recommend?"1 Pfander, much against his will, is thus plunged
among impossibilities; he acknowledges that where a logical impossibility is
really established, it must cancel every supposition involved in it; but he
denies the sovereignty of man's reason to determine what are absolute
impossibilities; and he demurs to the argument altogether as being foreign to
the subject in hand. The Maulavi, however, sticks manfully by his first
position, asserting that if the doctrine of impossibilities be not within
man's reason, and be not settled at the outset, all attempts at reasoning are
absurd. After several futile endeavours on Pfander's part to draw back the
Maulavi to the proofs of Christianity, and repeatedly challenging him to
impugn the reasoning of his published works, the controversy falls to the
ground. The Maulavi's closing letter afforded Pfander an opportunity of adding
a valuable note upon the use and abuse of reason in matters of religion. This
controversy possesses a peculiar interest, because the line of reasoning taken
by the Maulavi is that which even sensible and intelligent Mussulmans
generally adopt. Human reason is used or rather misused as a sovereign judge,
and the higher possibilities of Divine interference are thereby put aside. The
controversy, however, is not closed, for Ali Hassan is now printing a work at
Lucknow in refutation of Christianity and in defence of the Coran, at which he
has been labouring for fifteen years, and which is, by the way, to contain a
full reply to the Mizân as well as to the Dîn Haqq.
