change in them, much akin to the miracle of transubstantiation—the priests are completed, and they become the current ecclesiastical coin of our country. The whole body of clergy, here spoken of, have undergone the preliminary induction of baptism and confirmation; and all have been duly ordained, professing to hold one faith, and to believe in the selfsame doctrines! In short, to be as identical as the 20,000 sovereigns, if compared one with the other. But mind is not malleable and ductile, like gold; and all the preparations of tests, creeds, and catechisms will not insure uniformity of belief. No stamp of orthodoxy will produce the same impress on the minds of different men. Variety is manifest, and patent, upon everything mental and material. The Almighty has not created, nor man fashioned, two things alike! How futile, then, is the attempt to shape and mould man's apprehension of divine truth by one fallible standard of man's invention! If proof of this be required, an appeal might be made to history and the experience of eighteen hundred years."
This is an argument of force against the reasonableness of expecting tens of thousands of educated readers of the New Testament to find the doctrine above described in it. The lady's argument against the doctrine itself is very striking. Speaking of an outcry on this matter among the Dissenters against one of their body, who was the son of "the White Stone (Rev. ii. 17), or the Roman cement-maker," she says—
"If the doctrine for which they so wickedly fight were true, what would become of the black gentlemen for whose redemption I have been sacrificed from April 8 1839."
There are certainly very curious points about this revelation. There have been many surmises about the final restoration of the infernal spirits, from the earliest ages of Christianity until our own day: a collection of them would be worth making. On reading this in proof, I see a possibility that by "black gentlemen" may be meant the clergy:
I suppose my first interpretation must have been suggested by context: I leave the point to the reader's sagacity.]
JAMES SMITH, ARCH-PARADOXER.
The Problem of squaring the circle solved; or, the circumference and area of the circle discovered. By James Smith.[[200]] London, 1859, 8vo.
On the relations of a square inscribed in a circle. Read at the British Association, Sept. 1859, published in the Liverpool Courier, Oct. 8, 1859, and reprinted in broadsheet.
The question: Are there any commensurable relations between a circle and other Geometrical figures? Answered by a member of the British Association ... London, 1860, 8vo.—[This has been translated into French by M. Armand Grange, Bordeaux, 1863, 8vo.]
The Quadrature of the Circle. Correspondence between an eminent mathematician and James Smith, Esq. (Member of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board), London, 1861, 8vo. (pp. 200).
Letter to the ... British Association ... by James Smith, Esq. Liverpool, 1861, 8vo.
Letter to the ... British Association ... by James Smith, Esq. Liverpool, 1862, 8vo.—[These letters the author promised to continue.]
A Nut to crack for the readers of Professor De Morgan's 'Budget of Paradoxes.' By James Smith, Esq. Liverpool, 1863, 8vo.
Paper read at the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, reported in the Liverpool Daily Courier, Jan. 26, 1864. Reprinted as a pamphlet.
The Quadrature of the circle, or the true ratio between the diameter and circumference geometrically and mathematically demonstrated. By James Smith, Esq. Liverpool, 1865, 8vo.
[On the relations between the dimensions and distances of the Sun, Moon, and Earth; a paper read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, Jan. 25, 1864. By James Smith, Esq.
The British Association in Jeopardy, and Dr. Whewell, the Master of Trinity, in the stocks without hope of escape. Printed for the authors (J. S. confessed, and also hidden under Nauticus). (No date, 1865).
The British Association in Jeopardy, and Professor De Morgan in the Pillory without hope of escape. London, 1866, 8vo.]
When my work appeared in numbers, I had not anything like an adequate idea of Mr. James Smith's superiority to the rest of the world in the points in which he is superior. He is beyond a doubt the ablest head at unreasoning, and the greatest hand at writing it, of all who have tried in our day to attach their names to an error. Common cyclometers sink into puny orthodoxy by his side.
The behavior of this singular character induces me to pay him the compliment which Achilles paid Hector, to drag him round the walls again and again. He was treated with unusual notice and in the most gentle manner. The unnamed mathematician, E. M. bestowed a volume of mild correspondence upon him; Rowan Hamilton[[201]] quietly proved him wrong in a way accessible to an ordinary schoolboy; Whewell,[[202]] as we shall see, gave him the means of seeing himself wrong, even more easily than by Hamilton's method. Nothing would do; it was small kick and silly fling at all; and he exposed his conceit by alleging that he, James Smith, had placed Whewell in the stocks. He will therefore be universally pronounced a proper object of the severest literary punishment: but the opinion of all who can put two propositions together will be that of the many strokes I have given, the hardest and most telling are my republications of his own attempts to reason.
He will come out of my hands in the position he ought