mpatible with his beneficence. And on
the other hand, if he is beneficent, the fact of his having adopted these
means in order that the sum of ultimate enjoyment might exceed the sum of
concomitant pain, is a fact which is wholly incompatible with his
omnipotence. To a man who already believes, on independent grounds, in an
omnipotent and beneficent Deity, it is no doubt possible to avoid facing
this dilemma, and to rest content with the assumption that, in a sense
beyond the reach of human reason, or even of human conception, the two
horns of this dilemma must be united in some transcendental reconciliation;
but if a man undertakes to reason on the subject at all, as he must and
ought when the question is as to the _existence_ of such a Deity, then
clearly he has no alternative but to allow that the dilemma is a hopeless
one. With inverted meaning, therefore, may we quote Professor Flint's words
against himself:--"The mind of man never shows itself so small as when it
tries to measure the attributes ... of its Creator;" for certainly, if
Professor Flint's usually candid mind has had a Creator, it nowhere
displays the "littleness" of prejudice in so marked a degree as it does
when "measuring his attributes."

Thus in a subsequent chapter he deals at greater length with this
difficulty of the apparent failure of beneficence in nature, arguing, in
effect, that as pain and suffering "serve many good ends" in the way of
warning animals of danger to life, &c., therefore we ought to conclude
that, if we could see farther, we should see pain and suffering to be
unmitigated good, or nearly so. Now this argument, as I have previously
said, may possibly be admissible as between Christians or others who
_already_ believe in the existence and in the beneficence of God; but it is
only the blindest prejudice which can fail to perceive that the argument is
quite without relevancy when the question is as to the _evidences_ of such
existence and the _evidences_ of such character. For where the _fact_ of
such an existence and character is the question in dispute, it clearly can
be no argument to state its bare assumption by saying that if we knew more
of nature we should find the relative preponderance of good over evil to be
immeasurably greater than that which we now perceive. The platform of
argument on which the question of "Theism" must be discussed is that of the
observable Cosmos; and if, as Dr. Flint is constrained to admit, there