Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/189

 is not despicable on that account alone. Let what is really meritorious be pronounced so by the candid judge after due investigation ; blockheads only are swayed by the opinions of others." Natural Religion is bound to be catholic ; Revealed Religion cannot but be exclusive. With the latter God has spoken ; with the former He is ever speaking. The age of miracles is past, exclaims Revealed Religion; it shall never pass away, asserts Natural Religion. The former brands man as the offspring of darkness ; the latter cheers him as the child of light. The first states the laws of God to be inexorable ; the second proves them just and beneficent.

Nor is the appreciation, by a Theist, of the wisdom of other ages and countries any the less for his belief in the universality of inspiration. Rejecting the theory of plenary inspiration, he recognises that the dove of Heaven's "Holy Ghost" has been flying through all ages and countries and alighting at some time or other upon the head of 'very child of God: that He