'Revelation has nothing to do with our physical state. Reason is quite sufficient to teach us all those sanitary laws by which our bodies will be maintained in healthful vigor. Whatever we can attain by our mental powers, we are to attain by them. Physical and metaphysical science alike lie remote from the object matter of revelation. The Bible never gives us any scientific knowledge in a scientific way. If it did, it would be leaving its own proper domain. When it seems to give us any such knowledge, as in the first chapter of Genesis, what it says has always reference to man. The first chapter of Genesis does not tell us how the earth was formed absolutely, but how it was prepared and fitted for man. Look at the work of the fourth day. Does any man suppose that the stars were set in the expanse of heaven absolutely that men might know what time of the year it was? They _did_ render men this service, but this was not their great use. As the Bible speaks to all people, at all times, it must use popular language.' This writer, like many others when they approach this subject, speaks timidly, and in consequence somewhat vaguely and obscurely; but his meaning is, that we must expect the Bible, on scientific subjects, to speak, not according to science, but according to the prevailing ideas of their times on scientific subjects; and that we are to regard the Bible as our teacher, not on every subject to which it may allude, or on which it may speak, but only on matters of religious truth and duty. The following is from the Rev. H. W. Beecher. 'Matthew says, that Jesus dwelt in Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene. No such line has ever been found in the prophets. 'Infinite ingenuity of learning has been brought to bear upon this difficulty, without in the slightest degree solving it. 'What would happen if it should be said that Matthew recorded the current impression of his time in attributing this declaration to the Old Testament Prophets? Would a mere error of reference invalidate the trustworthiness of the evangelist? We lean our whole weight [in other matters] upon men who are fallible. Must a record be totally infallible before it can be trusted at all? Navigators trust ship, cargo, and the lives of all on board, to calculations based on tables of logarithms, knowing that there never was a set [of logarithms] computed, without machinery, that had not some error in it. The supposition, that to admit that there are immaterial and incidental mistakes in Sacred Writ would break the confidence of men in it, is contradicted by the uniform experience of life, and by the whole procedure of society. 'On the contrary, the shifts and ingenuities to which critics are obliged to resort, either blunt the sense of truth, or disgust men with the special pleading of critics, and tend powerfully to general unbelief.