"MAGIC IN NAMES."
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Referring to your brief notice of my Magic in Names in last week's issue. I thought that the days had passed away when reviewers made it a charge against a book dealing with serious matters that it might cause "distress to some readers." Surely, if such distress lie felt, it betokens a reluctance to face statements which, if they are proved to lie true, may COMP sur- render of beliefs thus proved to be invalid, to the gain of truth which alone can make men "free."
Dean loge's denial of the Virgin Birth and Canon Barnes's denial of the Fall of Man are probably causes of distress to many. But the remedy to be applied is not evasion, but exami- nation, in the spirit of the Bereans who "searched the Scrip- tures daily whether these things were so."—I am. Sir, 8m., Strafford House, Aldeburgh, Suffolk. EDWARD CLODD. [Mr. Clarld has misunderstood our comment. Weds not object to free inquiry, from which Christianity has nothing to lose. In saying that he presses his argument—that Christianity is a mere superstition—" in a way that will distress some of his readers," we merely wished to warn them that Mr. Clodd'e controversial methods lack the dispassionate tone of the scholar. In a book dealing with serious matters, he indulges in persiflage after the manner of Voltaire.—Em Spectator.]
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