Chapter III: Part 3

"Well," said Harrington, "with the exception of the immortality of the soul, on which Lord Herbert has the advantage of speaking a little more firmly, the Deists and such 'spiritualists' as you are assuredly identical. I have simply abridged his articles. The same project as yours spiritualism' or 'naturalism,' in all its essential features, has been often tried before, and found wanting; that is, of guaranteeing to man a sufficient and infallible internal oracle, independent of all aid from external revelation, and of proving that he has, in effect, possessed and enjoyed it always; only that, by a slight inadvertence (I suppose), he did not know it. The theory, indeed, is rather suspiciously confined to those who have previously had the Bible. No such plenary confidence is found in the ancient heathen philosophers, who, in many not obscure places, acknowledge that the path of mortal man, by his internal light, is a little dim. Many, therefore, say, that the 'Naturalists' and 'Spiritualists' are but plagiarists from the Bible, and of course, like other plagiarists, depreciate the sources from which they have stolen their treasures. I think unjustly; for, whatever their obligations to that mutilated volume, I acknowledge they have transformed Christianity quite sufficiently to entitle themselves to the praise of originality; and if the Battle of the Books were to be fought over again, I doubt whether Moses or Paul would think it worth while to make any other answer than that of Plato in that witty piece, to the Grub Street author, who boasted that he had not been in the slighest deuce indebted to the classics: Plato declared that, upon his honor, he believed him! Whether the successors of the Herberts and Tindals of a former day are not plagiarists from them, is another question, and depends entirely upon whether the writings of their predecessors are sufficiently known to them. Probably, the hopeless oblivion which, for the most part, covers them (for the perverse world has been again and again assured of its infallible internal light, and has persisted in denying that it has it) will protect our modern authors from the imputation of plagiarism; but that the systems in question are essentially identical can hardly admit of doubt. The principal difference is as to the organon by which the revelation affirmed to be internal and universal is apprehended; it affects the metaphysics of the question, and, like all metaphysics, is characteristically dark. But about this you will not get the mass of mankind to, any more than you can get yourselves to agree; no, nor will you agree even about the system itself. Nay, you modern spiritualists, just as the elder deists, are already quarrelling about it. In short, the universal light in man's soul flickers and wavers most abominably."

"I see," said Fellowes, "you are profoundly prejudiced against the spiritualists."

"I believe not," said Harrington; "the worst I wish them is that they may be honest men, and appear what they really are."

"I suppose next," exclaimed the other, "you will attribute to the modern spiritualists the scurrility of the elder deists,--of Woolston, Tindal, and Collins?"

"No," said Harrington, "I answer no; nor do I (remember) compare Lord Herbert in these respects with his successors. He was an amiable enthusiast; in many respects resembling Mr. Newman himself. Do you remember, by the way, how that most reasonable rejecter of all 'external' revelation prayed that he might be directed by Heaven whether he should publish or not publish his 'book'? about which, if Heaven was very solicitous, this world has since been very indifferent. Having distinctly heard 'a sound as of thunder,' on a very 'calm and serene day,' he immediately received it as a preternatural answer to prayer, and an indubitable sign of Heaven's concurrence'."

"No such taint of superstition, however, will be found clinging to Mr. Newman. He has most thoroughly abjured all notion of an external revelation; nay, he denies the possibility of a 'book-revelation of spiritual and moral truth'; and I am confident that his dilemma on that point is unassailable."

"Be it so," answered Harrington; "you will readily suppose I am not inclined to contest that point very vigorously; yet I confess that, as usual, my inveterate scepticism leaves me in some doubts. Will you assist me in resolving them?--but not to-night; let us have a little more talk about old college days,--or what say you to a game at chess?" ____

July 4. I thought this day would have passed off entirely without polemics; but I was mistaken. In the evening Harrington, after a very cheerful morning, relapsed into one of his pensive moods. Conversation flagged; at last I heard Fellowes say, "I have this advantage of you, my friend, that my sentiments have, at all events, produced that peace of which you are in quest, and which your countenance at times too plainly declares you not to possess. If you had it, you would not take so gloomy a view of things. Like him from whom I have derived some of my sentiments, I have found that they tend to make me a happier man. The Christian, like yourself, looks upon every thing with a jaundiced or distorted eye, and is apt to underrate the claims and pleasures of this present scene of our existence. I can truly say that I now enter into them much more keenly than I could when I was an orthodox Christian. I can say with Mr. Newman, I now, with deliberate approval, 'love the world and the things of the world.' The New Testament, as Mr. Newman says, bids us watch perpetually, not knowing whether the Lord will return at cock-crowing or midday; 'that the only thing worth spending one's energies on, is the forwarding of men's salvation.' Now I must say with him, that, while I believed this, I acted an eccentric and unprofitable part."

"Only then?" said Harrington. "You were fortunate."

