Some of the previous observations apply to the possibility and utility of a divinely originated statement of "ethical truth"; nor will they be neutralized by an objection which Mr. Newman is fond of urging, —namely, that a book cannot express (as it is freely acknowledged no book can) the limitations with which maxims of critical truth are to be received and applied; that all it can do is to give general principles, and leave them to be applied by the individual reason and conscience. Such reasoning is refuted by fact. The same thing precisely is done, and necessarily done, in every department in which men attempt to convey instruction in any particular art or method. It is thus with the general principles of mechanics, of law, of medicine. Yet men never entertain a notion that the collection and inculcation of such maxims are of no use, or of little, merely because they must be intelligently modified and not blindly applied in action. If indeed there were any force in the objection, it would put an end to all instruction,—that of Mr. Newman's "spiritual faculty" amongst the rest, for that too can only prompt us by general impulses, and leaves us in the same ignorance and perplexity how far we are to obey them. That is still to be otherwise determined. The genuine result of such reasoning, if it were acted upon, would be that we need never, in any science or art whatever, trouble ourselves to enunciate any general principle or maxim, because perfectly useless! Similarly, we need never inculcate on children the duty of obeying their honoring their superiors, of being frugal or diligent, humble or aspiring, the particular circumstances and limitations in which they are to be applied being indeterminate! But is not the experience of every day and of all the world against it? Is not the early and sedulous inculcation of just maxims of duty fell to be a great auxiliary to its performance in the circumstances in which it is necessary to apply them? Is not the possession of a general rule, with the advantages of a clear and concise expression,—in the form of familiar proverbs, or embodied in powerful imagery,—a potent suggestive to the mind; not only whispering of duty, but, by perpetual recurrence, aiding the habit of attending to it? Is not the early and earnest iteration of such sententious wisdom in the ears of the young, —the honor which has been paid to sages who have elicited it, or felicitously expressed it,—the care with which these treasures of moral wisdom have been garnered up,—the perpetual efforts to conjoin elementary moral truth with the fancy and association,—is not all this a standing testimony to a consciousness of the value of such auxiliaries of virtue and duty? Is it not felt, that, however general such truths may be, the very forms of expression,—the portable shape in which the truth is presented,—have an immense value in relation to practice? Admitting, therefore, as before,—but, as before, only conceding it for argument's sake (for the limits of variation, even as regards the elementary truths of morals, are, as experience shows, very wide),—that each man in some shape could anticipate for himself the more important ethical truth, there would be yet ample scope left for the utility of a divinely constructed instrument for its exhibition and enforcement, in perfect harmony with the modes in which it is actually exhibited and enforced by man, in close analogy with the form in which he attempts the same task, whenever he teaches any practical art or method whatever.
Only may it not be again presumed here, that He who knows perfectly "what is in man" would be able to perform the work with correspondent perfection? Whether He has performed it in the Bible or not, that book does, at all events, contain not merely a larger portion of pure ethical truth than any other in the world, but ethical truth expressed and exhibited (as Mr. Newman himself, and most other persons, would admit) in modes incomparably better adapted than in any other book to lay hold of the memory, the imagination, the conscience, and the heart.
