and the less, as I believe with Mr. Parker, that the only true revelation is in all men alike.'”

I will not here farther insist on the monstrosity of bringing forward St. Paul's words as mine, in order to pour contempt upon them; a monstrosity which no sophistry of Mr. Harrington can justify. But I now point to the fact, that Mr. Fellowes is purposely employed to make damaging concessions; so that the whole is a prevarication from beginning to end. Moreover, the author deliberately shows his belief, that the profane scoffer is competent to judge of deep spiritual questions.

But I come to a matter still graver; namely, that not a word which Mr. Harrington says concerning my opinions or arguments is trustworthy as to fact. His misrepresentation of me is so systematic, continuous, and stealthy, that to convict him and prove my points everywhere would need a volume. I can only give leading matters, which indeed will suffice.

1. I have already noted how falsely he insinuates that I claim some exclusive inspiration; whereas I only claim that which all pious Christians and Jews since David have always claimed. So resolute is he here to ridicule me, that, in p. 87, he proposes to nickname me Professor of Spiritual Insight.

2. He often implies and inculcates that my religion, according to me, has received nothing by Traditional and Historical agencies; that it owes nothing to men who went before me; that I believe I have a spiritual faculty "so bright as to anticipate all essential spiritual verities," p. 130; that had it not been for Traditional religion, "we should everywhere have heard the invariable utterance of spiritual religion in the one dialect of the heart," p. 135; that "this divinely implanted faculty of spiritual discernment anticipates all

external * truth," p. 135; &c., &c. Now all this is so far from being my doctrine, that it is the direct and most intense reverse of all that I have most elaborately and carefully written. I have in the "Soul" dwelt largely on the Historical Progress of Religion, and have shown how each age depends ordinarily on the preceding. In p. 169 of this treatise, the same is distinctly advanced. In p. 174 our mutual dependence is set forth. What is more, in my treatise on the Soul I have assimilated religious science to mathematical science, in respect to two cardinal facts: 1st, that each man inherits immense advantage from the labors of preceding minds; 2d, that each man has to appropriate these labors for himself, and learn to believe independently of the authority of his teachers. Until he has attained this point, he has learned nothing as he ought. Now I may be right, or wrong, in holding that religious science and all science have these points in common; but, inasmuch as the case of mathematics is indisputably clear, no man ought to misunderstand me, and no one has a right to pretend that I am self-contradictory, as a plea for his misrepresentations. This author says of me: "EVERY ONE CAN SEE† that Mr. Newman's system too has been derived from without; that it is, in fact, nothing but a distorted Christianity." p. 136. This is intended to make the reader suppose that I deny it. Deny it? Just as much as I deny that my mathematics have come from Euler, and New

* For external truth possibly he meant to write "external transmission of truth."

† Similarly p. 146: "It is odd that Mr. Newman does NOT perceive that, if it were not for the Bible, his religion would no more have assumed the peculiar cast it has, than that of Aristotle and Cicero." Yet in p. 294 he quotes what proves that I do perceive it.

Of course the invidious word distorted is not mine.

ton, and Descartes, and Archimedes, and Euclid. Deny it? Why, this writer perfectly knows the contrary. In this very discussion he argues against my doctrine of "progress" in religion, p. 141. he quotes my grateful recognition of the he thinks he can use * it against me. pretends I am not aware that I have Christian teachers!

In p. 294, Bible, where

And yet he learned from

For the sake of any one who is really and honestly stupid as to my meaning, I will here reiterate, that when I deny that History can be Religion, or a part of Religion, I mean it exactly in the same sense in which we all say that History is not Mathematics. "Newton wrote the Principia": true; but to make that proposition a part of Mathematics would be an egregious blunder as to the very nature of the science. A man might be quite as good a mathematician, though he had never heard of Newton's name. In the above, change Newton and Principia into Moses and Pentateuch, or David and Psalms, or Paul and Epistles, and change Mathematics into Religion, and (I say) all remains true. I may be right, or I may be wrong; but I speak most distinctly. Religion and Mathematics alike come to us by Historical Transmission; but where the sciences flourish, we judge of them for ourselves, make them our own, become independent of our teachers, add to their wisdom, and bequeathe an improved store to our successors; but these sciences have never flourished, and cannot flourish, where received

* Even there he proceeds to tell his reader that the Bible has had "more. to do than I think" with originating my present conceptions of truth. Where have I claimed any personal originality? To prove one's originality in moral and spiritual thought, can scarcely ever be possible, since we all are always imbibing from all sides; to assert it, therefore, is never advisable. The New Testament has very little original truth.

on authority. They come to us by external transmission, but are not believed because of that transmission; and no historical facts concerning that transmission are any part of the science at all. Mathematics is concerned with Relations of Quantities, Religion with the normal Relations between Divine and Human Nature. That is all.

3. I must quote another very gross case of garbling by this author. In p. 224 he writes:

"Do you remember, that Mr. Newman says that, when he was a boy, he read Benson's Life of Fletcher, and thought Fletcher a more perfect man than Jesus Christ?.... As to Mr. Newman's impression, I do not think it worth an answer. When a man so forgets himself as to say what he can hardly help knowing will be unspeakably painful to multitudes of his fellowcreatures on the strength of boyish impressions, . . . . I think it scarcely worth while to reply. Christianity is willing to consider the arguments of men, but not the impressions of boys."

No one can possibly read this, without understanding that I recommended my boyish impressions as something trustworthy, something for which I claimed respect from "Christianity." This is not said indeed, but is distinctly implied, and, I am forced to think, is undoubtedly the idea intended to be impressed on readers. Yet it is simply and totally the very reverse of the fact.

He says, that, when a boy, I thought Fletcher a more perfect man than Jesus Christ. This is not true: I made no comparison whatever. The idea did not occur to me, and could not then occur. My statement was, that Fletcher, as depicted by Benson, appeared to me, when I was a boy, to be a perfect man (I did not say more perfect than Jesus); and the inference which

I drew was, not that my boyish impression deserved respect, but that it may be a warning how untrustworthy is such criticism, proceeding from the uneducated, who are no wiser in criticism than I was when a boy.

The author of the "Eclipse" has here again intruded into a controversy with which he has no concern. As, elsewhere, he officiously fights the battle of sceptics against me, so here he fights that of a remarkable and able, but very new and very small school. Unitarians, to whom (I believe) he would ordinarily refuse the Christian name, he is now pleased to identify with Christianity. "CHRISTIANITY is not willing to consider the impressions of boys!" Why? Because I say to my Unitarian friends,- Since you will yourselves admit that I made a great blunder when a boy, in mistaking the overdrawn picture of Mr. Fletcher's excellence for a perfect reality, since this was an illusion which manly criticism hardly sufficed to dispel, — it appears to me that you cannot supersede miracles and the miraculous conception of Jesus, by setting the uncritical to judge for themselves in favor of the Moral Perfection of Jesus, and make that judgment the basis of Christianity.

Now this author happens to agree with me so far. He even intensely rejects the belief that our discernment of the moral and spiritual can be made the basis of religion: it is his cardinal point of attack against me. But when I oppose my friend Martineau, who goes beyond me in this,- (for I only say that our dis cernment, defective as it is, is the best thing we have got, and the only thing that can be made a basis at all; while Martineau says that illiterate, uneducated people ought to have, and have, so sound a moral discernment, as not only to judge that a character is above them, but that it is infinitely Perfect and an Absolute