The boy eyed the A for a moment and then asked:
"H-h-how do you know but he l-l-lied?"
The teacher could not get over this obstacle, and the poor boy was sent home as incorrigible.
Mr. Emerson, and the whole school of those who despise instruction, had better appoint this man their prophet of the inner light, and endow Martha's Vineyard as the Penikese of skepticism.
But the knowledge of letters is not half of their indebtedness to external revelation. For they will not deny that a Fiji cannibal has just the same "insight," "spiritual faculty," "mighty and transcendent soul," "self-consciousness," or any other name by which they may dignify our common humanity, which they themselves possess. How does it happen, then, that these writers are not assembled around the cannibal's oven, smearing their faces with the blood, and feasting themselves on the limbs of women and children? The inner nature of the cannibal and of the Rationalist is the same—whence comes the difference of character and conduct? And the inner light, too, is the same; for they assure us that "inspiration, like God's omnipresence, is coextensive with the race." Is it not, after all, mere external revelation, in the shape of education—aye, moral and religious teaching that makes the whole difference between the civilized American and his inspired Fiji brother?
These gentlemen not only acknowledge, but try to repay their obligations to external revelation. As it is impossible for God to give the world a book revelation of moral and religious truth, they modestly propose to come to his assistance, it being quite possible for some men to do what is impossible for God. Accordingly, we have a book revelation of moral and religious truth, from one, in his treatise on "The Soul," an "external revelation" from another, in his "Discourse Concerning Religion," a "Morrison's pill from the outside," from a third, in his "Past and Present," and "announcements" from a fourth, which assuredly the great mass of mankind never "found true within them," else his orations and publications had not been needed to convert them. It is to be understood, then, that an "external revelation," or a "book revelation" of spiritual truth is impossible, only when it comes from God, but that these gentlemen have proved it quite possible for themselves to deliver one.
In so doing they have undoubtedly attempted to meet the wishes of the greater part of mankind, who have in all lands and in all ages longed for some outward revelation from God, and testified their desire by running after all sorts of omens, auguries, and oracles, consulting witches, and treasuring Sibylline leaves, employing writing mediums, and listening to spirit-rappers. The "inspiration which is limited to no sect, age, or nation—which is wide as the world, and common as God,"[48] has never produced a nation of Rationalists; a fact very unaccountable, if Rationalism be true; and one which might well lead these writers to acknowledge at least one kind of total depravity, namely, that inspired men should love the darkness of external revelations, and even of book revelations, and read Bibles, and Korans, and Vedas, and "Discourses Concerning Religion," and "Phases of Faith," while yet "everything that is of use to man lies in the plane of our own consciousness." Surely, such a universal craving after an external revelation testifies to a felt necessity for it, and renders it probable, or at least desirable, that God would supply the deficiency. Is the religious appetite the only one for which God has provided no supply?
The fact is undeniable, that the grand distinction between man and the brutes presents itself right at this point. God guides animals by direct revelation—by their instincts; but having given man reason, and free will, he gives him the whole field of life for their exercise upon the indirect revelations he makes to us through the mediation of others. For all that we know of history, geography, politics, mechanics, agriculture, poetry, philosophy, or any of the common business of life, from the baking of a loaf of bread, or the sewing of a shirt, to the following of a funeral, and the digging of a grave, we are indebted to education, not to inspiration. All analogy then induces the belief that religion also will be taught to mankind by the ministry of human teachers, rather than by the direct inspiration of every individual.
But we are instructed, that, "as we have bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, through which we obtain naturally all needed material things, so we have spiritual faculties to lay hold on God, and supply spiritual wants; through them we obtain all needed spiritual things." That we have both bodily senses and spiritual faculties is doubtless true; but whether either the one or the other obtain all needed things is somewhat doubtful. I can not tell how it is with mankind in Boston, for I am not there; and this being a matter in which religious truth is concerned, Mr. Emerson will not allow me to receive instruction about it from any other soul; but I see from my window a poor widow, with five children, who has bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants; yet in my opinion she has not obtained naturally all needed material things; and if there be a truth which lies emphatically in the plane of her own consciousness, it is, that she is in great need of a cord of wood, and a barrel of flour, for her starving children. I know, also, a man, to whom God gave bodily senses to lay hold on matter, and supply bodily wants, who, by his drunkenness, has destroyed these bodily senses, and brought his family to utter destitution of all needed material things. From one cause or another, I find multitudes here in poverty and destitution, notwithstanding they have bodily senses. It is reported, also, that there is a poor-house in Boston, and poverty in Ireland, and starvation in Madeira, and famine in the inundated provinces of France, and misery and destitution in London; which, if true, completely overturns this beautiful theory. For, if, notwithstanding the possession of bodily senses, men do starve in this world for want of needful food and clothing, it is very possible that they may have spiritual faculties also, and yet not obtain through them all needed spiritual things.