36

THE MOHAMMEDAN CONTROVERSY

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.

We must now take leave of Pfander's writings, and we do so with regret and admiration. Let him not forget the singular advantages and talents he possesses, nor abandon his post of champion of Christianity against the Mohammedans. We are sure, if God spare him, that he will soon be again in the field, and we heartily wish him God-speed in this most momentous struggle.


1 In the fourteenth letter he illustrates his position by the following example:—" If not to credit the fact of a bullock having spoken, imply belief in an infinitesimal series or in the co-existence of contraries, which impossibility must be rejected?" Pfander's faculties must have been sadly puzzled to make out the learned Maulavi's meaning.