On the other hand, the transcendentalists and the radical Unitarians proposed a new theory of the nature of religious truth, and insisted that the spiritual message of Christianity is inward, and not outward, directly to the soul of man, and not through the mediation of a person or a book. Almost from the first Channing had been moving towards this newer conception of the nature and method of religion. He did not wholly abandon the miraculous, but it grew to have less significance for him with each year. The Unitarian conception of religion as natural to man, which was maintained strenuously from the time of Jonathan Mayhew, made it probable, if not certain, that a merely external system of religion would be ultimately outgrown. In his lecture on self-denial Channing stated this position in the clearest terms. "If," he said, "after a deliberate and impartial use of our best faculties, a professed revelation seems to us plainly to disagree with itself or to clash with great principles which we cannot question, we ought not to hesitate to withhold from it our belief. I am surer that my rational nature is from God, than that any book is an expression of his will. This light in my own breast is his primary revelation, and all subsequent ones must accord with it, and are in fact intended to blend with and brighten it."[6] Channing was not alone in accepting Christianity as a spiritual principle that is natural and universal. As early as 1826 Alvan Lamson had defended the proposition that miracles are merely local in their nature, and that attention should be chiefly given to the tendency, spirit, and object of Christianity. He claimed that it bore on the face of it the marks of its heavenly origin, and that, when these are fully accepted, no other form of evidence is required.[7] In 1834 James Walker, in writing on The Philosophy of Man's Spiritual Nature in regard to the Foundations of Faith, had taken what was essentially the transcendentalist view of the origin and nature of religion. He contended for the "religion in the soul" that is authenticated "by the revelations of consciousness."[8] In 1836 Convers Francis, in, describing the religion of Christ as a purely internal principle, maintained the "quiet, spirit-searching character of Christianity," as "a kingdom wholly within the soul of man."[9]