"He says, that to teach the certain speedy destruction of earthly things, as the New Testament does, is to cut the sinews of all earthly progress; to declare against intellect and imagination, against industrial and social advancement."

My gravity was hardly equal to the task of listening to the first part of Mr. Fellowes's speech. To hear that the common and just reproach against all mankind, but especially against all Christians, of taking too keen an interest in the present, was in a large measure at least founded upon a mistake; to find, in fact, that there was some danger of an excessive exaggeration of the claims of the future, which required a corrective; that the Christian world, owing to the above pernicious doctrine, might possibly evince too faint a relish for the pleasures or too diminished an estimate for the advantages of the present life; that, their "treasure being in heaven," it was not impossible but "their heart" might be too much there also,--there, perhaps, when it was imperatively demanded in the counting-house, on the hustings, at the mart or the theatre; all this, being, as I say, so notoriously contrary to ordinary opinion and experience, seemed to me so exquisitely ludicrous that I could hardly help bursting into laughter, especially as I imagined one of our new "spiritual" doctors ascending the pulpit under the new dispensation, to indulge in exhortations to a keener chase, of this world, and "the things of this world." I found afterwards similar thoughts were passing through Harrington's mind, rendered more whimsical by the recollection that, during college life, his friend (though very far from vicious) had certainly never seemed to take any deficient interest in the affairs of this world, nor to exhibit any predilection for an ascetic life. Indeed, he acknowledged that, after all, he could not sympathize with Mr. Newman's extreme sensitiveness in relation to this matter. (See Phases, p. 205.)

Harrington answered, with proper gravity, "I am glad to find that any undue austerity of character--of which, however, I assure you, upon my honor, I never suspected you--has received so invaluable a corrective. Still, it is obvious to remark, that, if the chief effect of this new style of religion is to abate any excessive antipathy which the New Testament has fostered, or was likely to foster, to the attractions of this life, it has, I conceive, an easy task. I never remarked in Christians any superfluous contempt of the present world or its pleasures; any indication of an extravagant admiration of any sublimer objects of pursuit. In truth, the tendencies of human nature, as it appears to me, are so strong the other way, that the strongest language of a hundred New Testaments would be little heeded. Your corrective is something like that of a moralist who should seriously prove that man was to take care that his appetites and passions are duly indulged, of which ethical writers have, alas! condescended to say but little, supposing that every body would feel that there was no need of solemn counsels on such a subject. It reminds one of the Christmas sermon mentioned in the 'Sketch Book,' preached by the good little antiquarian who elaborately proved, and pathetically enforced on reluctant auditors, the duty of a proper devotion to the festivities of the season. However, every one must like the complexion of your theology, though its counsels on this subject do not seem to me of urgent necessity."

"Perhaps," said Fellowes, "I ought rather to have said that Christians inculcate, theoretically, a contempt of the present life, while, practically, they enter as keenly into its pleasures as the 'worldling,'"--uttering the last word with an approach to a sneer.

"You may be sure," said Harrington, "I shall leave the Christian to defend himself; but if the case be as you now represent it, your new religious system seems to be superfluous as a corrective of any tendencies to Christian asceticism, and can do nothing for us. It appears that your Reformation was begun and ended before your 'spiritual' Luthers appeared."

"Not so," said Fellowes, "for the eagerness with which the Christian pursues the world, while he condemns it, is, as Mr. Greg has recently insisted, gigantic hypocrisy': it is founded on a lie. They say this world is not to be the great object for which we are to live and in which we are to find our happiness; we say it is: they say it is not our 'country' or our 'home'; we say it is: they say that we are to live supremely for the future, and in it; we say, for and in the present; that if there be a future world (of which many doubt, and I, for one, have not been able to make up my mind), we are to hope to be happy there, but that the main business is to secure our happiness here,--to embellish, adorn, and enjoy this our only certain dwelling-place,--and, in fact, to live supremely for the present. Such is the constitution of human nature."

"I shall not be at the trouble," replied Harrington, "to defend the inconsistencies of the Christian; but your system, I fear, is essentially a brutal theology, and, I am certain, a false philosophy. All the analogies of our nature cry out against it. All, even with regard to the 'present,' as you call this life, man is perpetually living for and in the future. This 'present' (minute as it is) is itself broken up into many futures, and it is these which man truly lives for, when he is not a beast; and not for the passing hour. It is not to-day, it is always to-morrow, on which his eye is fixed; and his ever-repining nature perpetually confesses its impatient want of something (it knows not what) to come. The child lives for his youth, and the youth is discontented till he is a man; every attainment and every possession pails as soon as it is reached, and we still sigh for something that we have not. It is simply in analogy with all this that the Christian and every other religion says (absurdly, if you will, but certainly with a deeper knowledge of human nature than you), that, as every little present has its little future for which we live, so the whole present of this life has its great future, which must, all the way through, be made the supreme object of forethought and solicitude; just as we should despise any man who, for a moment's gratification to-day, perilled the happiness of the whole of to-morrow. If Christians are inconsistent in this respect, that is their affair; but I am sure their theory is more in accordance with the constitution of human nature than yours." He might have added, that there is nothing in the New Testament which forbids to Christians any of the innocent pleasures of this life: the Christian may lawfully appropriate them. His system does not constrain him to hermit-like austerity or Puritanic grimace. He may enjoy them, just as a wise man, who will not sacrifice any of the interests of next year for a transient gratification of the passing hour, does not deny himself any legitimate pleasure which is not inconsistent with the more momentous interest. The pilgrim drinks and rests at the fountain though he does not dream of setting up his tent there.

