It would have been my peculiar pleasure to have given more satisfaction with regard to the superior ends of the messages, subservient, no doubt, to still greater ends, if it had been lawful. But for the present, they are immediately interesting only to a few persons. The knowledge which many would improve, others would abuse. If the answer of the oracle intended for the personal safety of David and his men, is immediately published, Saul will know it. When a creature professedly brings us a message from God, be this message ever so small, ever so strange, ever so unexpected; yet, if it does not oppose his word, we have not the least evidence that the profession is counterfeit, unless we obtain it by other means; because we are as yet ignorant of its connections, and God’s thoughts and plans are not like ours. Some say, if the message appear not in the scriptures, that will sufficiently condemn it and the messenger too, whatever be the credentials, “I will obey nothing but what I see in the scriptures.”[54] But may I not say, with Doctor Owen, that they unwarrantably limit the Holy One of Israel? In absolute monarchies the people dare not say, “I will obey no precept from the king, unless I find it in the public code.” Such language would breathe rebellion. And dare we treat thus the King of kings, who is an absolute monarch, and by his propriety in the universe has a right to be such? Will the scriptures themselves warrant this behavior? Can we despise the message and them who heard it, and them who obeyed it, and the angels who brought it, and yet stand guiltless before Him who sent it? until we obtain proof that he did not send it, and that the credentials are forgery? And are we one inch nearer to this point, than we were twenty-six years ago? Do we perceive _now_ any more than twenty-six years ago, how the deceiver talked in open space, by a voice inimitable, clearly understood by some, and not at all by others, with means of intelligence every way equal? Our blessed Lord, to prove that he was not a Spectre, said, “Handle me and see.” That is implicitly to say, if you handle me and find no substance, then you may conclude that I am a spirit. Our Spectre said, “Handle me and see.” And earnestly insisted on this experiment time after time. Can we tell _now_, why that very argument and mode of evidence which Christ himself used, is not valid and genuine, any more than we could twenty-six years ago? If not, let me be cautious, whatever be the conduct of this enlightened age, how I accuse my neighbors of folly or villainy, merely because they enjoyed interviews with a departed friend; lest I be found among those who speak evil of things which they understand not.