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"It appears, then, that to you, at least, my friend, it is possible that there may be a book-revelation of moral and spiritual truth' of the highest possible significance and value, although you do not consider the book to be divine; now, if so, I fancy many will be again inclined to say, that what Mr. Newman has done in your case God might easily do, if he pleased, for mankind in general; and with this advantage, that He would not include in the same book which revealed truth to the mind and rectified its errors, an assurance that any such book-revelation was impossible."

"But, my ingenious friend," cried Fellowes, with some warmth, "you are inferring a little too fast for the premises. I do not admit that Mr. Newman or any other spiritualist has revealed to me any truth, but only that he has been the instrument of giving shape and distinct consciousness to what was, in fact, uttered in the secret oracles of my own bosom before; and, as I believe, is uttered also in the hearts of all other men."

"I fear your distinction is practically without a difference. It will You say you were once in no distinct conscious certainly not avail us. possession of that system of spiritual truth which you now hold; on the contrary, that you believed a very different system; that the change by which you were brought into your present condition of mind-out of darkness into light-out of error into truth-has been produced chiefly by Mr. Newman's deeply instructive volumes. If so, one will be apt to argue that a book-revelation may be of the very utmost use and benefit to mankind in general, - if only by making that which would else be the inarticulate mutter of the internal oracle distinct and clear; and that if God would but give such a book, the same value at least might attach to it as to a book of Mr. Newman's. It matters little to this argument, to the question of the possibility, value, or utility of an external revelation, whether the truths it is to communicate be absolutely unknown till it reveals them, or only not known, If your natural taper of illuwhich you confess was your own case. mination is stuck into a dark lantern, and its light only can flash upon the soul when some Mr. Newman kindly lifts up the slide for you; or if your internal oracle, like a ghost, will not speak till it is spoken to; or, like a dumb demon, awaits to find a voice, and confess itself to be what it is, at the summons of an exorcist; the same argument precisely will apply for the possibility and utility of a book-revelation from God to men in general. What has been done for you by man, even though no more were done, might, one would imagine, be done for the rest of mankind, and in a much better manner, by God. If that internal and native revelation which both you and Mr. Newman say

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. 160.

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has its seat in the human soul, be clear without his aid, why did he write a syllable about it? If, as you say, its utterances were not recognized, and that his statements have first made them familiar to you, the same argument (the Christian will say) will do for the Bible. It is of little use that nature teaches you, if Mr. Newman is to teach nature."

Fellowes was silent; and, after a pause, Harrington resumed; he could not resist the temptation of saying, with playful malice, —

"Perhaps you are in doubt whether to say that the internal revelation which you possess does teach you clearly or darkly. It is a pity that nature so teaches as to leave you in doubt till some one else teaches you what she does teach you. She must be like some ladies, who keep school indeed, but have accomplished masters to teach every thing. Shall we call Mr. Newman the Professor of Spiritual Insight?' Would it not be advisable, if you are in any uncertainty, to write to him to ask whether the internal truths which no external revelation can impart be articulate or not; or whether, though a book from God could not make them plainer, you are at liberty to say that a book of Mr. Newman's will? It is undoubtedly a subtle question for him to decide for you; namely, what is the condition of your own consciousness? But I really see no help for it, after what you have granted; nor, without his aid, do I see whether you can truly affirm that you have an internal revelation, independently of him or not. And whichever way he decides, I am afraid lest he should prove both himself and you very much in the wrong. If he decides for you, that your internal revelation must and did anticipate any thing he might write, and that it was perfectly articulate, as well as inarticulately present to your 'insight' before, it will be difficult to determine why he should have written at all; he would also prove, not only how superfluous is your gratitude, but that he understands your own consciousness better than you do. If he decides it the other way, and says you had a 'revelation' before he revealed it, yet that he made it utter articulate language, and interpreted its hieroglyphics, then it once more seems very strange that either you or he should contend that a 'book-revelation' is impossible, since Mr. Newman has produced it. If, however, he decides in the first of these two ways, I fear, my good friend, that we shall fall into another paradox worse than all, for it will prove that the 'internal revelation' which you possess is better known to Mr. Newman than to yourself, which will be a perfectly worthy conclusion of all this embarras. It would be surely droll for you to affirm that you possess an internal revelation which renders all external revelation' impossible, but yet that its distinctness is unperceived by yourself, and

awaits the assurance of an external authority, which at the same time declares all 'external revelation' impossible!" p. 85-88.