"Nay," said Fellowes, "but think again of the 'gigantic lie' of making the future world the supreme object, and yet living wholly for this."

"If that be the case," said I, joining in their talk, "there is no doubt a 'gigantic lie' somewhere; but the question is, Who tells it? It does not follow that it is Christianity. You may see every day men nay, losing, some important advantages by loitering away the very hour which is to secure them,--in reading a novel, enjoying a social hour, lying in bed, and what not. You do not conclude that the man's estimate of the future--his philosophy of that--is any the more questionable for this folly? The ruthless future comes and makes his heart ache; and so may it be with Christianity for aught any such considerations imply. Your argument only proves that, if Christianity be true, man is an inconsistent fool; and, in my judgment, that was proved long before Christianity was born or thought of."

"Your theology," cried Harrington, "fairly carried out, would lead most men to the 'Epicurean sty' which, sceptic as I am, I loathe the thought of; it deserves the rebuke which Johnson gave the man who pleaded for a 'natural and savage condition,' as he called it. 'Sir,' said the Doctor, 'it is a brutal doctrine; a bull might as well say, I have this grass and this cow,--and what can a creature want more?' No, I am sure that the Christian or any other religionist--inconsistent though he is--appeals in this point deeper analogies of our nature than you."

"But the fact is," said Fellowes, "that the Christian depreciates the innocent pleasures of this life."

And my uncle would say it is his own fault then."

"Nay, but hear me. I conceive that nothing could be more natural, as several of our writers have remarked, than the injunctions of the Apostles to the primitive Christians to despise the world, and so forth, under the impression of that great mistake they had fallen into, that the world was about to tumble to pieces, and----"

"I am not sure," said Harrington, who seemed resolved to evince a scepticism provoking enough, "that they did make the mistake, on your principles. For I know not, nor you either, whether the expressions on which you found the supposition be not amongst the voluminous additions with which you are pleased to suppose their simple and genuine 'utterances' have been corrupted. But, leaving you to discuss that point, if you like, with my uncle here, I must deny that the mistake, supposing it one, makes any thing in relation to our present discussion. You say that the Apostles did well and naturally to inculcate a light grasp on the world, on the supposition that it was about to pass away; and therefore, I suppose, you (under a similar impression) would do the same; if so, ought you not still to do it? for can it make any conceivable difference to the wisdom or the folly of such exhortations, whether the world passes away from us, or we pass away from the world?-- whether it 'tumbles to pieces,' as you express it, or (which is too certain) we tumble to pieces? I think, therefore, your same comfortable theology cannot be justified, if you justify the conduct of the Apostles under their impression, let it be ever so erroneous. You ought to feel the same sentiments; you being, to all practical purposes, under a precisely similar impression."

Fellowes looked as if he were a little vexed at having thus hypothetically justified the conduct of the Apostles.

But he was not without his answer, adopted from Mr. Newman. "Yes," said he, "practically, no doubt, death is the end of the world to us; but to urge this,--what is it, as Mr. Newman says, but abominable selfishness preached as religion'? If we are to labor for posterity, will not our work remain, though we die? But if the world is to perish in fifty years, or a century, what then?"

"Far be it from me," said Harrington, "to compete with your spiritual philanthropy, which, doubtless, will not be content to work unless under a lease of a million of years. I suppose even if you thought the would come to an end in a hundred years, (and really I have no proof that the Apostles thought it would end sooner,--they spoke of their death as coming first,) you would not think it worth while to do any thing; the welfare of your children and grandchildren would appear far too paltry for so ambitious a benevolence as yours! Most people--Christians, sceptics, or otherwise--are contented to aim at the welfare of his generation and the next, and think as little of their great-great-grandchildren as of their great-great-grandfathers. That little vista terminates the projects of their philanthropy, just as their own death is to them the end of the world. Meantime, it appears, you would be tempted to neglect the practical little you could do, because you could not do more than for a century or so! Pray, which is really the more benevolent? Moreover, as not one man in a million can or does think of benefiting any but his immediate generation, you ought, upon your principles, still to sit down inactive; for they for whom alone you can work will soon pass away too. But the whole argument is too refined. No mortal-- except you or Mr. Newman--would be wrought upon by it."

