.

Cousin claims that the universal reason of man is illuminated by the
light of God. It is quite pertinent to ask, Why may not the universal
heart of humanity be touched and moved by the spirit of God? If the
ideas of reason be a revelation from God, may not the instinctive
feelings of the heart be an inspiration of God? May not God come near to
the heart of man and awaken a mysterious presentiment of an invisible
Presence, and an instinctive longing to come nearer to Him? May he not
draw men towards himself by sweet, persuasive influences, and raise man
to a conscious fellowship? Is not God indeed the _great want_ of the
human heart?

Secondly, Cousin does not give due importance to the influence of
revealed truth as given in the sacred Scriptures, and of the positive
institutions of religion, as a divine economy, supernaturally originated
in the world. He grants, indeed, that "a primitive revelation throws
light upon the cradle of human civilization," and that "all antique
traditions refer to an age in which man, at his departure from the hand
of God, received from him immediately all lights, and all truths."[76]
He also believes that "the Mosaic religion, by its developments, is
mingled with the history of all the surrounding people of Egypt, of
Assyria, of Persia, and of Greece and Rome."[77] Christianity, however,
is regarded as "the summing and crown of the two great religious systems
which reigned by turn in the East and in Greece"--the maturity of
Ethnicism and Judaism; a development rather than a new creation. The
explanation which he offers of the phenomena of inspiration opens the
door to religious skepticism. Those who were termed seers, prophets,
inspired teachers of ancient times, were simply men who resigned
themselves wholly to their intellectual instincts, and thus gazed upon
truth in its pure and perfect form. They did not reason, they did not
reflect, they made no pretensions to philosophy they received truth
spontaneously as it flowed in upon them from heaven.[78] This immediate
reception of Divine light was nothing more than the _natural_ play of
spontaneous reason nothing more than what has existed to a greater or
less degree in every man of great genius; nothing more than may now
exist in any mind which resigns itself to its own unreflective
apperceptions. Thus revelation, in its proper sense, loses all its
peculiar value, and Christianity is robbed of its pre-eminent authority.
The extremes of