quotes some
remarkable words from Dr. Newman's _Apologia_--"The being of a god is as
certain to me as the certainty of my own existence. Yet when I look
out of myself into the world of men, I see a sight which fills me with
unspeakable distress. _The world of men seems simply to give the lie to
that great truth_ of which my whole being is so full. If I looked into
a mirror and did not see my face, I should experience the same sort of
difficulty that actually comes upon me when _I look into this living
busy world and see no reflection of its Creator._" How, asks the Dean,
is this difficulty to be met? Oh, he replies, | we must turn to God the
Son in the person of Jesus Christ, and his utterances will supplement
and correct the uncertain sounds of nature; and then there is the Holy
Ghost to finally supply all omissions, and clear up all difficulties.
Now to our mind this is simply intellectual thimble-rigging. Or rather
does it not suggest the three-card trick? One card is useless, two cards
are unsafe, but with three cards to shuffle you are almost sure to
win. Dr. Newman gets his God through intuition; he maintains that
the existence of God is a primary fact of consciousness, and entirely
declines the impossible task of proving it from the phaenomena of nature.
Dean Stanley should do the same. It is not honest to employ an argument
and then shirk all the difficulties it raises by resorting to the
theological three-card trick, which confounds instead of satisfying the
spectator, while emptying his mental pockets of the good cash of common
sense.

The Dean's treatment of God the Son is amusing. He writes of Jesus
Christ as though he were a principle instead of a person. "The
Mahometan," he says, "_rightly_ objects to the introduction of the
paternal and filial relations into the idea of God, when they are
interpreted in the _gross and literal sense_. But in the moral spiritual
sense it is true that the kindness, tenderness and wisdom we find in
Jesus Christ is the reflection of the same kindness, tenderness and
wisdom which we recognise in the governance of the universe." This may
be called mysticism, but we think it moonshine. Gross and literal sense,
forsooth! Why, was not Jesus Christ a man, a most literal fact, "gross
as a mountain, open, palpable?" Dean Stanley approves the Mahometan's
objection, and yet he knows full well that it contravenes a fundamental
dogma of the Christian Church, and is accounted a most damna