"Well, but," said Fellowes, "as to the mistake of the Apostles, there can be no doubt of that; it really appears to me grossly disingenuous"--looking towards me--"to deny it. What do you say, Mr. B.?" repeating his assertion that the Apostles clearly thought that the end of the world was close at hand,--in fact, that it would happen in their generation.

I told him I was afraid I must run the risk of appearing in his eyes "grossly disingenuous"; not that I deemed it necessary to maintain that the Apostles had any idea of the period of time which was to intervene between the first promulgation of the Gospel and the consummation of all things; for when I found our Lord himself acknowledging, "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, not even the angels, nor even the Son, but the Father only," I could not wonder that the Apostles were left to mere conjectures on a subject which was then veiled even from his humanity. I said I even thought it probable that their vivid feeling anticipated the day,--that the interval between, so to speak, was "foreshortened" to them; but that I could not see how the question of their inspiration, or the truth of Christianity, was at all involved in their ignorance on that point; unless, indeed, it could be proved that they had positively stated that the predicted event would take place in their own time. This, I acknowledged, I could not find,--but much to the contrary; that the charge, indeed, had been so often repeated by the infidel school, that they had persuaded themselves of it, and spoke of it as if it were a decided point; but that as long as the second Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians remained, in which the Apostle expressly corrected misapprehensions similar to those which infidelity still professes to found on the first Epistle, I should continue to doubt whether Paul did not know his own mind better than his modern commentators. I told him that we do not hear that the Thessalonians persisted in believing that they had rightly interpreted Paul's words after he had himself disowned the meaning they had put upon them; that this was a degree of assurance only possible to modern critics; and that I was surprised that Mr. Newman should have quietly assumed the alleged "mistake" in his "Phases of Faith," without thinking it worth while even to state the opposing argument from the Second Epistle. I added, that the repeated references which both Paul and Peter make to their own deaths, as certain to take place before the dissolution of all things, sufficiently prove that, however their view of the future might be contracted, they did not expect the world to end in their day, and ought to have silenced the perverse criticism on the popular expression, "Then we which are alive and remain," &c.

Having briefly stated my opinion, Fellowes said he saw that he and I were as little likely to agree as Harrington and he. "However," he continued, turning to his friend, "to go back to the point from which we digressed. My new faith, at all events, makes me happy, which it is plain--too plain--that your want of all faith does not make you."

"Whether it is your new faith," said the other, "makes you happy, --whether you were not as happy in your old faith--whether there are not thousands of Christians who are as happy with their faith (they would say much happier, and I should say so too, if they not only say they believe it, but believe it and practise it.), I will not inquire; that my want of faith does not make me happy is a sad truth, which I do not think it worth while to deny; though I must confess that there have been many who have shared in my scepticism who have not shared in my misery. It is just because they have not realized what they did not believe; even as there are thousands of soi-disant Christians who do not realize what they say they do believe; neither the one nor the other are the happier or the more sorrowful for their pretended tenets. This is simply because they stand in no need of the admirable correctives supplied by your new theology; the present engrosses their solicitudes and affections; and the mere talk of the belief or the no-belief suffices to hush and tranquillize the heart in relation to those most momentous subjects, on which if man has not thought at all, he is a fool indeed. In either case the 'future' and the 'eternal' seem so far removed that they seem to be an 'eternal futurity.' Such parties look at that distant future much as children at the stars; it is a point, an invisible speck, in the firmament. A sixpence held near the eye appears larger; and brought sufficiently close shuts out the universe altogether. But let us also forget the future, and have a little talk of the past."

They resumed their conversation on subjects indifferent as far as this journal is concerned, and I bade them good night.

---

July 5. We were sitting in the library after breakfast. The two college friends soon fell into chat, while I sat writing at my separate table, but ready to resume my capacity of reporter, should any polemical discussion take place. I soon had plenty of employment. After about an hour I heard Harrington say:--

"But I shall be happy, I assure you, to fill the void whenever you will give me something solid wherewith to fill it."

It was impossible that even a believer in the doctrine that no "creed" can be taught, and that an "external revelation" is an impossibility, could be insensible to the charm of making a proselyte.

"What is it," said Fellowes, "that you want?"

"What do I want? I want certainty, or quasi-certainty, on those points on which if a man is content to remain uncertain, he is a fool or a brute; points respecting which it is no more possible for a genuine sceptic--for I speak not of the thoughtless lover paradox, or the queer dogmatist who resolves that nothing is true--to still the soul, than nakedness can render us insensible to cold; or hunger cure its own pangs by saying, 'Go to, now; I have nothing to eat.' The generality of mankind are insensible to these questions only because they imagine, even though it may be falsely, that they possess certainty. They are problems which, whenever there is elevation of mind enough to appreciate their importance, engage the real doubter in a life-long conflict; and to attempt to appease restlessness of such a mind by the old prescriptions,--the old quackish Epicurean nostrum of 'Carpe diem,'--'Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow die,'--'We do not know what the morrow may bring--is like attempting to call back the soul from a moral syncope by applying to the nostrils a drop of eau de Cologne. 'Enjoy to-day, we do not know what the morrow will bring!' Why, that is the very thought which poisons to-day. No, a soul of any worth cannot but feel an intense wish for the solution of its doubts, even while it doubts whether they can be solved."