But the ultimate postulate, on which this whole system of unbelief rests, is the intrinsic impossibility of miracles; and on this point the writers under discussion have adopted a style of reasoning, in which success and defeat are equally fatal. They have been themselves busy in a desperate attempt to actualize the resurrection of the dead, by resuscitating Hume's defunct argument from experience. Had they succeeded, they would have established beyond cavil the possibility of miracles; in their failure, they have left the field of controversy in statu ante bellum. There cannot be a more utterly baseless assumption, than that the uniformity of the course of nature is a fundamental law of human belief. The contrary is so notoriously the case, that the instances in which belief is thus limited are, even in this skeptical age, less numerous than those of congenital malformation or of idiocy, while, during many periods of the world's history, they have been too sparse to leave of themselves either memorial or record. We might, with immeasurably greater plausibility, assert, that appetency for the abnormal is an element of human nature, and that the sporadic exceptions to this law are defective specimens of their race. We are prepared to maintain this position, not merely in antagonism to its converse, but as in accordance at once with intrinsic probability and with fact. If the Creator does at certain epochs supersede the common course of nature, it is impossible that He should not have adapted man's cognitive faculties to the belief of the supernatural; and on the other hand, the prevalent belief of, nay, demand for, the supernatural, renders it in the highest degree probable that this belief has its stable ground, this demand its accredited supply. Nor does the multitude of confessedly false reports of miracles interfere with this consideration, except to strengthen it. If miracles not only have never taken place, but are intrinsically incredible, how is it that the traditions of all nations bristle with them? Counterfeits presuppose a genuine paradigm. The eleven ancilia are forged after the pattern of the one that fell from heaven. Fiction takes its rise from verisimilitude, and obtains currency by not utterly violating the analogy of fact.

Yet farther, the limitation of human belief by the existing course of nature implies more than the incredibility of miracles. There can be no metaphysical barrier to the belief in miracles, which does not equally negative the belief in the creation of the universe and in the commencement of its present order. It is as conceivable, as possible, with competent evidence as probable, that there may have been events beyond the cycle of present experience eighteen hundred, as eighteen thousand, years ago. But geology demonstrates that the order of nature in the earlier epochs was very different from its present order. It indicates violent catastrophes, the irruption of new trains of causes and new sequences of events, the entrance of new orders of beings upon the stage of animated existence. It bears manifold testimony to the occurrence of miracles at successive geological periods,- that is, to the occurrence of phenomena which were inconsistent with all previous experience, and to the prevalence of phenomena which were equally inconsistent with all subsequent experience. The argument from uniform experience can therefore be successful only with the unscientific mind, and it would be well for those who urge it to join the author of the "Vestiges," in appealing from the judgment of men of science to that of the unenlightened mass.

The most that can be urged on this head is an a priori improbability against any specific miraculous narrative. But this may be met by a stronger opposing improbability. Human testimony is a fact, which has a definite weight, according to the intelligence, interest, veracity, persistency, and multitude of witnesses. A single interested, uncorroborated witness. is of no avail against current experience. But that several witnesses, honest and competent, and with their interest in the opposite scale, should combine in the promulgation of false reports, is an improbability of the highest order. There is no hypothesis which can account for such a phenomenon. The argument from experience bears, with unmitigated force, against it. The truth of their report under such circumstances becomes less probable than its falsehood.

Nor can it be affirmed that miracles are inconsistent with our actual experience. We have ample experience of an order of nature adapted to our present condition and needs by

infinite power, wisdom, and love. The boundlessness of the divine resources is the one salient fact in the administration under which we live. Folly, malignity, and self-contradiction are the only conceivable forms of impossibility under the government of God. Have there been exigencies, which demanded events inconsistent with the ordinary course of nature? Such exigencies appear on the face of the Christian record. Humanity was in intense need of spiritual knowledge and guidance, of truths marked by the divine signet, of precepts promulgated under the divine sanction; and our experience authorizes the belief that, under such exigences, this signet would have been affixed, this sanction given.

Among the interlocutors in this book, is one who maintains that the New Testament contains a revelation, but contains it with a large admixture of alloy, and that it is left for the individual inquirer to separate the precious grains from the crude ore, the divine from the human element, and thus to construct from the Christianity of the Apostles a Christianity of his own. It is justly agued, that such a revelation is a revelation not in fact, but in name. No book in the world is so wretchedly adapted to this theory as the New Testament. The Gospels contain absolutely no reasoning, and the reasoning of the Epistles is with reference, not to the principles of theology and ethics, but to their application to certain postures of circumstances that existed in the primitive church, and may never exist again. As regards the articles of Christian belief, the didactic form is constantly maintained, and the validity of what is thus communicated depends wholly on the knowledge of the authors and on their right to be believed. Then, too, the New Testament relates, in great part, to subjects beyond our independent cognizance-to subjects on which we have not at our command the premises requisite for argument. This is especially the case with reference to the future life, concerning which we know absolutely nothing— are entirely unprovided with a test, by which we can separate the actual truth from the groundless surmises and gratuitous inferences of the sacred writers. The case is the same, also, with many features of the divine character and administration, which we could determine for ourselves only by changing