ing intelligence, where did I pick it up? And I feel an invincible persuasion that, if I have some moral goodness, the great Author of my being has infinitely more. Hence it is from within that we know the morality of God.' On which we may remark, in passing, that it is strange the author of this reasoning did not see that he might, by exactly the same process, establish the reverse of his position. For he might equally have said, 'Being conscious in myself of a little hatred and a little evil, I ask concerning it, where did I pick it up? And I feel an invincible persuasion that, if I have some moral evil, the great Author of my being has infinitely more. Hence it is from within that we know the immorality of God.' If God is to be made the magnified reflection of man's moral nature, it is quite as philosophical to worship an omnipotent devil as a benevolent deity. In point of fact, mankind has practically adopted the former conclusion much oftener than the latter. The faculty of 'spiritual insight,' which is, according to Mr. Newman, man's only religious guide, has led its votaries into tracks diverging through all the points of the compass. It has created such divinities as Kali, the Goddess of the Thugs, and has seated incarnations of lust, envy, murder, and every conceivable crime, in the miscellaneous crowd of its Pantheon. "This boasted faculty,' says Mr. Rogers, most truly, instead of being a glorious light which renders all external revelation superfluous, is one of the feeblest in our nature, which everywhere and always is seduced and debauched. It is not so with people's eyes; it is not so with people's appetites. No early instruction can make men think that green is blue, or stones and chalk good for food.' Mr. Parker, indeed, says that he can find an absolute religion which animates every form of worship. Whereon Harrington (the sceptical interlocutor in the Eclipse') observes—

'If it be vain to attempt to abstract this absolute religion from all religions (as Mr. Parker admits), though it is truly in them-and if I take his definition from his " direct consciousness" (which direct consciousness we can see has been directly affected by his abjured Bible), namely, "that it is voluntary obedience to the will of God, outward and inward "why, what on earth does this vague generality do for us? What sort of God? Is he or it one or many ? Of infinite attributes or finite? Of goodness and mercy equal to his power or not? What is his will? How is he to be worshipped? Have we offended him? Is he placable or not? Is it true that man is immortal, and knows it by immediate "insight," as Mr. Parker contends; or does the said "insight," as Mr. Newman believes, tell us nothing about the matter? Surely the "Absolute Religion," after having removed from it all in which different religions differ, is in danger of vanishing into that imperfect susceptibility of some religion which I have already con

ceded,

ceded, and which is certainly not such a thing as to render an external revelation very obviously superfluous. It may be summed up in one imperfect article. All men and each may say, "I believe there is some Being superior in some respects to man, whom it is my duty or my interest to" (cætera desunt).'-Eclipse, p. 107.

Nor need we refer to barbarous nations or uncivilised epochs to prove the fallibility of the 'immutable morality of insight.' In modern times and in civilised countries there is a wide discordance among those who reject Christianity, not only on religious, but also on moral questions. On such points as pride, revenge, chastity, and slavery, there is the strongest diversity of sentiment between Rousseau, Voltaire, Paine, Comte, George Sand, Mr. Parker, Mr. Carlyle, and Mr. Newman. Yet each of these writers has as fair a claim as any of the rest to consider his own insight' infallible. Hence most men would conclude, as Socrates did of old from similar phenomena, that an external revelation would be far from useless. Mr. Newman misrepresents this reasoning, and calls it 'a dishonest defence of Christian pretensions to taunt the assailants with diversities in their creed,' whereas the argument was adduced not to prove the truth of Christianity, but to disprove the alleged infallibility of 'spiritual insight,' and to refute Mr. Newman's favourite proposition that a revelation must be useless.

