sider Mr Mill's chapter of criticisms.

It is always unfortunate to make a stumble on the threshold; and Mr. Mill's opening paragraph makes two. "The name of God," "is veiled under two extremely

he says,

lute.'

But it is one of the most unquestionable of all logical maxims, that the meaning of the abstract must be sought in the concrete, and not conversely."*-Now, in the first place, "the Infinite" and "the Absolute," even in the sense in which they are both predicable of God, are no more names of God than "the creature" and "the finite" are names of man. They are the

* Examination, p. 32.

of certain attributes, which further may, perhaps, show to belong to God no other being, but which do not in gnification express this, and do not ce our primary idea of God, which is a Person. Men may believe in an and infinite, without in any proper lieving in God; and thousands upon ls of pious men have prayed to a God, who have never heard of the and the infinite, and who would not nd the expressions if they heard But, in the second place, "the absod "the infinite," in Sir W. Hamilton's the terms, cannot both be names of the simple reason that they are con-y of each other, and are proposed as ves which cannot both be accepted as es of the same subject. For Hamil

in some of His attributes is absolute without being infinite, and in others is infinite without being absolute.*

But we have not yet done with this single paragraph. After thus making two errors in his exposition of his opponent's doctrine, Mr. Mill immediately proceeds to a third, in his criticism of it. By following his "most unquestionable of all logical maxims," and substituting the name of God in the place of "the Infinite" and "the Absolute," he exactly reverses Sir W. Hamilton's argument, and makes his own attempted refutation of it a glaring ignoratio elenchi.

One of the purposes of Hamilton's argument is to show that we have no positive

produce a distorted representation of the e; and hence, that our so-called concep

of the infinite is not the true infinite. ace it is not to be wondered at—nay, it is tural consequence of this doctrine, that positive conception of God as a Person not be included under this pseudo-concept he Infinite. Whereas Mr. Mill, by laying n the maxim that the meaning of the ract must be sought in the concrete, tly assumes that this pseudo-infinite is oper predicate of God, to be tested by its icability to the subject, and that what nilton says of this infinite cannot be true ss it is also true of God. Of this refutaHamilton, were he living, might truly as he said of a former criticism on

in two words-Quis dubitavit ?"

But if the substitution of God for the Infinite be thus a perversion of Hamilton's argument, what shall we say to a similar substitution in the case of the Absolute ? Hamilton distinctly tells us that there is one sense of the term absolute in which it is contradictory of the infinite, and therefore is not predicable of God at all. Mr. Mill admits that Hamilton, throughout the greater part of his arguments, employs the term in this sense; and he then actually proceeds to "test" these arguments "by substituting the concrete, God, for the abstract, Absolute;' i.e., by substituting God for something which Hamilton defines as contradictory to the nature of God. Can the force of confusion