f these awful forms. One almost envies him the truly childlike faith
with which he waves his hand to these Alps, and says, "Be ye removed,
and east into the sea"; but the feeling is exchanged for another, when
he seems to rub his eyes, and exclaim, "Presto, they are gone
sure enough!" while you still feel that you stand far within the
circumference of their awful shadows.

As to physical evil, Mr. Newman tells us, "Here may be sufficient to
remark, that the difficulty on the Epicurean assumption, that physical
case and comfort is the most valuable thing in the universe: but that
is not true even with brutes. There is a certain perfection in the
nature of each, consisting in the full development of all their powers,
to which the existing order manifestly tends ...... As for
susceptibility to pain, it is obviously essential to every part of
corporeal life, and to discuss the question of degree is absurd. On the
other hand, human capacity for sorrow is equally necessary to our
whole moral nature, and sorrow itself is a most essential process
for the perfecting of the soul." (Soul, pp. 43, 44.)

This, then, is the fine balm for all the anguish under which the
world has been groaning for these thousands of years! But, first,
how does suffering tend to the perfection of the whole lower creation?
It enfeebles, and at last destroys them, I know; but I am yet to
Learn that it is essential to the perfection of animal life.
Again, how does it minister to that of man, except he be more than
the insect of the day, of which Mr. Newman's theology leaves him in
utter doubt? And if he be immortal, how does it operate beneficially
except as an instrument of moral improvement? And how rarely
(comparatively) do we see that it has that effect! How often is it
most prolonged and torturing in those who seem least to need it, and
in those who are absolutely as yet incapable of learning from it; or,
alas! are too evidently past learning from it! How often do we
see, slowly sinking under the protracted agonies of consumption,
cancer, or stone, all these various classes of mortals, without our
being able to assign, or even conjecture, the slightest reason for
such experiments! I acknowledge freely, all, at we can give no
reasons for them; but it is to mock miserable humanity to give
such reasons as these; doubly to mock it, if men be the ephemeral
creatures which Mr. Newman's theology leaves in such doubt: since
in that case we see not only (wh