But Mr. Newman had gone far beyond this. He had maintained that a revelation would not merely be useless, but prejudicial; and not merely prejudicial, but impossible. It would be prejudicial, in his opinion, because 'dictatorial' instruction, or an authoritative oracle,' would paralyze our moral powers (p. 151), and the guidance of a mind from without would benumb conscience by disuse' (p. 138). From this it would seem to follow that the employment of our moral powers (in Mr. Newman's opinion) is the investigation of truth: a strange confusion between the Moral and the Intellectual. It must also strike his readers as inconsistent that Mr. Newman, while thus protesting against 'dictatorial' instruction in morality, contemptuously rejects the moral judgment of all the rest of mankind, whenever it differs from his own. Even those whom he acknowledges as the best specimens of humanity are pronounced 'dishonest' or 'prejudiced,' if they cannot see through the spectacles of his individual consciousness. As to the alleged ‘benumbing of conscience' by submission to the guidance of an external revelation, it may be safely referred to experience. We may appeal from the à priori sentence of Mr. Newman to the history of Christendom. Where do we find sensitiveness of conscience-where a rigid rule of obligation-where a devoted

sacrifice

sacrifice of interest to duty, except among the disciples of that faith which, according to Mr. Newman, benumbs and paralyzes the moral powers?

But modern Deists, as we have said, hold an external revelation (or, as they are fond of calling it, a Book-revelation) to be not merely useless and injurious, but impossible. God could not give such a manifestation of his will to man. 'An authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is essentially impossible to man.* What God reveals to us he reveals within. (Newman on the Soul, p. 59.) From this proposition, by a chain of irresistible reasoning, Mr. Rogers deduces the conclusion that Mr. Newman can do what God cannot do; for Mr. Newman has unquestionably given to his few disciples an external revelation of moral and spiritual truth.' In his reply' Mr. Newman endeavours to evade the force of this logic by a distinction between the words 'authoritative' and 'instructive,' He never denied, it seems, the possibility of an 'instructive' revelation, but only of an 'authoritative' revelation. To this Mr. Rogers rejoins as follows:

6

'It appears that there is a convenient distinction to be made between what is morally and spiritually instructive, and what is morally and spiritually authoritative. I answer-in sound only, not in meaning. For to convince any one who believes in a God and moral and spiritual truth at all, of any moral and spiritual truth, is, ipso facto, to make it authoritative in the sense that it is felt it ought to have authority. He who knows what he means when he talks of God and his claims, man and his duty, will smile at the paradox of any moral or spiritual truth being proved to him (no matter how or by whom), while yet it is considered optional with him whether he shall regard it as merely "instructive" and not "authoritative.” In admitting that

books on spiritual and religious subjects may be instructive, Mr. Newman admits all that is essential to the argument. Instructive! yes, but if books be so instructive as to teach men who have no scruple in banqueting on their fellow-creatures, in strangling their new-born infants, in exposing their parents, that all these things are "abominations "then in such instruction is shown plainly the possibility of an external revelation; it is to teach men to recognise doctrines which were before unrecognised; to realise truths of which they were before unconscious, and to practise duties which they had never suspected to be duties

Sceptics have recourse to sophisms like that of Hume, who denied the possibility of proving a miracle, or like this of Mr. Newman, who denies the possibility of an external revelation, to escape the necessity of meeting in its integrity the mass of direct evidence which proves beyond refutation that miracles were wrought and that an external revelation has been made. That they are compelled to rest their unbelief upon such à priori propositions as are rejected, after all, by the common sense of mankind, and upon partial cavils at arguments which they are unable to meet as a whole, is of itself to proclaim how untenable is their

cause.

before.

before. If this be so, then the argument returns,—that what man can do, God can surely do.'-Defence, p. 89.

A favourite argument of Mr. Newman's to prove an external revelation impossible is, that such a revelation must appeal to the conscience in witness of its truth; and since it appeals to the verdict of man's moral faculties, it cannot authoritatively guide and direct those faculties themselves. The mistake involved in this fallacy is that commonplace metaphysical solecism which confounds capacities with notions. A reflecting telescope has a rusty, dented mirror; if it had no mirror at all, it would be useless to its owner, and, however correctly pointed to the starry heaven, would leave him ignorant of Jupiter's satellites and Saturn's ring to his dying day. Therefore, according to Mr. Newman's reasoning, it is impossible that any external operation should cleanse and polish the reflecting surface. Or, to take the illustration of the rejoinder

