ble heresy.
Why this paltering with us in a double sense? To our mind downright
blatant orthodoxy, which is at least honest if not subtle, is preferable
to this hybrid theology which attempts to reconcile contradictions
in order to show respect to truth while sticking to the flesh-pots of
error, and evades all difficulties by a patent and patently dishonest
method of "interpretation."

Quoting Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," Dean Stanley tells us that one great
benefit traceable to God the Son is the recognition of "humility and
poverty, mockery and despising, wretchedness and suffering, as divine."
Well, if these things are divine, the sooner we all become devilish the
better. Nobody thinks them divine when they happen to himself; on the
contrary, he cries out lustily against them. But it is a different
matter when they happen to others. Then the good Christian considers
them divine. How easily, says a French wit, we bear other people's
troubles! Undistracted by personal care, pious souls contemplate with
serene resignation the suffering of their neighbors, and acknowledge in
them the chastening hand of a Divine Father.

God the Holy Ghost represents _Spiritual_ religion: the Father
represents God in Nature, the Son represents God in History, and "the
Holy Ghost represents to us God in our own hearts and spirits and
consciences." Here be truths! An illustration is given. Theodore Parker,
when a boy, took up a stone to throw at a tortoise in a pond, but felt
himself restrained by something within him; and that something, as his
mother told him, was the voice of God, or in other words the Holy Ghost.
Now if the Holy Ghost is required to account for every kind impulse of
boys and men, there is required also an Unholy Ghost to account for all
our unkind impulses. That is, a place in theology must be found for
the Devil. The equilateral triangle of theology must be turned into a
square, with Old Nick for the fourth side. But Dean Stanley does not
like the Devil; he deems him not quite respectable enough for polite
society. Let him, then, give up the Holy Ghost too, for the one is the
correlative of the other.

"It may be," says the Dean, after interpreting the Trinity, "that the
Biblical words in some respects fall short of this high signification."
What, God's own language inferior to that of the Dean of Westminster?
Surely this is strange arrogance, unless after all "it's only his fun."
Perhaps that is how we should take i