iration are the effects of abnormal
conditions of man ..... Prophecy, clairvoyance, healing by touch,
visions, dreams, revelations, .... are now known to be simple
matters in nature, which may be induced at will, and experimented
upon at our firesides, here in England (climate and other
circumstances permitting), as well as in the Holy Land."* But no
one seemed prepared to receive this hypothesis. At last, our host,
addressing the Deist, said, "But you forget, Mr. M., that, though
you find it insurmountably difficult to conceive a book full of
lies (as you express it) to have been, consciously or unconsciously,
the product of honest and guileless minds, you ought to find it a
little difficult to conceive a book (as you admit the New Testament
to be) of profound moral worth produced by shameless impostors. But
let that pass. Let us assume that Christianity, as a supernaturally
revealed and miraculously authenticated system, is false, though you
are dolefully at variance as to how it is to be proved so; let us
assume, I say, that this system is false, and dismiss it. I am much
more anxious to hear what is the positive system of religious truth,
which you are of course each persuaded is the true one. I have left
off to seek,' but if any one will find the truth for me without my
'seeking' it, how rejoiced shall I be!"

---
* He cited the substance of these sentiments. I have since referred
to, and here quote, the ipsissima verba. See "Letters," &c.,
pp. 175, 212.
---

Painful as were the "revelations" which ensued, I would not have
missed them on any account. "In vino veritas," says the proverb
which on this occasion lied most vilely; yet it was true in the
only sense in which "veritas" is there used; for there was unbounded
candor and frankness, under the inspiring hospitality of our host,
aided by his skilful management of the conversation. Nor was there,
I am bound to say, much of coarse ribaldry, even from the free-spoken
representative of the Tindals and Woolstons of other days. But the
varieties of judgment and opinion in that small company were almost
numberless. Fellowes, and two of the Rationalists, were firm believers
in the theory of "insight"; that the human spirit derives, by immediate
intuition from the "depths" of its consciousness, a "revelation of
religious and spiritual truth." They differed, however, as to several
articles; but especially as to the little point, whether the fact
of man's future exist