will not say that they know that. The distinction between the certain and the probable is felt to be far too important not to be marked by corresponding varieties of speech; and speech has made them according." ____ July 10. This morning Harrington fulfilled his promise of acquainting me with a few of the reasons which prevented his taking refuge in the "half-way houses" between the Bible and Religious Scepticism. Mr. Fellowes was an attentive listener. Harrington had entitled his paper,-- REASONS FOR DECLINING THE VIA MEDIA BETWEEN REVEALED RELIGION AND ATHEISM--OR SCEPTICISM WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE THEORIES OF MR. THEODORE PARKER AND MR. FRANCIS NEWMAN. I shall be brief; not being solicitous to suggest doubts to others, but merely to justify my own. Both Mr. Parker and Mr. Newman make themselves very merry with a "book-revelation," as they call it; and if they had given any thing better,--more rational or more certain than the Bible,--how gladly could I have joined in the ridicule! As it is, I doubt the solidity of the theories they support, 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. ----