be rejected; consequently its existence in our Scriptures would simply prove their corruption, not the truth of the doctrine. Our opponent being determined to resist the utmost amount of evidence, it was needless for him to have advanced further. With a mind so bent against the reception of evidence, what advantage could be anticipated from discussion?

To the argument that our reason is feeble, and that a thousand things about us are as incomprehensible as the Divine mystery, he replies, that these things are involved in creation, and are therefore nothing to the point. Every thing that we, can think of, he divides into three classes:¹ (1) the absolute, whose existence is beyond change or question; (2) the impossible, whose existence cannot be conceived ; and (3) the possible, of which the existence and non-existence are both imaginable. The mysteries of nature belong to the third class, and, liable to change and composition, cannot be regarded as analogies of the Divine nature; but real trinity in unity is included in the second category, and, therefore, the mysteries of nature, however incomprehensible, cannot affect its impossibility. He thus asserts that the doctrine in dispute is not incomprehensible, but impossible; and he accuses Pfander of confounding that which it is impossible to comprehend with what we comprehend to be impossible. Thus, by begging the question, he renders his reasoning inconclusive.

The Maulavi feigns surprise that Pfander, having once renounced reason, should again at pleasure use it to his service. Reason, he pretends, is abjured by us only for the occasion; in one sense, indeed, we do reject our own reason, by taking up with that of the devil! He taunts his opponent: "At times affecting the extreme of piety, you abandon your reason and follow only the Word; at others, you hold the most extravagant absurdities, fabricated out of your own head, and even in opposition to the Scripture!" Thus he takes Pfander to task for speaking of the planets as hung in the air; assuming from the Old Testament the creation of a material Heavens, he accuses his adversary of substituting in their stead an empty space on the hypothesis of our