From the earliest times which I can remember, I have heard the English Bible spoken of with the utmost reverence, as the undoubted word of God, as a revelation of the will, ways, and even the thoughts of the Supreme Being. Everything which it contains has been regarded as infallibly true, and the wisdom, goodness, mercy, and justice of its doctrines and laws have been judged to be unimpeachable. From the pulpit of many earnest divines I have heard innumerable sermons whose burden has been praise of, and admiration for, the morality of the Old and New Testaments, the sublimity of the language therein used, and the loftiness of the thoughts embodied. From those same teachers, and from a still greater number of laymen, I have heard the assertion repeatedly made that the Bible must be divinely inspired, because no other set of men, except those who composed its books, could write so powerfully; and depict so graphically, the wants, the woes, the pleasures, the passions, the aspirations, and the doubts of the human mind. By a great majority, if not by the whole of our imperfectly educated ministers and people, the assertion to which we here refer is raised to the position of an argument; and any opponent who ventures to question the truth of the assumption, is challenged to show a book of divinity equal or superior to the Bible. The worthlessness of the argument might be readily shown to any one accustomed to use his reason, by pointing out that the religious books of the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Medea, Persians, and Etruscans, are lost to us. We may compare the assertion with that which Englishmen might have made, to the effect that the British breed of horses was superior to any other, for no one could show them a better; yet as soon as our Crusaders became acquainted with the Arabian steed, the value of the assumption was destroyed. Yet such a remark would be wholly inoperative on the mind of every bigot whose judgment of evidence is always bribed by his prejudice. Consequently, to make any serious impression upon the mind of the Bibliolater, it is desirable, if possible, to make copies of the holy images worshipped by other nations, under the name of sacred books, and to place these side by side with that grotesque production, which, for our purposes, may be compared to Diana of the Ephesians--the thing which fell down from Jupiter. Yet even when we do bring from distant countries, to which in our complacency we give the name of "heathen," copies of their deified books, and show their equality with, or superiority to that which we are told was arranged by the disposition of angels (Acts vii. 53)--the scriptures that Paul (2 Tim. iii. 16) affirms were entirely given by inspiration of God [--Greek--], see also 1 Pet. i. 11, 12,--we are met by the assertion, if the equality is allowed, that the Pagan writings have been copied from, or are traceable to, the writers in the Old or in the New Testament.