replaced the crumbling Judaism which existed at the beginning of our era, and the Reformed Church has since then, in many countries, replaced the gigantic sham of Popery. But the metaphor is one which we cannot wholly adopt, inasmuch as we believe that no faith of ancient times has ever wholly fallen like the spire and tower of Chichester, nor has any new system of belief the solidity of that new edifice which has replaced the old. The difficulties connected with reconstruction are greatly increased by the propensity which is so common in the human mind to make the best of that which is in actual existence and familiar to the vulgar, rather than to adopt something entirely new. The child who dislikes to go to bed at night equally dislikes to get up in the morning, and we have known elderly people who have systematically preferred an old lumbering stage-coach to a first-class compartment in a railway carriage. In every walk of life an innovator is regarded as an enemy by the majority, and especially by those whose practice or whose theories his discoveries supersede. Yet, great as is the contest which any new truth has to sustain, there is no doubt whatever that the first part of the fight--the preliminaries essential to conquest, are the investigation of the ground to be occupied; the real value of the defences; the superiority of the armour; and the temper, strength, and tenacity of the offensive weapons. The engineer to whom is confided the attack or the defence of a town will abandon or destroy everything which would harbour an enemy or facilitate his operations. The fighting commodore, ere he carries his ship into action, sacrifices readily all the gewgaws of luxury; and in like manner the ecclesiastic ought never to endanger his position by spending his energies in the defence of a useless outwork or a tinsel ornament. Entertaining these views ourselves, our first effort has been to clear the ground, and to remove every object which we consider to be detrimental to the spread of truth.