The Common Scold-The Cotton of Catholicity-The Argument from "I sign"-Eternal Succession of Being-Plurality of Gods--The Fall of Ma Is it Just that Animals should Endure Uncompensated Suffering because " Adam's Fall we Sinned All?"-Divine Mercy not a Sin-License.

THERE is so much of the method of the common scold the "Notes" that the task of review becomes an unpleasa

Ingersoll." It will not do to say that the universe is signed, and therefore there must be a designer."

Listen to the profound comment of the Father: Lambert.-"Why not, if all have a right to give their hon thoughts?"

Is such stuff the cotton of Catholicity with which it clo the eyes and stops the ears of its votaries? Does not Father know that the words, "it will not do to say" im only that it is not logical to say, but by no means that the who believe in the argument from design have no moral rig to advance it ?

I am not indisposed to admit that there is great force in t argument. John Stuart Mill advised the theist to stick to as his most available defence against atheistic encroachme Dr. James McCosh, who, in his work on "Christianity a Positivism," gives one of the strongest presentations of argument, referring to Mr. Mill's remark, says (I quote fr

memory), that, in this instance, he will follow the advice of an adversary.

Still, the argument has its difficulties, as some of the most learned of the advocates of Christianity have admitted. Rather in a spirit of exposition than disputation I will mention some of them. Briefly stated the argument from design is this: the works of nature show design; design implies a designer; hence God. Some have believed in an eternal succession of being; and, unless disproved by science, it is difficult to logically controvert the possibility of such succession. We can as readily apprehend the idea of a chain composed of successive links co-extensive with space as we can the infinite extension of space itself. Again, the belief in a plurality of gods meets us as a doctrine held by some of the greatest minds of antiquity, and which in former times was believed in by the great majority of the ignorant and educated. Even the Jews believed that the heathen gods were real deities, though far inferior to Jehovah. Christian theology, also, affirms that there are three Gods, co-equal and infinite in every divine attribute, although declaring that the Three, in some inexplicable sense, are one. But in the statement of this doctrine and its consequences Catholics and Protestants do not agree: the one holding that Mary was the Mother of God, the other repudiating this dogma. Nor is this divergence of belief barren of important differences; for, if the Catholic be correct, the Protestant is withholding praise from one to whom reverence is due as unto the next to God in glory and honor; while, if the Protestant is right, Mariolatry is idolatry.

Ingersoll.-"Was there no design in having an infinite de

signer?"

Lambert.-"None whatever, because there can be nothing back of an eternal designer."

Certainly not; but the “eternal" part of it is the very ques

tion in debate. Thus is assumed, by one dash of the pen, th point in dispute.

Ingersoll." It is somewhat difficult to discern the desig or the benevolence in so making the world that billions o animals live on the agonies of others."

Lambert.-" Until you prove that God so made the worl that billions of animals live on the agonies of others, you ar not called upon to discern design or benevolence in this ago nizing state of things. It does not follow because agony suffering exist that God designed it to be so. It is for you t prove that God designed this suffering before you should at tribute it to him. You should be just-even to God."

Can it be possible that Father Lambert fails to see the issu raised by Mr. Ingersoll's remark? or that he is ignorant of th scientific facts to which he alludes? or-no, he would no intentionally mislead those whom it is his duty to point heaven ward. Therefore I say-for I think I understand the Fatho -that he attributes all of the suffering in the animal kingdon to the primal sin of Adam. If not, if God did not design it, t what does he impute that suffering? We find from the con formation of the teeth, stomach and other structural parts o animals, that some were made carnivorous, flesh-eaters; other herbivorous, feeders on plants and trees; yet thousands of year before man inhabited this globe, we are told by those wh have delved the deepest into this "rock-ribbed earth" brought to the light most of its hidden secrets, that flesh ha nurtured flesh, torn by the stronger from the bones of weake animals-the herbivorous becoming the victims of the carniv orous, who devoured also the weaker of their own species The scales of fishes and bones of animals found in the excre ments of extinct animals prove these facts beyond scientifi doubt.

Had we the ability, we could not in an essay like this in

corporate a treatise on geology or paleontology; but we have asserted only facts known to the merest tyros in these departments, and asserted by men the best informed in these sciences, and of almost every grade of religious faith. Why should Christian teachers ignore these facts, and attempt to brush them away by the force of an obscure sentence?

If design can be seen in nature, the teeth, stomach, etc., of animals indicate that they were originally intended to feed upon each other—the weaker and more innocent to be devoured by the stronger and more savage. Such is the order of nature, and ever has been, according to the "testimony of the rocks." If, then, death and suffering did exist before human transgression (as science teaches us it did), why claim that, contrary to all analogy, the effect goes before its cause? Or, if it be true that there is one exception, to the otherwise universal law, that the cause in the order of time precedes its effect, it is incumbent on those who assert it to prove it-and that by the most irrefragable evidence.

Lambert.-" God made man a free agent.... But man abused the gift of liberty, and, in so doing, produced discord in universal harmony.... He betrayed it [his trust] and thus became a victim of the disorder he himself produced. The agent is responsible to his principal, and a failure to perform the duties assigned him brings upon him punishment and disgrace."

Be it so, and, waiving the hardship to prattling infancy, in that the child must suffer for sin committed six thousand years before it was born, does it seem just that dumb brutes should endure uncompensated suffering because

"In Adam's fall

We sinned all?"

You may be right in your picture of a world where all

things dark and mysterious to us here will there be illumined by heavenly light. I hope so.

It is said that Agassiz believed in the immortality of fishes -at worst a beautiful conceit, which showed the goodness of the great man's soul. But no heaven could we covet where we must lose the identity of self-forget the past with its memories of moral battles fought and won—of friendships so dear and loves so holy that heaven would not be heaven if it denied their continuance. Picture not to us, "beyond the parting and the greeting,” a heaven darkened and made desolate by the absence of loved ones, in their eternal banishment made translucent by the lurid glare of hell. Those of us dissenters who revere a Supreme Spirit bow not to a Moloch, with fiery outstretched arms, waiting to receive helpless victims consigned to him by soulless dogma; but a being whose love extendeth to all, and whose "mercy endureth forever."

Yet let no one have the temerity or ingratitude to construe that mercy into a sin-license. Suffering in the moral world is the child of violated law, and, if the soul survive the decay of the body, we cannot conceive why God is under greater obligation, or is more willing, irrespective of our own efforts, to save us from the consequences of our sins hereafter than in our present state.