"'Carpe diem' certainly would not be my sole prescription," said Fellowes; "you have not told me yet what you want."

"No, but I will. The questions on which I want certainty are indeed questions about which philosophers will often argue just to display their vanity, as human vanity will argue about any thing; but they are no sooner felt in their true grandeur, than they absorb the soul."

"Still, what is it you want?"

"I want to know---whence I came; whither I am going. Whether there be, in truth, as so many say there is, a God,--a tremendous personality, to whose infinite faculties the 'great' and the 'little' (as we call them) equally vanish,--whose universal presence fills all space, in any point of which he exists entire in the amplitude of all his infinite attributes,--whose universal government extends even to me, and my fellow-atoms, called men,--within whose sheltering embrace even I am not too mean for protection;--whether, if there be such a being, he is truly infinite; or whether this vast machine of the universe may not have developed tendencies or involved consequences which eluded his forethought, and are now beyond even his control; --whether, for this reason, or for some other necessity, such infinite sorrows have been permitted to invade it;--whether, above all, He be propitious or offended with a world in which I feel too surely, in the profound and various misery of man, that his aspects are not all benignant;--how, if he be offended, he is to be reconciled;--whether he is at all accessible, or one to whom the pleasures and the sufferings of the poor child of dust are equally subjects of horrible indifference;--whether, if such Omnipotent Being created the world, he has now abandoned it to be the sport of chance, and I am thus an orphan in the universe;--whether this 'universal frame' be indeed without a mind, and we are, in fact, the only forms of conscious existence; --whether, as the Pantheist declares, the universe itself be God,-- ever making, never made,--the product of an evolution of an infinite series of 'antecedents' and 'consequents'; a God of which--for I cannot say of whom--you and I are bits; perishable fragments of a Divinity, itself imperishable only because there will always be bits of it to perish;--whether, even upon some such supposition, this conscious existence of ours is to be renewed; and, if under what conditions; or whether, when we have finished our little day, no other dawn is to break upon our night;--whether the vale, vale in eternum vale, is really the proper utterance of a breaking heart as it closes the sepulchre on the object of its love."

His voice faltered; and I was confirmed in my suspicions, that some deep, secret sorrow had had to do with his morbid state of mind. In a moment, he resumed:--

"These are the questions, and others like the them, which I have vainly toiled to solve. I, like you, have been rudely driven out of my old beliefs; my early Christian faith has given way to doubt; the little hut on the mountain-side, in which I thought to dwell in pastoral simplicity, has been scattered to the tempest, and I am turned out to the blast without a shelter. I have wandered long and far, but have not found that rest which you tell me is to be obtained. As I examine all other theories, they seem, to me, pressed by at least equal difficulties with that I have abandoned. I cannot make myself contented, as others do, with believing nothing, and yet I have nothing to believe; I have wrestled long and hard with my Titan foes,--but not successfully. I have turned to every quarter of the universe in vain; I have interrogated my own soul, but it answers not; I have gazed upon nature, but its many voices speak no articulate language to me; and, more especially, when I gaze upon the bright page of the midnight heavens, those orbs gleam upon me with so cold a light, and amidst so portentous a silence, that I am, with Pascal, terrified at the spectacle of the infinite solitudes,--'de ces espaces infinis.' I declare to you that I know nothing in nature so beautiful or so terrible as those mute oracles."

"They are indeed mute," said Fellowes; "but not so that still voice which whispers its oracles within. You have but to look inwards, and you may see, by the direct gaze of 'the spiritual faculty,' bright and clear, those great 'intuitions' of spiritual truth which the gauds and splendors of the external universe can no more illustrate than can the illuminated characters of an old missal;--just as little can any book teach these truths. You have truly said, the stars will shed no light upon them; they, on the contrary, must illumine the stars; I mean, they must themselves be seen before the outward universe can assume intelligible meaning; must utter their voices before any of the phenomena of the external world can have any real significance!"

