It was also probable in another light.  This world is a world of incarnations; nothing has a real and potential existence, which is not embodied in some form.  A theory is nothing; if no personal philosopher, no sect, or school of learners, takes it up.  An opinion is mere air; without the multitude to give it all the force of a mighty wind.  An idea is mere spiritual light; if unclad in deeds, or in words written or spoken.  So, also, of the Godhead:  He would be like all these.  He would pervade words spoken, as by prophets or preachers:  He would include words written, as in the Bible:  He would influence crowds with spirit-stirring sentiments:  He would embody the theory of all things in one simple, philosophic form.  As this material world is constituted, God could not reveal himself at all, excepting by the aid of matter.  I mean; even granting that He spiritually inspired a prophet, still the man was necessary:  he becomes an inspired man; not mere inspiration.  So, also, of a book; which is the written labour of inspired men.  There is no doing without the Humanity of God, so far as this world is concerned, any more than His Deity can be dispensed with, regarding the worlds beyond worlds, and the ages of ages, and the dread for ever and ever.

MAHOMETANISM.

It seems expedient that, in one or two instances, I should attempt the illustration of this rule of probability in matters beyond the Bible.  As very fair ones, take Mahometanism and Romanism.  And first of the former.

At the commencement of the seventh century, or a little previously to that era, we know that a fierce religion sprang up, promulgated by a false prophet.  I wish briefly to show that this was antecedently to have been expected.

In a moral point of view, the Christian world, torn by all manner of schisms, and polluted by all sorts of heresies, had earned for the human race, whether accepting the gospel or refusing it, some signal and extensive punishment at the hands of Him, who is the Great Retributor as well as the Munificent Rewarder.  In a physical point of view, the civilized kingdoms of the earth had become stagnant, arguing that corrupt and poisonous calm which is the herald of a coming tempest.  The heat of a true religion had cooled down into lukewarm disputations about nothings, scholastical and casuistic figments; whilst at the same time the prevalence of peaceful doctrines had amalgamated all classes into a luxurious indolence.  Passionate Man is not to be so satisfied; and the time was fully come for the rise of some fierce spirit, who should change the tinsel theology of the crucifix for the iron religion of the sword:  who should blow in the ears of the slumbering West the shrill war-blast of Eastern fervencies; who should exchange the dull rewards of canonization due to penance, or an after-life voluntary humiliation under pseudo-saints and angels, for the human and comprehensible joys of animal appetite and military glory:  who should enlist under his banner all the frantic zeal, all the pent-up licentiousness, all the heart-burning hatreds of mankind, stifled either by a positive barbarism, or the incense-laden cloud of a scarcely-masked idolatry.