, if it were not a
spontaneous and native intuition of the mind,--a necessity of thought. A
fact of history must be presumed to stick to the mind with much greater
tenacity than a purely rational idea which has no visible symbol in the
sensible world, and yet, even in regard to the events of history, the
persistence and pertinacity of tradition is exceedingly feeble. The
South Sea Islanders know not from whence, or at what time, their
ancestors came. There are monuments in Tonga and Fiji of which the
present inhabitants can give no account. How, then, can a pure, abstract
idea which can have no sensible representation, no visible image, retain
its hold upon the memory of humanity for thousands of years? The Fijian
may not remember whence his immediate ancestors came, but he knows that
the race came originally from the hands of the Creator. He can not tell
who built the monuments of solid masonry which are found in his
island-home, but he can tell who reared the everlasting hills and built
the universe. He may not know who reigned in Vewa a hundred years ago,
but he knows who now reigns, and has always reigned, over the whole
earth. "The idea of a God is familiar to the Fijian, and the existence
of an invisible superhuman power controlling and influencing nature, and
all earthly things, is fully recognized by him."[91] The idea of God is
a common fact of human consciousness, and tradition alone is manifestly
inadequate to account for its _universality_.

[Footnote 91: "Fiji and the Fijians," p. 215.]

3. A verbal revelation would be inadequate to convey the knowledge of
God to an intelligence "_purely passive_" and utterly unfurnished with
any _a priori_ ideas or necessary laws of cognition and thought.

Of course it is not denied that important verbal communications relating
to the character of God, and the duties we owe to God, were given to the
first human pair, more clear and definite, it may be, than any knowledge
attained by Socrates and Plato through their dialectic processes, and
that these oral revelations were successively repeated and enlarged to
the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament church. And
furthermore, that some rays of light proceeding from this pure fountain
of truth were diffused, and are still lingering among the heathen
nations, we have no desire, and no need to deny.

All this, however, supposes, at least, a natural power and aptitude for
the knowledge of God, and some configuration a