"How different," said Harrington, "are the experiences of mankind! You well described those internal oracles, if there are indeed such, as whispering their responses; if they utter them at all, it is to me in a whisper so low that I cannot distinctly catch them. Strange paradoxes! the soul speaks, and the soul listens, and the soul cannot tell what the soul says. That is, the soul speaks to itself, and says, 'What have I said?' I assure you that the ear of my soul (if I may so speak) has often ached with intense effort to listen to what the tongue of the soul mutters, and yet I cannot catch it. You tell me I have only to look down into the depths within. Well, I have. I assure you that I have endeavoured to do so, as far as I know, honestly; and, so far from seeing clear and bright those splendors which you speak of, I can only see as in the depths of a cavern occasional gleams of a tremulous flickering light, which distinctly shows me nothing, and which, I half suspect, comes from without into these recesses: or I feel as if gazing down an abyss, the bottom of which is filled with water; the light--and that, too, for aught I know, reflected from without--only throws a transient glimpse of my own image on the surface of the dark water; that image itself broken and renewed as the water boils up from its hidden fountain. Or, if I may recur to your own metaphor, instead of hearing in those deep caverns the clear oracles of which you boast, I can distinguish nothing but a scarcely audible murmur; I know not whether it be any thing more than the lingering echoes of what I heard in my childhood: or, rather, my soul speaks to me on all these momentous subjects much as one in sleep often does; the lips move, but no sound issues from them. I retire from these attempts, as those of old from the cave of Trophonius, pale, terrified, and dejected. In short," he continued, "I feel much as Descartes says he did when he had denuded himself of all his traditional opinions,--a condition so graphically described in the beginning of the second of his Meditations. There is this difference, however, and in his favor: that he imposed upon himself only a self-inflicted doubt, which he could terminate at any time. His opinions had been but temporarily laid aside. They were on the shelf, close at hand, ready to be taken down again when wanted. But enough of this. You will, I know, aid me, if you can. And, now I think of it, do so on one point, by justifying your assertion, made the other evening, as to Mr. Newman's dilemma of the 'impossibility of a book-revelation.'"

"I said, I think, that Mr. Newman has satisfactorily proved to me that a book-revelation of moral and spiritual truth is impossible; that God reveals himself to us within, and not from without."

"As to what is impossible," said the other, "I fancy it would be difficult to get one thoroughly convinced of his ignorance and feebleness to be other than very cautious how he used the word. Perhaps, however, Mr. Newman may be more readily excused than most men for the strength with which he pronounces his opinions; for, as he has passed through an infinity of experiences, it may have given him 'insight' into many absurdities which, to the generality of mankind, do not appear such. I think if I had believed half so many things, I should have lost all confidence in myself. What a strong mind, or what buoyant faith, he must have!"

"Both,--both," said Fellowes.

"Well, be it so. But let us, as you promised yesterday, examine this very point." This led on to a dialogue in which it was distinctly proved that

THAT MAY BE POSSIBLE WITH MAN, WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH GOD.

"Mr. Newman affirms, you say," said Harrington, "that in his judgment every book-'revelation' is an absurdity and a contradiction; or, in the words quoted by you, 'impossible.'"

"Yes,--of 'moral and spiritual truth.'"

"And of any other truth--as of historical truth--you say such revelation is unnecessary?"

"Yes."

"Moreover, as you and Mr. Newman affirm, the bulk of mankind are not competent to investigate the claims of such an historic revelation?"

"Certainly."

"And, therefore, it is impossible in fact, if not per se, unless God is to be supposed doing something both unnecessary and futile."

"I think so, of course," said Fellowes.

"So that all book-revelation is impossible."

"I affirm it."

"Very well,--I do not dispute it. There still remain one or two difficulties on which I should like to have your judgment towards forming an opinion: and they are on the very threshold of the subject. And, first, I suppose you do not mean to restrict your term of a 'book-revelation' to that only which is literally consigned to a book in our modern sense. You mean an external revelation?"

"Certainly."

"If, for example, you could recover a genuine manuscript of Isaiah or Paul, you would not think it entitled to any more respect, as authority, than a modern translation in a printed book,--though it might be free from some errors?"

"I should not."

"You would not allow that parchment, however ancient, has any advantage in this respect over paper, however modern?"

"Certainly not."

"Nor Hebrew or Greek over English or German?

"No."

"All such matters are in very deed but 'leather and prunella'?"

"Nothing more."

"And for a similar reason, surely, you would reject at once the oral teaching of any such man as Paul or Matthew, or any body else, if he professed that what he said was dictated by divine inspiration, concurrently or not with the use of his own faculties? You would repudiate at once his claims, however authenticated, to be your infallible guide; to tell you what you are to believe, and how you are to act? For surely you will not pretend that there is any difference between statements which are merely expressed by the living voice, and those same statements as consigned to a book; except that, if any difference be supposed at all, one would, for some reasons, rather have their in the last shape than in the first."

"Of course there is no difference: to object to a book-revelation and grant a 'lip-revelation' from God, or to deny that lip-revelation (when it is made permanent and diffusible) the authority it had when first given, would be a childish hatred of a book indeed," answered Fellowes.

"I perfectly agree with you," replied Harrington.

"I understand you, then, to deny that any revelation professedly given to you or to me does, or ever can, come to us through any external channel, printed or on parchment, ancient or modern, by the living voice or in a written character; and that this is a proper translation, in a generalized form, of the phrase 'a book-revelation'?"