'There is some savage cannibal who is ready to devour his fellowmen, or a creature who puts his children out of the way with as little remorse as you would drown a kitten, devoutly worshipping at the same time a wooden thing which certainly is not the "likeness of anything in heaven above nor in the earth beneath," and so far does not infringe upon the Second Commandment. Well, you naturally think his "moral and spiritual" perceptions somewhat out of sorts. The missionaries succeed in convincing him of his abominable errors, and in amending his practice. "Ah!" then cries the savage, "it is true that you found me dining upon my neighbour, and quite ready to dine upon you, murdering my children, and living in all sorts of licentiousness and beastliness without compunction. Yet, let me tell you, Mr. Missionary, you could not have given me a 'revelation' of al! this error unless I had had faculties which could be educated to a perception of it; and I therefore conclude that an authoritative revelation of moral and spiritual truth is impossible! What, think you, would the missionary reply? I apprehend something like this:-" My good Mr. Savage, just as it is because you are a reasonable creature, and not an idiot, that I can instruct you in anything, so it is because you had a spiritual faculty (though, as your sentiments and prac tices too plainly showed, in a very dormant state) that a revelation was possible-not impossible-my good friend. It was because your faculties were asleep, not dead, that I could awaken them; had you not had those faculties which, you so strangely say, render a revelation impossible, it would have been impossible: it was possible only because you had them."'-Defence, p. 83.

Connected with this doctrine of the impossibility of an external revelation' is that of the 'impossibility of an historical religion." No historical facts, such, for example, as the resurrection of our Lord, can, it seems, be a part of religion, because such facts are received by our understanding, not by our spiritual faculties;

from

from without, not from within. 'Of our moral and spiritual God,' says Mr. Newman, we know nothing without, everything within. It is in the spirit we meet him, not in the communications of sense. "* Mr. Rogers points out the inconsistency of

this with Mr. Newman's admission that we do in fact receive our religion by external instruction. In his reply Mr. Newman attempts to meet the difficulty by a parallel. Religion and mathematics,' he says, 'alike come to us by historical transmission, but are not believed because of that transmission; and no historical facts concerning that transmission are any part of the science at all. Mathematics is concerned with relations of quantity; religion with the normal relations between divine and human nature; that is all.' To which Mr. Rogers rejoins that, even if this parallel were maintainable, it would not support the conclusion; for even in mathematics it would be untrue to say that we know everything within, and nothing from without. And farther, that the analogy is false, because religious truth is received on moral evidence, mathematical truth on demonstrative evidence. We may add, that, even according to Mr. Newman's admission, some historical truths are a part of religion; for it is a portion of his creed that God created the world,' and this is as strictly historical as the proposition that 'Cæsar created the empire.' If Mr. Newman's parallel were tenable, no religious belief could be contradicted without a contradiction in terms. Yet he will scarcely venture to maintain such a paradox as this, in face of the variety of religious sentiment among men. Mr. Rogers comments on the conclusion of the parallel as follows:

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'The close of the paragraph is exquisite: "Mathematics is concerned with relations of quantities; religion with the normal relations between divine and human nature. That is all." All, indeed! aud enough too. This is just the way in which Mr. Newman slurs over a difficulty with vague language. The moment we ask "What are the relations of quantity?" all mankind are agreed. No one supposes that two and two make five. But when we ask what are 66 the normal relations of divine and human nature?" I suppose the hubbub that will arise will distinctly show that the case is very different. Or are we to take Mr. Newman's theory of the said normal relations as infallibly true?'-Defence, p. 100.

In truth, this unfortunate parallel labours under a double

* Phases, p. 152 (1st edition). In the 2nd edition of the 'Phases' these sentences are erased, without acknowledgment. On which the rejoinder remarks, When an author is about to charge another with having stealthily misrepresented him, it is as well to let the world know what he has erased, and why. He says that my representation of his sentiments is "the reverse of all that he has most carefully written." It certainly is not the reverse of all that he has most carefully scratched out?'

defect;