he naturalness of the response would gradually tend
to efface itself: for "what is universal is natural," and the voice
which every man was able to recognise would come at last to be
regarded as a voice from within oneself. If the supernatural
character of an alleged revelation is to be established, its
uniqueness must be duly emphasised. A particular people must be
chosen for the purpose of the divine experiment. A particular
law-giver must be commissioned to declare to the chosen people the
will of the Supernatural God. And from time to time a particular
prophet must be sent to rebuke the chosen people for its
backslidings, to show it where it has gone astray, and to exhort
it to turn again to its God.

For if it is far from Man to discern good, it is still farther from
him to desire it. How, then, shall he be induced to walk in the path
which the Law has prescribed for him? To this question there can be
but one answer: By the promise of external reward, and the threat of
external punishment. To set before Man an ideal of life--an ideal
which would be to him an unfailing fountain of magnetic force and
guiding light--is not in the power of legalism. For if an ideal is
to appeal to one, it must be the consummation of one's own natural
tendencies; but the current of Man's natural tendencies is ever
setting towards perdition, and the vanishing point of his heart's
desires is death. Were an ideal revealed to the Law-giver and by him
presented to his fellow-men, and were the heart of Man to respond
to the appeal that it made to him, the basic assumption of
legalism--that of the corruption of Man's nature--would be
undermined; for Man would have proved that it belonged to his nature
to turn towards the light,--in other words, that he had a natural
capacity for good. The plain truth is that legalism is precluded, by
its own first principles from appealing to any motive higher than
that instinctive desire for pleasure which has as its counterpart a
quasi-physical fear of pain. It is impossible for the lawgiver to
appeal to Man's better nature, to say to him: "Cannot you see for
yourself that this course of action is better than that,--that love
is better than hatred, mercy than cruelty, loyalty than treachery,
continence than self-indulgence?" What he can and must say to him is
this, and this only; "If you obey the Law you will be rewarded. If
you disobey it you will be punished." And this he must say to him
again and again