so long as you affirm and deny so capriciously?  Who ‘strain at the gnats’ of the Bible, and ’swallow the camels’ of your Natural Religion?  You ought, on the principle on which you reject so much of the Bible,—­namely, that it does not harmonize with the deductions of your intellect, the instincts of conscience, the intuitions of the ‘spiritual faculty,’ and Heaven knows what,—­to become Manichaeans at the least.”

“But these very arguments,” said one of the youths, “are just the old-fashioned arguments of Butler, Which it is surely droll of all things to find a sceptic making use of.”

“I admit they are his, my friend; but not that there is any inconsistency in my employing them.  I affirm that Butler is quite right in his premises, though I may reject the conclusion to which he would bring me.  He leaves two alternatives, and only two, in my judgment, open; leaves two parties untouched; one is the Christian, and the other is the Atheist or the Sceptic, which-ever you please; but I am profoundly convinced he does not leave a consistent footing for any thing between.  His fire does not injure the Christian, for-comes out of his own camp; nor me, for it falls short of my lines; but for you, who have pitched your tent between, take heed to yourselves.  He proves clearly enough, that the very difficulties for which you reject Christianity exist equally, sometimes to a still amount, in the domain of nature.”

“Oh!” said the youngest, “we do not think that Butler’s argument is sound.”

“Then,” said Harrington, “the sooner you refute it the better.  All you have to do is, just to show that this world does not exhibit the inequalities, the miseries,—­the apparent caprice in its administration, —­the involuntary ignorance,—­the enormous wrongs,—­the wide-spread sorrows and death,—­it does.  You will do greater service to the Deist than the whole of the have ever done him yet.  I am convinced that Butler is not to be refuted.”

“But do you not recollect what no less a man than Pitt said,—­’Analogy is an argument so easily retorted!’” replied the same youth.

“Then you will have the less difficulty in retorting it,” said Harrington, coolly.  “Pitt’s observation only shows that he had forgotten the true object of the work, or never understood it.  For the purposes of refutation, it does not follow that an analogy may be easily retorted; it may be, and often is, irresistible.  It is when employed to establish a truth, not to expose an error, that it is often feeble.  If Butler had attempted to prove that the inhabitants of Jupiter must be miserable, nothing could have been more ridiculous than to adduce the analogy of our planet.  But if he merely wished to show that it did not follow that that beautiful orb, being created by infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, must be an abode of happiness, (just the Rationalist style of reasoning,) it would be quite sufficient to introduce the speculator to this ill-starred planet of ours.”