one shall take the liberty of reminding them that their own difficulties are greater still.

But if the creation of merriment on any subject in any way connected with religion be the error and the sin, I am by no means sure that many of our new spiritualists have not quite as much to answer for as myself. The great difference between us is that I have sometimes made my readers laugh at my illustrations, and they have as often made them laugh at their arguments; I have attacked error with irony, and they have assailed truth with paradox.

I confess, indeed, the sonorous solemnity with which they enforce their "Procul! oh procul! este profani ;" but the words from such lips are not the less laughable for all that; often more so. If "wisdom" sometimes "wears motley," it is quite as often the case that folly puts on the garb of wisdom. The owl is the symbol of wisdom; but the owl herself is not wise.

But Mr. Newman complains also of the plan of "The Eclipse:" he says, "it is self-condemning as a medium of controversy." "The Socratic dialogue," it seems, "when used in talk, may possibly have a legitimate use to a teacher addressing uncultivated minds;"- but he objects to it in print. Very natural. "In writing, where one person works both the puppets, it really is too puerile." But I divined Mr. Newman's answer, and guarded against it. It was easy to see, in his writings, on what mere splinters of evidence, a logic so buoyant as his could survive the wreck of an argument; and therefore I resolved that the greater part of the discussions in which his opinions were sifted, should be in the form of disquisition, and not dialogue. I made Harrington give, in this form, the sceptical

* Reply, p. 179.

results of accepting Mr. Newman's dogmas. In taking the positive argument on the other side ("On a Bookrevelation") I used the same form; as also in the notes on the three questions of Marriage, Slavery, and the Early Progress of Christianity, given to Mr. Fellowes; and in the notes on a "Fundamental Fallacy!" The only Dialogue in which Mr. Newman's views of an external revelation are canvassed at any length (though I conceive abundantly sufficient as a reductio ad absurdum), concludes* with an express admission that the principles of his main doctrine have not been entered into, and that they are reserved for the subsequent disquisition on a "Book-revelation." I may remark in general that at least half the entire volume is free from this novel sin of- Dialogue!

Of course it would be pleasant to an adversary to dictate the form in which he shall sift our opinions; but he is not likely to grant it; nor shall I to mine. Nor do I allow that the Platonic dialogue need be the "screen of infinite sophistries." All depends on the fairness with which an adversary's opinions are cited; whether I have here done Mr. Newman injustice or not, will be seen in a future page: I contend that I have not. As to "working both the puppets," — it is in fact no more than is, to a great extent, necessarily done in every work of controversy, whatever its form, and rather more disguisedly in the ordinary form; in all alike, an opponent's arguments are stated by him who confutes them, and whether fairly stated and dealt with, or not, depends on the clearness of head and integrity of heart of him who states them.

Mr. Newman complains of having to fight with a "sham adversary" (the sceptic), and says, that he

D

"shrinks with a most painful repugnance from one who, by discarding his personality, thinks to get free from moral responsibility."* It is really hard to know what to make of all this. Does he refer to my having introduced Harrington-whether a real or imaginary character, matters not to use the argumentum ad hominem, or does he refer to my having published anonymously? I am quite in the dark. If the former, I presume Plato, Pascal, and Berkeley will be a sufficient apology; if the latter, I presume I require none. I published anonymously — partly and, indeed, principally — that the book might sink or swim purely by its own merits or demerits, without anything either to conciliate or prejudice in a name. I used it as a moral electrometer, to ascertain the intensity of the “spiritual” currents in our day; or as a feather, to see which way the wind blew, and whether my countrymen still took any considerable interest in that "historical Christianity," which so many of our modern infidels have asserted is all but exploded amongst us. I am rejoiced to find that they do ; and that I may apply, with a little alteration, to some of our vaunting opponents, the passage in which Burke characterises the noisy revolutionists of his day:"Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle repose in the shade, and are silent, pray do not suppose that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; or that, after all, they are other than the little, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour."

But as to my being a "sham antagonist,"-I should have thought that the decision with which, when speaking in my own person, principles were laid down, and

• Phases. Reply, p. 180.

the consequences of argument taken, might have left no doubt that I was none. Though I rode into the field with a plain shield and a barred vizor, I should have thought there could be as little doubt about my being no "sham antagonist," as Brian-de-Bois Guilbert could have felt about Ivanhoe, when that knight touched his shield with the sharp end of his lance.

In conclusion, the very worst thing I wish Mr. Newand I am sure it is the kindest, very

man,

is, that

But

he may re-trace his way to the faith he has abandoned, and advocate the truths he now seeks to subvert. if this is not to be, and he will continue to write against Christianity, then I hope it may be with the same force of logic, the same taste, discrimination, and self-control, which he has manifested in the chapter "on the Perfection of Christ," and his "Reply to The Eclipse of Faith.""

SECTION II.

HOW FAR I ENDORSE HARRINGTON D'S ARGUMENT,

AND WHETHER I BELIEVE IN AN UNMORAL DEITY.

AND now I propose to re-state for Mr. Newman's benefit, who seems inclined to evade it or for the benefit of any other Deist who is disposed to take up the gauntlet for him that argument of Harrington D- from which my critic so preposterously infers such strange things as these: "It is impossible to doubt the intensity of this Christian advocate's conviction that all nature testifies with overpowering force, to every impartial mind, that its Creator is reckless of all moral considerations" * "With energetic

and dogmatic earnestness he enforces upon me, that God, as revealed to him and me in Nature, has no constent or trustworthy moral character." I answer (as I have already briefly done) that neither does Harrington Dprofess any such "conviction," nor "enforce " any such doctrine, nor if he did, do I. He argues - and I so far quite " endorse " the reasoning-that the rigid adoption of Mr. Newman's own criterion, by which he rejects certain facts of Scripture, as morally unworthy of God, will necessitate a similar conclusion in relation to some of the facts of the universe. I do not,

any more than Harrington, assert (he is a sceptic simply, and asserts nothing, I am a Christian, I humbly hope, and assert the contrary,) that the facts of the universe