And therefore are we very bold to assert that it is all too late for men _now_ to vaunt the authority of the Moral Sense, as a thing to be set up against the fixed and immutable Revelation of GOD'S mind and will. "The sufficiency of Natural Religion is a paradox of modern invention, and the boast of it comes with an ill grace, and under great suspicions, so late in the day of trial[387]." Aye, it comes all too late. Here in England, (GOD be praised!) the moral sense is indeed strong. Is it _as_ strong, think you, among those continental nations which are under the spiritual yoke of Rome? Is it as strong among the Hindoos? Is it as strong among the savage inhabitants of central Australia?... Perceive you not that if Moral Science speaks with a loud and clear voice in Christian lands, it is because there the Moral Sense has been in those lands informed afresh by Revelation? "That the principles of Natural Religion have come to be so far understood and admitted, may fairly be taken for one of the effects of the Gospel[388]." The echoes of the voice of GOD are now so distinct, only because GOD hath suffered His awful voice to be heard on earth again: and if among ourselves those echoes are the loudest and the clearest, is it not because among ourselves the Bible is read the most? "The fact" (says the thoughtful writer already quoted,)--"the fact is not to be denied; the Religion of Nature _has_ had the opportunity of rekindling her faded taper by the Gospel light,--whether furtively or unconsciously availed of. Let her not dissemble the obligation, and make a boast of the splendour, as though it were originally her own; or had always, in her hands, been sufficient for the illumination of the World."--"It is not to be imagined that men fail to profit by the light that has been shed upon them, though they have not always the integrity to own the source from which it comes; or though they may turn their back upon it, whilst it fills the very atmosphere in which they move, with glory[389]." I say, therefore, that it is _all too late_ to vaunt the supremacy of Conscience as opposed to Revelation,--Moral as opposed to Theological Science. Moral Science owes all its renewed strength and vigour to Theology. And so, were Moral Science to dare call in question, (as she sometimes _has_ done, and may dare to do again!), the Morality of the Bible,--we should find her monstrous image nowhere so fitly as in that of the man whose withered hand CHRIST healed in the Synagogue,--if the same man had proved such a wretch, as straightway to lift up his arm with intention to smite his Benefactor and his GOD.