"I admit it. For surely, as already said, it would be truly ridiculous to allow that Paul, if we could but hear his living voice, was to be listened to with implicit reverence as an authorized teacher of divine truth; but that his deliberate utterances, recorded in a permanent form, were to be regarded not merely as less authoritative, but of no authority at all."

"So that if you saw Peter or Paul to-morrow, you would tell him the same story?"

"Of course I should," replied Mr. Fellowes.

"And you would of course also reject any such revelation, coming from any external source, even though the party proclaiming it confirmed it by miracles? For I cannot see how, if it be true that an external revelation is impossible, and that God always reveals himself 'within us' and never 'out of us,' (which is the principle affirmed,)--I say I cannot see how miracles can make any difference in the case."

"No, certainly not. But surely you forget that miracles are impossible on my notion: for, as Mr. Newman says---"

"Whatever he says, I suppose you will not deny that they are conceivable; and that is all I am thinking of at present. Their impossibility or possibility I will not dispute with you just now. I am disposed to with you; only, as usual, I have some doubts, which I wish you would endeavor to solve; but of that another time. Meantime, my good friend, be so obliging as to give me an answer to my question,--whether you would deem it to be your duty to reject any such claims to authoritative teaching, even if backed by the performance of miracles? for, admitting miracles never to have occurred, and even that they never will, you, I think, would hesitate to affirm that you clearly perceive that the very notion involves a contradiction. They are, at least, imaginable, and that is sufficient to supply you with an answer to my question. I once more ask you, therefore, whether, if such a teacher of a book-revelation, in the comprehensive sense of these words already defined, were to authenticate (as he affirmed) his claims to reverence by any number, variety, or splendor of miracles,--undoubted miracles,--you would any the more feel bound to believe him?"

"What! upon the supposition that there was any thing morally objectionable in his doctrine?"

"I will release you on that score too." said Harrington, in a most accommodating manner. "Morally, I will assume there is nothing in his doctrine but what you approve; and as for the rest,--to confirm which I will suppose the revelation given,--I will assume nothing in it which you could demonstrate to be false or contradictory; in fact, nothing more difficult to be believed than many undeniable phenomena of the external universe,--matters, for example, which you acknowledge you do not comprehend, but which may possibly be true for aught you can tell to the contrary."

"But if the supposed revelation contain nothing but what, appealing thus to my judgment, I can approve, where is the necessity of a revelation at all?"

"Did I say, my friend, that it was to contain nothing but what is referred to your judgment? nothing but what you would know and approve just as well without it? or even did I concede that you could have known and approved without it that which, when it is proposed, you do approve? I simply wish an answer to the question, whether, if a teacher of an ethical system such as you entirely approved, with some doctrines attached, incomprehensible it may be, but not demonstratively false or immoral, were to substantiate (as he affirmed) his claims to your belief by the performance of miracles, you would or would not feel constrained any the more to believe him?"

"But I do not see the use of discussing a question under circumstances which it is admitted never did nor ever can occur?"

"You 'fight hard,' as Socrates says to one of his antagonists on a similar occasion; but I really must request an answer to the question. The case is an imaginable one; and you may surely say how, upon the principles you have laid down, you think those principles would compel you to act in the hypothetical case."

"Well, then, if I must give all answer, I should say that upon the principles on which Mr. Newman has argued the question,--that all revelation, except which is internal, is impossible,--I should not believe the supposed envoy's claims."

"Whatever the number or the splendor of his miracles?"

"Certainly," said Fellowes, with some hesitation however, and speaking slowly.

"For that does not affect the principles we are agreed upon?"

"No,"--not seeming, however, perfectly satisfied.

"Very well," resumed Harrington, "that is what I call a plain answer to a plain question. I fancy (waverer that I am!) that I should believe the man's claims. I should be even greatly tempted to think that those things which I could not entirely see ought to be contained in the said revelation, were to be believed. But all that is doubtless only because I am much weaker in mind and will than either Mr. Newman or yourself. You must pardon me; it will in no degree practically affect the question, except on the supposition that the same infirmity is also a characteristic of man in general; that not I, from my weakness, am an exception to rule; but you, in your strength. But to dismiss that. You have agreed that a book-revelation is impossible, and not to be believed, even if avouched by miracles. Have men in general been disposed to believe a book-revelation impossible? for if not, I am afraid they would be very liable to run into error, if they share in my weaknesses."

"Liable to run into error!" said Fellowes. "Man has been perpetually running into this very error, always and everywhere."

"If it be true, as you say, that man has always and everywhere manifested a remarkable facility of falling into this error, many will be tempted to think that the thing is not so plainly impossible. It seems so strange that men in general should believe things to be possible when they are impossible. However, you admit it as a too certain fact."

"I do, for I can not honestly deny it; but it has been because they have confounded what is historical or intellectual with moral and spiritual truth."

