this question, with him I will hold no argument; if he write in a vehement and angry strain, I will have nothing to say to him.” The author is here alluding to Sir David Brewster, the author of the second of the three works placed at the head of this article. If, on the other hand, a man of great authority and reputation be unwise enough to run counter to opinions universally received, and that by persons of high scientific and literary reputation, merely as a sort of gladiatorial exercise, disturbing views rightly associated with religion and science, and with levity shaking the confidence of mankind in conclusions arrived at by the profoundest masters of science, he must take the consequences of being deemed presumptuous and trifling, and encounter the stern rebuke of those whom he is not entitled to treat with disrespect. Now, a careful and unprejudiced perusal of this _Essay_ has satisfied us concerning several things. It is written with uncommon ability. The author has an easy mastery of the English language, and these pages abound in vigorous and beautifully-exact expressions. From beginning to end, also, may be seen indications of a subtle and guarded logic; a felicitous and masterly disposition of his subject; a thorough familiarity with the heights and depths of physics, divinity, and morals; and, above and infinitely beyond all, a reverent regard for the truths of revealed religion, and an earnest desire to advance its interests, by removing what, in his opinion, many deem a serious stumblingblock in the way of the devout Christian. That stumblingblock may be seen indicated in the audacious language which we have quoted from Thomas Paine. If this be the object which Dr Whewell has had in view—and who will doubt it?—his title to respectful consideration is greatly enhanced. He must be given credit for having deliberately counted the cost of what he was about to do—the amount of censure, ridicule, and contempt which he might provoke. It seems that he has felt himself strong enough to make the experiment; and here he sees a distinguished contemporary, Sir David Brewster, quickly ascribing “his theories and speculations to no better feeling than a love of notoriety;”[16] who again stigmatises an argument of the Essayist as “the most ingenious though shallow piece of sophistry which we have ever encountered in modern dialectics.”[17]