pardon me; it will in no degree
practically affect the question, except on the supposition that the
same infirmity is also a characteristic of man in general; that not
I, from my weakness, am an exception to rule; but you, in your strength.
But to dismiss that. You have agreed that a book-revelation is
impossible, and not to be believed, even if avouched by miracles.
Have men in general been disposed to believe a book-revelation
impossible? for if not, I am afraid they would be very liable to run
into error, if they share in my weaknesses."

"Liable to run into error!" said Fellowes. "Man has been perpetually
running into this very error, always and everywhere."

"If it be true, as you say, that man has always and everywhere manifested
a remarkable facility of falling into this error, many will be tempted
to think that the thing is not so plainly impossible. It seems so
strange that men in general should believe things to be possible when
they are impossible. However, you admit it as a too certain fact."

"I do, for I can not honestly deny it; but it has been because they
have confounded what is historical or intellectual with moral and
spiritual truth."

"I am afraid that will not excuse their absurdity, because, as you
admit, all book-revelation is impossible.--But further, supposing
men to have made this strange blunder, it only shows that the 'moral
and spiritual' could not be very clearly revealed within; and no
wonder men began to think that perhaps it might come to them
from without! When men begin to mistake blue for red, and square for
round, and chaff for wheat, I think it is high time that they repair
to a doctor outside them to tell them what is the matter with their
poor brains. Meantime an external revelation is impossible?"

"Certainly."

"But men, however, have somehow perversely believed it very possible,
and that, in some shape or other, it has been given?"

"They have, I must admit."

"Unhappy race! thus led on by some fatality, though not by the
constitution of their nature (rather by some inevitable perversion
of it), to believe as possible that which is so plainly impossible.
O that it did not involve a contradiction to wish that God would
relieve them from such universal and pernicious delusions, by giving
them a book-revelation to show them that all book-revelations are
impossible!"

"That," said Fellowes, laughing, "would indeed be a novelty. Miracles
would hardly prove that."

"I