Highly as we venerate the benign and beautiful ordinance of the Sabbath, important as we think it, that, on all accounts, it should be observed with reverence and gratitude,—still we should hesitate before we regarded the single act of attendance or absence on public worship as a safe or charitable exposition of any man's religious stability. We, therefore, as far as in us lies, repudiate the charge; we regard it as groundless; and think that, as no profession affords more frequent opportunities for a constant awakening and keeping alive the best sympathies of our nature, so no profession can be more calculated to impress the fragile nature of the body, as contrasted with the immortal spirit which inhabits it, or the constant presence of that Power by whose laws they are both governed. But groundless as we think the charge, we must contend that the apathy of the Council of the College, at the time Mr. Lawrence delivered the lectures in question, was a serious neglect of duty. In those Lectures, Mr. Lawrence spoke of the Old Testament in a tone which must, we think, be regarded as irrelevant to, or at least unnecessary in, a course of Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. We hold no sympathy with that sort of persecution with which several well-intentioned people visited the book; but we must always regard the Council of the time as having been neglectful of their duty. Lectures on Comparative Anatomy do not render it necessary to impugn the historical correctness, or the inspired character, of the Old Testament. What answer could private individuals make, or with what influence could they oppose the prejudices of the public in relation to the religious securities afforded by men in whom they confide, when they saw a young professor allowed to introduce into lectures—given to an audience composed of the most aged and eminent of the profession, as well as of many of those who were just commencing their studies, delivered, too, at the chartered College of the profession—matter which was not only not at all necessary to the most ample exposition of the subject, but which, as we have said, only alluded to the Old Testament in a manner calculated to weaken its authority as an historical document, and to impugn its inspired character?