, and hardly doubt that, if the principles
on which they reject the Bible be sound, they ought to go much farther.
Both affirm the absurdity of a special external revelation to man;
both, that the fountain of spiritual illumination is exclusively
from within, and not from without. A few brief citations will set
this point in a clear light. "Religion itself." says Mr. Parker,
"must be the same thing in each man; not a similar thing, but just
the same; differing only in degree."* "The Idea of God, as a fact
given in man's nature, is permanent and alike in all; while the
sentiment of God, though vague and mysterious, is always the same in
itself." (ibid. p. 21)--"Of course, then, there is no difference but
of words between revealed Religion and natural Religion; for all actual
Religion is revealed in us, or it could not be felt." (ibid. p. 33). The
Absolute Religion, which he affirms to be universally known, he defines
as "Voluntary Obedience to the Law of God,--inward and outward Obedience
to that law he has written on our nature, revealed in various ways
through Instinct, Reason, Conscience, and the Religious Sentiment."
(ibid. p. 34). Similarly, Mr. Newman says, "What God reveals to us he
reveals within, through the medium of our moral and spiritual senses."
(Soul, p. 59) "Christianity itself has practically confessed, what is
theoretically clear,"--you must take his word for both,--"that an
authoritative external revelation of moral and spiritual truth is
essentially impossible to man." (Soul, p. 59) "No book-revelation can
(without sapping its own pedestal) authoritatively dictate laws of human
virtue, or alter our a priori view of the Divine character." (Ibid. p.
58)

----
* Discourses of Matters pertaining to Religion, p. 36.
----

"Happy race of men," one is ready to exclaim, with this Idea of God,
one and the same in all; this "Absolute Religion," which is also
"universal"; this internal revelation, which supersedes, by
anticipating, all possible disclosures of an external revelation,
and renders it an "impertinence." Men in all ages and nations must
exhibit a delightful unanimity in their religious notions, sentiments,
and practices!

"They would do so," cries Mr. Parker; but unhappily, though the "idea"
of God is "one and the same, and perfect" in all "when the proper
conditions" are complied with, yet practically, if, in the majority of
these proper "conditions are not observed"; (Discourses, p. 19) "the