bodily
senses, men do starve in this world for want of needful food and
clothing, it is very possible that they may have spiritual faculties
also, and yet not obtain through them all needed spiritual things.

The second part of the theory is as baseless as the first. All men have
spiritual faculties, and have not obtained by them all needed spiritual
things. They have not in their own opinion, and surely they are
competent judges of "what lies wholly in the plane of their own
consciousness." In proof of the fact that mankind have not, in their own
opinion, obtained all needed spiritual things by the use of their
spiritual faculties, without the aid of external revelation, we appeal
to all the religions of mankind, Heathen, Mohammedan, and Christian.
Every one of these appeals to revelations from God. Every lawgiver of
note professed to have communication with heaven, Zoroaster, Minos,
Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, Mohammed, down to the chief of the
recent revolution in China. "Whatever becomes of the real truth of these
relations," says Strabo of those before his day, "_it is certain that
men did believe and think them true_." If mankind has found the supply
of all their spiritual wants within themselves, would they have clung in
this way to the pretense of external revelations? Is not the abundance
of quack doctors conclusive proof of the existence of disease, and of
the need of physicians?

Not only was the need of an external revelation of some sort
acknowledged by all mankind, but the insufficiency of the pretended
oracles which they enjoyed was deplored by the wisest part of them. We
never find men amidst the dim moonlight of tradition, and the light of
nature, vaunting the sufficiency of their inward light; it is only
amidst the full blaze of noonday Christianity that philosophers can
stand up and declare that they have no need of God's teaching. Had such
men lived in Athens of old, they would have found men possessed of
spiritual faculties, and those of no mean order, engaged in erecting an
altar with this inscription, "_To the Unknown God._" One of the wisest
of the heathen (Socrates) acknowledged that he could attain to no
certainty respecting religious truth or moral duty, in these memorable
words, "We must of necessity wait, till some one from him who careth for
us, shall come and instruct us how we ought to behave toward God and
toward man." The chief of the Academy, whose philosophy concerning the
e