Acting on his principles, Mr. Newman refuses to “depress” his conscience (as he says) to the Bible standard.  He affirms, that in many cases the Bible sanctions, and even enjoins, things which shock his moral sense as flagrantly immoral, and he must therefore reject them as supposed to be sanctioned by God.  He in different places gives instances;—­as the supposed approbation of the assassination of Sisera by the wife of Heber, the command to Abraham to sacrifice his son, and the extermination of the Canaanites.  Now, whether the Bible represents God, or not, in all these cases, as sanctioning the things in question, I shall not be at the pains to inquire, because I am willing to take it for granted that Mr. Newman’s representation is perfectly correct.  I only think that he ought, in consistency, to have gone a little further.  Let him defend, as in perfect harmony with his “intuitions” of right and wrong, the undeniably similar instances which occur in the administration of the universe; or, if it be found impossible to solve those difficulties, let him acknowledge, either that our supposed essential “intuitions” of moral rectitude are not to be trusted, as applicable to the Supreme Being, and that therefore the argument from them against the Bible is inconclusive; or, that no such being exists; or, lastly, that he has conferred upon man an intuitive conception of moral equity and rectitude,—­of the just and the unjust,—­in most edifying contradiction to his own character and proceedings!

Here Fellowes broke in:—­

“If indeed there be any such instances; but I think Mr. Newman would reply, that they will be sought for in vain in the ‘world,’ however plentiful, as I admit they are, in the Bible.”

“I know not whether he would deny them or not,” said Harrington; “but they are found in great abundance in the world notwithstanding, and this is my difficulty.  If Mr. Newman were the creator of the universe, no question, none of these contradictions between ‘intuitions’ within, and stubborn ‘facts’ without, would be found.  He has created a God after his own mind; if he could but have created a universe also after his own mind, we should doubtless have been relieved from all our perplexities.  But, unhappily, we find in it, as I imagine, the very things which so startle Mr. Newman in the Scriptural representations of the divine character and proceedings.  Is he not, like all other infidels, peculiarly scandalized, that God should have enjoined the extermination of the Canaanites? and yet does not God do still more startling things every day of our lives, and which appear less startling only because we are familiar with them,—­at least, if we believe that the elements, pestilence, famine, in a word, destruction in all its forms, really fulfil his bidding?  Is there any difference in the world between the cases, except that the terrible phenomena which we find it impossible to account for are on an infinitely larger scale, and in duration