Ib. p. 54.

  Let them not attempt to escape it by quoting a few disconnected
  phrases in the Epistles, but let them adhere solely and steadfastly to
  that Gospel of which they affect to be the exclusive preachers.

And whence has the Barrister learnt that the Epistles are not equally binding on Christians as the four Gospels?  Surely, of St. Paul’s at least, the authenticity is incomparably clearer than that of the first three Gospels; and if he give up, as doubtless he does, the plenary inspiration of the Gospels, the personal authority of the writers of all the Epistles is greater than two at least of the four Evangelists.  Secondly, the Gospel of John and all the Epistles were purposely written to teach the Christian Faith; whereas the first three Gospels are as evidently intended only as ‘memorabilia’ of the history of the Christian Revelation, as far as the process of Redemption was carried on in the life, death, and resurrection of the divine Founder.  This is the blank, brazen, blushless, or only brass-blushing, impudence of an Old Bailey Barrister, attempting to browbeat out of Court the better and more authentic half of the witnesses against him.  If I wished to understand the laws of England, shall I consult Hume or Blackstone—­him who has written his volumes expressly as comments on those laws, or the historian who mentions them only as far as the laws were connected with the events and characters which he relates or describes?  Nay, it is far worse than this; far Christ himself repeatedly defers the publication of his doctrines till after his death, and gives the reason too, that till he had sent the Holy Ghost, his disciples were not capable of comprehending them.  Does he not attribute to an immediate influence of especial inspiration even Peter’s acknowledgment of his Filiation to God, or Messiahship?—­Was it from the Gospels that Paul learned to know Christ?—­Was the Church sixty years without the awful truths taught exclusively in John’s Gospel?

Part III. p. 5.

The ‘nostrum’ of the mountebank will he preferred to the prescription of the regular practitioner.  Why is this?  Because there is something in the authoritative arrogance of the pretender, by which ignorance is overawed.

This is something; and true as far as it goes; that is, however, but a very little way.  The great power of both spiritual and physical mountebanks rests on that irremovable property of human nature, in force of which indefinite instincts and sufferings find no echo, no resting-place, in the definite and comprehensible.  Ignorance unnecessarily enlarges the sphere of these:  but a sphere there is,—­facts of mind and cravings of the soul there are,—­in which the wisest man seeks help from the indefinite, because it is nearer and more like the infinite, of which he is made the image:—­for even we are infinite, even in our finiteness infinite, as the Father in his infinity.  In many caterpillars there is a large empty space in the head, the destined room for the pushing forth of the ‘antennae’ of its next state of being.