supernatural works as of natural. Nor is it incredible because it
records miracles. The miracles recorded in the coal measures are as
astonishing as any recorded in the Bible.

The Rationalist next assures us, however, that any external revelation
from God to man is _useless_, because man is wise enough without it. The
vulgar exposition of this sentiment is familiar to every reader. "You
need not begin to preach Bible to me. I know my duty well enough without
the Bible." The more educated attempt to reason the matter after this
fashion: "Miraculous phenomena will never prove the goodness and
veracity of God, if we do not know these qualities in him without a
miracle."[41] We may remark, in passing, that there are some other
attributes of God besides goodness and veracity--holiness and justice
for instance--which are proved by miracles. "Can thunder from the
thirty-two azimuths, repeated daily for centuries, make God's laws more
godlike to me? Brother, no. Perhaps I am grown to be a man now, and do
not need the thunder and the terror any longer. Perhaps I am above being
frightened. Perhaps it is not fear but reverence that shall now lead me!
Revelation! Inspirations! And thy own god-created soul, dost thou not
call that a revelation?"[42] It is manifest, however, that if Mr.
Carlyle needs not the Sinai thunder to assure him that the law given on
Sinai was from God, there were then, and are now, many who do, and some
of his own sect who doubt in spite of it. If he is above the weakness of
fearing God, all the world is not so.

The claims of a divine teacher are as unceremoniously rejected as those
of a divine revelation. "If it depends on Jesus it is not eternally
true, and if it is not eternally true it is no truth at all," says
Parker. As if eternally true, and sufficiently known, were just the same
thing; or as if because vaccination would always have prevented the
smallpox, the world is under no obligation to Jenner for informing us of
the fact. In the same tone Emerson despises instruction: "It is not
instruction but provocation that I can receive from another soul. What
he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word,
or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing." Again says
Parker, "Christianity is dependent on no outside authority. We verify
its eternal truth in our soul."[43] His aim is "to separate religion
from whatever is finite--Church, book, person--and let it rest on it