these spiritual and Divine topics? Nothing. What we term the "light of nature" is, as has been justly said, "only the reflected light of Revelation." The proper light of nature, or, as it should be termed, illumination from God, merely gives the power of confirming, by reflection and observation, the truths which we have already learned by instruction from Divine Revelation, in the days of our infancy and childhood. Warburton has admirably said, "Had not Revelation discovered the true principles of religion, they would, without doubt, have remained altogether unknown: yet, on their discovery, they appeared so consonant to human reason, that men were apt to mistake them for the production of it."[1] This is precisely the truth. As a proof of it, on the records of criminal courts are to be found frequent cases of persons endowed with good natural intelligence, who yet, from want of instruction in childhood, were found utterly ignorant of the being of a God, of the existence of a life after death—nay, of the fact that they themselves possessed an immortal soul at all. These great truths they were able to comprehend gradually when instructed, yet of themselves they had no knowledge of them. The same has been found to be true of those born deaf and dumb;—thus showing plainly that it is not, as some have imagined, by an inner light or light of nature that we know these Divine and spiritual things, but by instruction in the first place, from without,—from parents and teachers, who have themselves been instructed from written Revelation. Nay, is it not still stronger proof that there is not such an inner light, giving a knowledge of and belief in Divine things,—that we
- ↑ Divine Legation, Book III., Sec. V.}}
