Part 6 (2/2)
”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 const.i.tution 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d to mankind.”
”To what do you owe your emanc.i.p.ation from this grievous and universal error, which still infects, in this or some other shape, the myriads of the human race?”
”I think princ.i.p.ally 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d.'”
”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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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.
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