Yet all this supposes that Christianity is something found by man outside himself, with whose origination he had nothing to do; but, if this be established, its supernatural origin, and therefore, supposing theism, its truth, is already proved, and can only receive confirmation from the argument of adaptability. If the Book of Mormon really came down from Heaven, my conviction that polygamy is not for the best, would seem a feeble objection against its claims. That the Judaeo-Christian religion is supernatural and is from without, not only with respect to the individual but to the race; that it is an external, God-given rule, awakening, explaining, developing man's natural religious instinct, correcting his own clumsy interpretations thereof, is just what gives it its claim to pre-eminence over all, even the most highly conceived, man-made interpretations of the same instinct. Yet though claiming to be a God-made interpretation, it is confessedly through human agency, through the human mind and lips of the prophets and of Christ that this revelation has come to us. Moreover, it involves, though it transcends, all those religious beliefs of which human nature seems exigent and which are, absolutely speaking, attainable by what might be called the "natural inspiration" of religious genius. Viewing the whole revelation in itself, its adaptability is evident only in respect to that part which might have originated with those minds through which it was delivered to us. If the beliefs proposed seem to have anticipated moral and intellectual needs not felt in the prophet's own age or society, this might be paralleled from the inspiration of genius in other departments, and could not of itself be regarded as establishing the _ab extra_ character of the revelation. Plainly, then, so far as a religion claims to be from outside, its adaptability to our religious and moral instincts may confirm but cannot establish its Divine origin, which, given theism, is equivalent to its truth. For to show that it is from outside, is to show that it is from God. It is only therefore with regard to man-made interpretations of our spiritual instincts, to the natural inspirations of religious genius, to the intuitions and even the reasoned inferences of the conscientious and clean-hearted, that the argument from adaptability can have any independent value. It is now no longer as one who argues from a comparison of lock and key to their common authorship; but rather we have a self-conscious lock, pining to be opened, and from a more or less imperfect self-knowledge dreaming of some sort of key and arguing that in the measure that its dream is based on true self-knowledge there must be a reality corresponding to it--a valid argument enough, supposing the locksmith to act on the usual lines and not to be indulging in a freak.