To the Editor of the "Norra-Cuina Darty News,"
Sir,—I think that "Sophia" hag mistaken the last paragraph of my letter. Twas not giving a definition of reason, but trying to arrive at the meaning of the word in the phrase Reason versus the Bible.
I said that in this connexion it really came to be my own ideas or some one else's. Perhaps I ought to have written conclusions instead of ideas.
"Sophia" writes about ideal re-son which can only come to one conclusion and that the right one. But where in the world is ideal reason to be found that we may interrogate it? I do not think "Sophia" can tell us.
Reason is I think a faculty given to men, and perhaps also to beasts, birds, insects and even we are now told to the very lowest forms of life, in very varying degrees. Men possess it, of course, in the highest degree, but still unequally, and the reasoning power of even a Newton may be at fault, how much more the reason of the average man! And if this is so in material things and earthly things, how much more will it be so in heavenly things, "that which we understand not, things too wonderful for us which we know not." 4 If God, who of course has all things in view, has truly spoken to us, it is truest reason to submit the conclusions of my own and other mens reasoning to His Word, and uncertainties and a' never-ending quest.
St. Paul said that the world with all its reasonings had not found and could not find God, and so it pleased God by the apparently foolish plan of sending a message to mer. to save those who believed it. Tt is not difficult to see a reason for this plan. It puts man at once and keeps him always in the right relative position towards his Creator, the position of filial trust and dependence.
T am, ete.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.