Even then, if we conceded that elementary "spiritual and moral truth" is not only congruous to man's faculties, but in some shape universally recognized and possessed, it might yet be contended, from the manner in which such truth is dependent for its power and vitality on the forms in which it comes in contact with the human spirit and stimulates it, that ample space is left for such a divine instrument as the Bible; and that it would be in perfect conformity with the laws of our nature, —in analogy with the known modes in which external aids give efficacy to such truth. At the same time, be pleased once more to remember, that I concede so much only for argument's sake; I contend that in the stricter sense, without some external aid,—and the Bible may be at least as effectual,—the religious faculty will not expand at all; and that, even where there are these indispensable external influences, the recognition of the truth is obscure or bright, as those influences vary in their degrees of appropriateness. Where they are rude and imperfect, (as amongst barbarous nations) we have the spectacle of a soul which struggles towards the light, like a plant to which but small portion of the sun's rays is admitted; it depends on the free admission of the light whether or not it shall arrive at its full development,—its beauty, its fragrance, and its color. The most that merely human culture can promise, even under the most favorable circumstances, (witness ancient Greece!) is that men, in some few favored instances, may possibly attain those truths which it may be admitted are congenital to the soul, and easily recognized when once propounded but which, in fact, few men, by nature's sole teaching, ever do clearly attain. It is infinitely important that the path, dimly explored by sages alone, should be thrown open to mankind. Is it not even possible, then, that this task should be performed by a book like the Bible? and if such a book were given, would it not be, I once more ask, in analogy with the fundamental laws of the soul's development,—its uniform dependence on external influences for any result, and the variable nature of that result, as the influence itself is more or less appropriate? To affirm that each man at once, by in internal illumination alone, attains a clear recognition of even elementary "moral and spiritual truth" is to ignore the laws according to which the soul's activity is developed, and to contradict universal experience, which tells us that the great majority of mankind are but in partial possession of this "spiritual and moral truth," and hold it for the most part in connection with the most prodigious and pernicious errors.
You will perceive that I have here chosen to argue the question of the possibility and utility of a "revelation" on your own grounds; but recollect what I have said, that, in fact, the principal reasons for a revelation would still remain in force, even if all you demand were conceded. It is a point which I do not find that Mr. Newman's dictum affects.
There may obviously be other facts and other truths as intimately connected with man's destinies and happiness as the elementary truths of religious and moral science; facts and truths which may be necessary to give efficacy to mere elementary principles, and to supply motives to the performance of moral precepts. And how ample in this respect are man's necessities, and how large the field for a "divine revelation," if we content ourselves with such a meagre theology as that of Mr. Parker and Mr. Newman, you see plainly enough in the questions asked by Harrington! How many of Mr. Newman's and Mr. Parker's assumptions—the moment they step beyond such "spiritual and moral truth" as is "elementary" indeed—does Harrington declare that he finds unverified by his own consciousness, and needing, if true, an authority to confirm them far more weighty than theirs! As to the terms of access to the Supreme Being,—his aspects towards man,—man's duties towards him,—the future destinies, even the future existence, of the soul (a point on which these writers are themselves divided),—the boasted "progress" of the race, which they "prophesy," indeed, but without any credentials of their mission,—you see how on all these points Harrington maintains—and oh! how many, if the Bible be untrue, must maintain with him—that he is in total darkness!
III. But I must proceed to show yet further, if you will have patience with me, that, supposing a divine external revelation to be given, it is in striking analogy, not only with the primary laws of development of our whole intellectual and spiritual being, but with the fact— undeniable, however unaccountable—that our subjection to external influence does, in truth, not only mould and modify, but usually determine, our intellectual and religious position. We see not only some external influence is necessary to awaken activity at all, but that it is actually so powerful and so inevitable from the manner in which man enters the world, and is brought up in it,—his long years of dependence, absolute dependence, on the education which is given him (and what an education it has ever been for the mass of the race!),—that it makes all the difference, intellectually and morally, between a New Zealand savage and an Englishman,—between the grossest idolater and the most enlightened Christian. This fact affects alike our intellectual and spiritual condition. The savage can use his senses better than the civilized; but the interval is trifling compared with that between the intellectual condition of a man can appreciate Milton and Newman, and that of our Teutonic ancestors. Its the sentiments of a nature there is the same wide gulf—or rather wider—between a Hottentot and a Paul. Yet the same "susceptibilities" and "potentialities" are in each human mind. The same remark applies to the sense of the beautiful and sublime; the characteristic faculties are in all mankind; it is education which elicits them. Nay, would you not stare at a man who should affirm that education was not itself a species of "revelation," simply because the truths thus communicated were all "potentially" in the mind before? The fact is, that education is of coordinate importance with the very faculties without which it cannot be imparted.
