"But men, however, have somehow perversely believed it very possible, and that, in some shape or other, it has been given?"
"They have, I must admit."
"Unhappy race! thus led on by some fatality, though not by the constitution of their nature (rather by some inevitable perversion of it), to believe as possible that which is so plainly impossible. O that it did not involve a contradiction to wish that God would relieve them from such universal and pernicious delusions, by giving them a book-revelation to show them that all book-revelations are impossible!"
"That," said Fellowes, laughing, "would indeed be a novelty. Miracles would hardly prove that."
"I think not," said Harrington. "But, as the poet says, 'some god or friendly man' may show the way. Pray, permit me to ask, did you always believe that a book-revelation was impossible?"
"How can you ask the question?—you know that I was brought up, like yourself, in the reception of the Bible as the only and infallible revelation of God to mankind."
"To what do you owe your emancipation from this grievous and universal error, which still infects, in this or some other shape, the myriads of the human race?"
"I think principally to the work of Mr. Newman on the 'Soul,' and his
'Phases of Faith.'"
"These have been to you, then, at least, a book-revelation that a 'divine book-revelation is impossible'; a truth which I acknowledge you could not have received by divine book-revelation, without a contradiction. You ought, indeed, to think very highly of Mr. Newman. It is well, when God cannot do a this that man can; though I confess, considering the wide prevalence of this pernicious error, it would have been better, had it been possible, that man should have had a divine book-revelation to tell him that a divine book-revelation was impossible. Great as is my admiration of Mr. Newman, I should, myself, have preferred having God's word for it. However, let us lay it down as an axiom that a human book-revelation, showing you that 'a divine book-revelation is impossible,' is not impossible; and really, considering the almost universal error of man on this subject,—now happily exploded,—the book-revelation which convinces man of this great truth ought to be reverenced as of the highest value; it is such that it might not appear unworthy of celestial origin, if it did not imply a contradiction that God should reveal to us in a book that a revelation in a book is impossible."
Fellowes looked very grave, but said nothing.