MISCHIEVOUS THEOLOGY.

Evening Star, Issue 2907, 13 June 1872, Page 2

MISCHIEVOUS THEOLOGY.

To the Editor. Slit,—The contempt which your irritated and baffled correspondents pretend to feel for any statements of so young a man as myself, is scarcely consistent with the degree of prominence which they give to these statements. If a sentence of mine of eight t r ten lines is worthy of a review of a column in length, and my reply is considered worthy of rejoinders so incontinently long as the letters of “Christian” and “ i'conomicus,” one cannot forbear thinking that the expressions of contempt on the part of your correspondents are scarcely honest. Moreover, if I am so slight an antagonist, why is it considered necessary by “the other side” for two to be retained for the defence, one to charge me with rationalism, and the other with blasphemy ? Let your correspondents lay aside this silly affectation, and give your readers something better in the shape of argument than, “Young man, you are a very young man”—a statement at once false and (both in the technical and popular sense) impertinent. The letter of “Economicus ” (for I do not feel called upon to deal with his assistant junior counsel “Christian’), lengthy as it is, is so lightly weighted with argument that it need not detain us long. In my former

letter I asserted that I admit Malthas’* theory to be true as a theory, but that practically the world is not yet reduced to those straits in which alone the theory becomes applicable. Now. it so happens, your correspondent himself supplies the argument by which my statement may bo established He asks, “ Will the rev. gentleman refer to a single word in my letter where I said the doctrine of Malthas was applicable to this Colony or any new country?” I reply, if the doctrine is not practically applicable to new (that is, thinly-pupulafed) countries; if it is not applicable to America, nor to Africa, nor to Australasia—that is to say, if it is not applicable to the Western Hemisphere nor to the Southern Hemisphere—then “theworld is not reduced to those staits in which alone the theory becomes applicable.” This simple reply (so scanty is the residium of your correspondent's argument, when its scum of abuse is blown off) disposes of the first half of his letter. Let us now turn to the second half. To this a brief summary of the whole argument will be my best reply. Your correspondent laid hold of a passage in a recent letter of mine, wherein I had occasion to call attention to the great, the inscrutable mystery of the origin and continuance in the world of moral evil —a mystery which the wisdom of the ages, even when enlightened by revelation, has acknowledged to be insoluble, and which perhaps not even eternity (owing to the limitation of human intelligence) may fully disclose. In calling attention to the subject, I was careful to express myself in language to which no school ef theology could take exception. I said that the birth into the world of one who afterwards became a Judas is (in the final analysis of that fact) an inscrutable mystery. Your correspondent flatly denies that there is any mystery here at all. He denies that God has anything to do with the birth of such as Judas. “God is,” says this marvellous logician, “the Creator of man—i.c., of the race—but He is not the Creator of all men.” He is not the Creator of any whoso after-life is vicious. To assert that lie is, is blasphemy. Such is, as 1 understand it, the argument of your correspondent. Surely I am justified in saying that such a tissue of absurdity affords unmistakeable evidence that the writer is dealing with a subject he has only imperfectly studied. I would confidently leave it to the judgment ®f any man who has given serious thought to the great problem of moral evil, whether such a flippant handling of a theme so deep and solemn be not deserving of severe rebuke. To the unanswered arguments of my former letter in refutation of the infidel suggestions of your correspondent, I have nothing further to add. Having disposed of his arguments, it will not, I think, be necessary for me to notice his vulgar and impertinent abuse.

The last sentences of your correspondent’s letter I can compare to nothing but a display of fireworks. There is a fizz, a glare, an explosion, and then, prostrate at the bottom of the column lies the “unlearned, unorthodox,” economic burnt out stick. There I shall leave him. I am, &c., Thomas Rosebv. Dunedin, June 12.