AN EXTERNAL REVELATION, EVEN OF ELEMENTARY "SPIRITUAL AND MORAL TRUTHS" VERY POSSIBLE, AND VERY USEFUL; AND IN ANALOGY WITH THE CONDITIONS OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, WHETHER IN THE INDIVIDUAL OR THE SPECIES. It is Necessary to observe in the outset, that, even if I were to grant your proposition, "that a revelation of moral and spiritual truth is impossible,"--understanding by such "truth" what you seem to mean, the truth which "Natural Religion," as it is called, has recognized in some shape or other (for it has varied not a little),--it would leave the chief reasons for imparting an external revelation just where they were. I, at least, should never contend that the sole or even chief object of an external revelation is to impart elementary moral or spiritual truth, however possible I may deem it. On the contrary, I am fully persuaded that the great purpose for which such a revelation has been given is to communicate facts and truths many of which were quite transcendental to the human faculties; which man would never have discovered, and most of which he would never have surmised. All this your favorite Mr. Newman perceived in his earlier days clearly enough, and has recorded his sentiments held at that period in his "Phases."(p.42) If I were to grant you, therefore, your proposition, it would leave the question of an external revelation untouched; your hasty inference from it, that every book-revelation is to be rejected, is perfectly gratuitous. But I am thoroughly persuaded that the notion of the impossibility of all external revelation of moral and spiritual truth, even of the elementary form already referred to, is a fallacy.