influences of his Christian education he imputes to the direct intuitions of spiritual vision, just as we are apt to confound the original and acquired perceptions of our eyesight.  He is in the condition of one who mistakes a reflected image for the object itself, or a forgotten suggestion of another for an original idea.  In the camera obscura of his mind, he flatters himself that the colored forms there traced are the original inscriptions on the walls, forgetful of the little aperture which has let in the light; and not even disturbed by the untoward phenomenon, that the ideas thus contemplated are all upside down.

But, surely, it is natural to ask,—­How is it that Greek philosophers, Hindoo sages, Egyptian priests, English Deists,—­that men of all other religions,—­having always had access to the fountain of natural illumination within, have not also had their “Baxters, Leightons, Watts, Doddridges”? that the whole style of thought on this subject is so totally different in them all, by his own confession?  If man possess the “spiritual faculty” attributed to him,—­if it be a characteristic of humanity,—­it will be surely generally manifested; and even if those disturbing causes, which he and Mr. Parker so plentifully provide, by which the genesis of religion is so unhappily marred, but which, alas! no revelation from without can ever counteract—­prevent its uniform, or nearly uniform display, still its principal indications (partial though they may be everywhere) ought, at least, to be everywhere indifferently diffused throughout the race.  Its manifestation may be sporadic, but it will be in one race as in another; it will not be suspiciously confined to one race with a peculiarly felicitous “religious organization,” or to “two books” exclusively originating with that favored race.