is all to be rejected; nor, if it be affirmed that they never did
record it, but that somebody else has put these matters into their
mouths, how we can be sure that any thing whatever of the small
remainder ever came out of their mouths. All this, ever, is of the
less consequence, as these gentlemen descend to tell us how we are
to separate the "spiritual" gold which faintly streaks the huge mass
of impure ore of fable, legend, and mysticism. Each man, it seems
has his own particular spade and mattock in his "spiritual faculty";
so off with you to the diggings in these spiritual mines of Ophir. You
will say, Why not stay at home, and be content at once, with the
advocates of the absolute sufficiency of the internal oracle, listen to
its responses exclusively? Ask these men--for I am sure I do not know;
I only know that the results are very different--whether the
possessor of "insight" listens to its own rare voice, or puts on
spectacles and reads aloud from the New Testament. Generally, as I
say, these good folks are resolved that all that is supernatural
and specially inspired in sacred volume is to be rejected; and as
to the rest, which by the way might be conveniently published as
the "Spiritualists' Bible" (in two or three sheets, 48mo, say),
that would still require a careful winnowing; for, while one man
tells us that the Apostle Paul, in his intense appreciation of
the "spiritual element," made light even of the "resurrection of
Christ," and everywhere shows his superiority to the beggarly elements
of history, dogma, and ritual, another declares that he was so
enslaved by his Jewish prejudices and the trumpery he had picked up
at the feet of Gamaliel, that he knew but little or next to nothing
of the real mystery of the very Gospel he preached; that while he
proclaims that it is "revealed, after having been hidden from ages
generations," he himself manages to hide it afresh. This you will be
told is a perpetual process, going on even now; that as all the