Nothing is more common than to find men of great intelligence on almost every subject except this, the most vital, indeed the foundation and starting-point of all real knowledge. Especially are clergymen ignorant, and those who assume to be the interpreters of the laws of God are not unfrequently the most ignorant of the most palpable and fundamental of these laws. This should not be so, and in all reasonable probability would not be so had it not been for the untruthful and unfortunate classification of Linnæus. Instead of meeting the Materialists on their own ground, and showing them that however approximating to certain forms of animal life, the human creation was yet separated by an absolutely boundless as well as impassable interval—for the distinctions between them are utterly unlike those separating mere animal beings—they tacitly admitted the truth of their assumptions, and met it by a blind and foolish refusal to investigate the matter, indeed have generally cast their influence on the side of ignorance, and advised against the study of nature and the noblest works of God. But there can be no contradiction; God cannot lie; and whatever seeming conflict there may be at times between His word and His works, a further search is alone needed to show their perfect uniformity. It is true that the physical resemblances between men and beings of the class mammalia seem closer than those of the latter and some other forms of life, but while there is also an eternal correspondence between structure and functions, it is rational and philosophical to suppose that the difference in the qualities or external manifestations is the safest standard of comparison. Or in other words, whatever may be the seeming physical resemblances, the differences in the faculties show that the former are not reliable. For example: in contemplating the intelligence of certain quadrupeds and birds, can any one suppose or believe for a moment that the difference between them in this respect equals or even approaches to that separating both from human beings? And in the present state of our knowledge, our ignorance of the elementary arrangement of organic life, it is surely safer and more philosophical to be governed by our reason rather than our senses—to accept the differences which separate human intelligence from the animal world as boundless and immeasurable when compared with the apparent physical approximations which seem to unite us with a class of the latter.