"I am afraid that will not excuse their absurdity, because, as you admit, all book-revelation is impossible.--But further, supposing men to have made this strange blunder, it only shows that the 'moral and spiritual' could not be very clearly revealed within; and no wonder men began to think that perhaps it might come to them from without! When men begin to mistake blue for red, and square for round, and chaff for wheat, I think it is high time that they repair to a doctor outside them to tell them what is the matter with their poor brains. Meantime an external revelation is impossible?"

"Certainly."

"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.

"But yet," continued Harrington, very seriously, "I know not whether I ought not, upon your principles, to consider this book-revelation with which you have been favored, about the impossibility of such a thing, as itself a divine revelation; in which case I am afraid we shall be constrained to admit, in form, that contradiction which we have been so anxious to avoid, by making 'possible with man what is impossible with God.'"

"I know not what you mean," said Fellowes, rather offended.

"Why," said Harrington, quite unmoved, "I have heard you say you do not deny, in some sense, inspiration, but only that inspiration is preternatural; that every 'holy thought,' every 'lofty and sublime conception,' all 'truth and excellence,' in any man, come from the 'Father of lights,' and are to be ascribed to him; that, as Mr. Parker and Mr. Foxton affirm on this point, the inspiration of Paul or Milton, or even of Christ and of Benjamin Franklin, is of the same nature, and in an intelligible sense from the same source,--differing only in degree. Can you deem less, then, of that great conception by which Mr. Newman has released you, and possibly many more, from that bondage to a 'book-revelation' in which you were brought up, and in which, by your own confession, you might have been still enthralled? Can you think less of this than that it is an 'inspired' voice which has proclaimed 'liberty to the captive,' and made known to you 'spiritual freedom'? If any thing be divine about Mr. Newman's system, surely it must be this. Ought you not to thank God that he has been thus pleased to 'open your eyes,' and to turn you from 'darkness to light,'--to raise up in these last days such an apostle of the truth which had lain so long 'hidden from ages and generations'? Can you do less than admire the divine artifice by when it was impossible for God directly to tell man that he could directly tell him nothing, He raised up his servant Newman to perform the office?"

"For my part," said Fellowes, "I am not ashamed to say, that I think I ought to thank God for such a boon as Mr. Newman has, in this instance at least, been the instrument of conveying to me: I acknowledge it most momentous truth, without which I should still have been in thraldom to the 'letter.'"

"Very well; then the book-revelation of Mr. Newman is, as I say, in some sort to you, perhaps to a divine 'book-revelation.'"

"Well, in some sense, it is so."

"So that now we have, in some sense, a divine book-revelation to prove that a divine book-revelation is impossible."

"You are pleased to jest on the subject," said Fellowes.

"I never was more serious in my life. However, I will not press this point any further. You shall be permitted to say (what I will not contradict) that, though Mr. Newman may be inspired, for aught I know, in that modified sense in which you believe in any phenomenon,--inspired as much (say) as the inventor of Lucifer matches,--yet that his book is not divine,--that it is purely human; and even, if you please, that God has had nothing to do with it. But even then I must be allowed to repeat, that at least you have derived from a 'book-revelation' what it would not have been a unworthy of a divine book-revelation to impart, if it could have been imparted without contradiction. Such book-revelation, in this case, must be of inestimable value to man, because, without it, he must have persisted in that ancient and all but inveterate and universal delusion of which we have so often spoken. There is only one little inconvenience, I apprehend, from it in relation to the argument of such a book; and that is, that I am afraid that men, so far from being convinced thereby that a divine revelation is impossible, will rather argue the contrary way, and say, 'If Mr. Newman can do so much, what might not God do by the very same method?' If he can thus break the spiritual yoke of his fellow-men by only teaching them negative truth, surely it may be possible for God to be as useful in teaching positive truth. I almost tremble, I assure you, lest, by his most conspicuous success in imparting to you such important truth, and reclaiming you from such a fundamental error, which lay at the very threshold of your 'spiritual' progress, he may, so far from convincing mankind of the truth of his principle, lead them rather to believe that a 'book-revelation' may have been very possible, and of singular advantage. But, to speak the truth, I am by no means sure that Mr. Newman has not done something more than what we have attributed to him, and whether his book-revelation be not a true divine revelation to you also."

Fellowes looked rather curious, and I thought a little angry.

"My good friend," said Harrington, "I am sure you will not refuse me every satisfaction you can, in my present state of doubt and perplexity; that you will render me (as indeed you have promised) all the assistance in your power, by kindly telling me what you know of your own religious development and history. I cannot sufficiently admire your candor and frankness hitherto."

"You may depend upon it," said Fellowes, "I will not hesitate to answer any questions you choose to put. I am not ashamed of the system I have adopted,--or rather selected, for I do not agree with any one writer--although I confess I wish I were a better advocate of it."