TRUTH OUT OF ERROR.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4656, 6 December 1883, Page 2

TRUTH OUT OF ERROR.

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.) The eagle sunward soars;. the owl . In quest of mice in darkness prowls. .

! Sib,—Having demolished the three j famous positions of M.C., panic-stricken, he has caught hold of the devil by the tail and, under cover of his Satanic majesty, beat an ignoble retreat. It is amusing to hear the percussion of his pop-guns and mock thunder of his bursting windbags, as he sheers off under shelter of the above named venerable old gentleman. Yet, strange to say, though beneath the seven-fold shield of Auld Clootie, he thinks he is not quite secure, therefore, in his headlong retreat, he picks up a fellow mousehunter, and throws him across his shoulders. Feeling more secure, he gathers courage, and onwarcl treads with firmer step, thinking doubtless that he has shown fight, though running away, he has some claim to victory. I a*o Rl&& ac "as acquired the common sense to acknowledge that man comes into the world a chaos of error. Yet be has not the nous to discern that of necessity man from his birth to his death would remain such without the aid of teachers. Bather owlish this. Again, in the darkness of,

error within him, he swoops down on parents and teachers as if they were mere mice, and with triumphant hootjte-hoo, screeches " All are steeped in error," — let us hope, himself not excepted. As the above sweeping assertion could not have emanated from a brain fairly balanced we must humanely accept it as the outcome of a mind benighted, bewildered, and besotted by error. Again, every error we commit is a lie. It must be so, for his fellow-owl endorses it as a fact. Beautiful owlish logic this. Of a verity these mousers are so accustomed to, and delighted with darkness, that when light \ .floods in upon them they close their eyes, and in pious horror exclaim, " Get tbee behind me, Satan ! " As for M.C.'s halfuncrackable nuts, I must say that as far as they refer to my premises, they were so thin skinned that the kernels dropped out of their husks on my slightest handling. Nut No. 1. Truth never had an independent existence in man. No. 2. Truth nerer stood upon immovable basis in man. . No. 3. Error is not man's stumbling block, but his great and inexorable educator. No. 4. Truth never existed in man without error. No. 5. Ignorance and rebellion being error there was no necessity for their creeping in, error being part qL man's nature. No. 6. Same as No.~^ i In my argument I have never trenched upon Divine truth or religious belief, but have simply sought to prove that all truth acquired by man for,the maintenance of his very existence in anything like comfort has been won through long series of laborious and painful conflict with error, and that without this irritant to quicken and develop the attributes of heart and mind the human race had ever remained in imbecility. Trusting that M. C.'s diseased mental vision may speedily be healed, wishing him farewell, I am, &c, Whit ro You Think of Youa Nuts.