moral and religious teaching that makes the whole
difference between the civilized American and his inspired Fiji brother?

These gentlemen not only acknowledge, but try to repay their obligations
to external revelation. As it is impossible for God to give the world a
book revelation of moral and religious truth, they modestly propose to
come to his assistance, it being quite possible for some men to do what
is impossible for God. Accordingly, we have a book revelation of moral
and religious truth, from one, in his treatise on "The Soul," an
"external revelation" from another, in his "Discourse Concerning
Religion," a "Morrison's pill from the outside," from a third, in his
"Past and Present," and "announcements" from a fourth, which assuredly
the great mass of mankind never "found true within them," else his
orations and publications had not been needed to convert them. It is to
be understood, then, that an "external revelation," or a "book
revelation" of spiritual truth is impossible, only when it comes from
God, but that these gentlemen have proved it quite possible for
themselves to deliver one.

In so doing they have undoubtedly attempted to meet the wishes of the
greater part of mankind, who have in all lands and in all ages longed
for some outward revelation from God, and testified their desire by
running after all sorts of omens, auguries, and oracles, consulting
witches, and treasuring Sibylline leaves, employing writing mediums, and
listening to spirit-rappers. The "inspiration which is limited to no
sect, age, or nation--which is wide as the world, and common as
God,"[48] has never produced a nation of Rationalists; a fact very
unaccountable, if Rationalism be true; and one which might well lead
these writers to acknowledge at least one kind of total depravity,
namely, that inspired men should love the darkness of external
revelations, and even of book revelations, and read Bibles, and Korans,
and Vedas, and "Discourses Concerning Religion," and "Phases of Faith,"
while yet "everything that is of use to man lies in the plane of our own
consciousness." Surely, such a universal craving after an external
revelation testifies to a felt necessity for it, and renders it
probable, or at least desirable, that God would supply the deficiency.
Is the religious appetite the only one for which God has provided no
supply?

The fact is undeniable, that the grand distinction between man and the
brutes presents itself rig