Now we cannot break away from that law of development with which our individual existence is involved, and which necessarily (as far as any will of ours is concerned) is a most important, nay, the most important, element in that tertium quid which man becomes in virtue of the threefold elements which constitute him:—1st, a given internal constitution of mind; 2d. the modifying effects of the actual exercise of his faculties and their interaction with one another, resulting in habits; and, 3d, that external world of influences which supplies the materiel from which this strange plant extracts its aliment, and ultimately derives its fair fruits or its poisonous berries. All this is inevitable, upon the supposition that man was to be a social, not a solitary being,—linked by an indissoluble chain to those who came before and to those who come after him,—dependent, absolutely dependent, upon others for his being, his training, his whole condition, civil, social, intellectual, moral, and religious. If, then, an external instrument of moral and religious culture were Given by God to man, would it not be in strict analogy with this tremendous and mysterious law of human development?
IV. I must be permitted to proceed yet one step further, and affirm that the very form in which this presumed revelation has (as we say) been given—that of a Book—is also in strict analogy with the law by which God himself has made this an indispensable instrument of all human progress. We have just seen that man is what he is, as much (to say the least) by the influence of external influence as by the influence of the internal principles of his constitution; it must be added, that to make that external influence of much efficiency at all, still more to render it either universally or progressively beneficial, the world waits for a—BOOK. Among the varied external influences amidst which the human race is developed, this is incomparably the most important, and the only one that is absolutely essential. Upon it the collective education of the race depends. It is the sole instrument of registering, perpetuating, transmitting thought.
Yes, whatever trivial and vulgar associations may impair our due conceptions of this grandeur of this material and artificial organon of man's development, as compared with the intellectual and moral energies, which have recourse to it, but which are almost impotent without it. God has made man's whole career of triumphs dependent upon this same art of writing! The whole progress of the world he has created, he has made dependent upon the Alphabet! Without this the progress of the individual is inconceivably slow, and with him, for the most part, progress terminates. By this alone can we garner the fruits of experience,—become wise by the wisdom of others, and strong by their strength. Without this man everywhere remains, age after age, immovably a savage; and, if he were to lose it when he has once gained it, would, after a little ineffectual flutter by the aid of tradition, sink into barbarism again. Till this cardinal want is supplied, all considerable "progress" is impossible. It may look odd to say that the whole world is dependent on any thing so purely artificial; but, in point of fact, it is only another way of stating the truth that God has constituted the race a series of mutually dependent beings; and as each term of this series is perishable and evanescent, the development and improvement of the race must depend on an instrument by which an inter-connection can be maintained between its parts; till then, progress must not only be most precarious, but virtually impossible. To the truth of this all history testifies. I say, then, not only that, if God has given man a revelation at all, he has but acted in analogy with that law by which he has made man so absolutely dependent upon external culture, but that if he has given it in the very shape of a book, he has acted also in strict analogy with the very form in which he has imposed that law on the world. He has simply made use of that instrument, which, by the very constitution of our nature and of the world, he has made absolutely essential to the progress and advancement of humanity. May we not conclude from analogy, that if God has indeed thus constituted the world, and if he busies himself at all in the fortunes of miserable humanity, he has not disdained to take part in its education, by condescendingly using that very instrument which himself has made the condition of all human progress? I think, even if you hesitate to admit that God has given us a "book-revelation," you must admit it would be at least in manifest coincidence with the laws of human development and the "constitution and course of nature."
To conclude; I must say that Mr. Newman, in his account of the genesis of religion, does himself in effect admit (as Harrington has remarked) an "external revelation," though not in a book. For what else is that apparatus of external influences by which the several preparatory or auxiliary emotions are awakened, and the development of your "spiritual faculty" effected?—contact with the outward world,—with visible and material nature,—the instruction of the living voice! You acknowledge all this without derogation, as you imagine, to the sublime and divine functions of the indwelling "spiritual" power, why this rabid, this, I might almost say, puerile (if I ought not rather to say fanatical), hatred of the very notion of a "book-revelation"?