Farther, it appears that our experience of delusion forces us to enact a very severe test of supernatural revelation.  No doubt, we can conceive that which is equivalent to a new sense opening to us; but then it must have verifications connecting it with the other senses.  Thus, a particularly vivid sort of dream recurring with special marks, and communicating at once heavenly and earthly knowledge, of which the latter was otherwise verified, would probably be admitted as a valid sort of evidence:  but so intense would be the interest and duty to have all unravelled and probed to the bottom, that we should think it impossible to verify the new sense too anxiously, and we should demand the fullest particulars of the divine transaction.  On the contrary, it is undeniable that all such severity of research is rebuked in the Scriptures as unbelief.  The deeply interesting process of receiving supernatural revelation.—­a revelation, not of moral principles, but of outward facts and events, supposed to be communicated in a mode wholly peculiar and unknown to common men,—­this process, which ought to be laid open and analyzed under the fullest light, if we are to believe the results at second hand, is always and avowedly shrouded in impenetrable darkness.  There surely is something here, which denotes that it is dangerous to resign ourselves to the conclusions of the apostles, when their logical notions are so different from ours.

I farther inquired, what sort of miracle I could conceive, that would alter my opinion on a moral question.  Hosea was divinely ordered to go and unite himself to an impure woman:  could I possibly think that God ordered me to do so, if I heard a voice in the air commanding it?  Should I not rather disbelieve my hearing, than disown my moral perceptions?  If not, where am I to stop?  I may practise all sorts of heathenism.  A man who, in obedience to a voice in the air, kills his innocent wife or child, will either be called mad, and shut up for safety, or will be hanged as a desperate fanatic:  do I dare to condemn this modern judgment of him?  Would any conceivable miracle justify my slaying my wife?  God forbid!  It must be morally right, to believe moral rather than sensible perceptions.  No outward impressions on the eye or ear can be so valid an assurance to me of God’s will, as my inward judgment.  How amazing, then, that a Paul or a James could look on Abraham’s intention to slay his son, as indicating a praiseworthy faith!—­And yet not amazing:  It does but show, that apostles in former days, like ourselves, scrutinized antiquity with different eyes from modern events.  If Paul had been ordered by a supernatural voice to slay Peter, he would have attributed the voice to the devil, “the prince of the power of the air,” and would have despised it.  He praises the faith of Abraham, but he certainly would never have imitated his conduct.  Just so, the modern divines who laud Joseph’s piety towards Mary, would be very differently affected, if events and persons were transported to the present day.