“Susceptibility to pain,” says Mr. Newman, “is essential to corporeal being.”

Yes, susceptibility to pain; just as a created being must be liable to annihilation.  Must he be annihilated?  Just as a hungry stomach must be liable to starvation.  Must it be starved?  The primary office of susceptibilities to pain would seem to be to forewarn us to provide against it.  They certainly have that effect.  Does it necessarily follow that they must involve anguish and death?  Unless it be supposed, indeed, that nature, having provided such an admirable apparatus of “susceptibilities” of pain, thought it a thousand pities that they should not be employed.

But when it comes to “moral evil,” which Mr. Newman acknowledges cannot be so lightly disposed of, what then?

Why, then he says, “Let the Gordian knot be cut.”

Well, what then?  Why, then Mr. Newman frankly “assumes” that it is “transitory and finite,” (Soul, p. 45.) and will one day vanish from the universe, a supposition for which he condescends to give no reason whatever.

Stat pro ratione voluntas.

That this “moral evil” should have existed at all, much more to so immense an extent, under the administration of supposed infinite power, wisdom, and benevolence, is the great difficulty; that it will ever cease to be, is a pure assumption for the nonce; but if it will one day entirely vanish, it is gratuitous to suppose it might not have been prevented.

I, of course, acknowledge that we can give no answer to the questions involved in this transcendent mystery,—­that our ignorance is absolute; but I do say, that, if I am to trust to those “intuitions” of the Divine Goodness, on whose warranty Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker reject the Bible, as containing what is unworthy of their conceptions of God, I am compelled to proceed further in the same direction; and repudiate, as unworthy of Him, not merely some of the phenomena of the Book which men profess to be His word, but also some of the phenomena of that universe which men profess to be His work.  If I can only judge, as these gentlemen urge, of such a Being by the analogies of my own nature, no “intuition” of theirs can possibly seem stronger than do mine, that beings absolutely innocent ought not to suffer; that to inflict suffering upon them is injustice; that to permit any evils which we can prevent is in like manner to be accomplices in the crime.  On those very principles of all moral judgment which Mr. Newman says are innate and our only rule, I say I am compelled to these conclusions; for if God does those things which are ordinarily attributed to Him, He acts as much in contravention of these intuitions as in any acts attributed to Him in the Bible.  If it be said, that there may be reasons for such apparent violations of rectitude, which we cannot fathom, I deny it not:  but that is to acknowledge that the supposed maxims derived from the analogies of our own being are most deceptive