We can quite understand that the foregoing pages may prove very

unattractive to some of our readers.  We can only treat our subject by

stating the facts and giving examples; and this we have done with as few

technical terms as possible.  It would make the matter clearer to the reader

if he would himself compose a few examples of each of the four moods here

given, if possible visualizing them in diagram form, using concentric,

separate and interlocking circles.  We now leave the syllogism for other

features that we trust will prove of service in the quest of understanding.

An example of fallacious reasoning

Before embarking upon any classification of fallacies, we would seek to

interest the reader and prepare the way by considering one or two examples of

fallacious arguments that bear upon the teaching of Scripture and touch upon

subjects of great interest to all who in any measure endorse the teaching of

An Alphabetical Analysis.

We therefore draw attention

to the 'unsound mode of arguing, which

appears to demand our conviction,

and to be decisive of the question in hand,

when in fairness it is not', that

is found in the pamphlet entitled: Is

Conditional Immortality True? (by

F. W. Pitt).

The pamphlet opens with an attempt to prejudice the reader against the

doctrine of Conditional Immortality, by associating it with Evolution:

'It is a remarkable fact that with the advancement of the Darwinian

Theory of Evolution the doctrine of annihilation became popular'.

No attempt is made to justify this association; it is left to work upon

the sensitiveness of the believer.  A further appeal to prejudice is the

substitution without comment or explanation of the word 'annihilation' for

'conditional immortality'.

The next paragraph reads:

'When belief in the fall of man was widely abandoned and a more or less

materialistic view of his nature was adopted, a restatement of the

doctrine of eternal punishment followed as a matter of course'.

Again, this creates a prejudice and would lead the uninstructed to

imagine that the doctrine of Conditional Immortality denies the fall of man,

an inference which would be completely false.

Again, the author writes:

'It would be difficult to find a pamphlet written by opponents of

eternal punishment which does not prejudice its argument by the

suggestion that it is inconceivable that a loving, heavenly Father will

punish His children with endless torment'.

We can at least find one pamphlet that makes no such appeal -- our own

pamphlet entitled: Hell, or Pure from the blood of all men.  Moreover, it is

not the teaching on either side that a loving, heavenly Father punishes 'His

children', either by destruction or by eternal torment.  He punishes the