This is a creed which long since came to me after earnest inward communings, and which, though subsequent reflection has in some few particulars modified it, I still in substance hold, clinging to it with a grateful consciousness of ever-multiplying obligations. For in it the soul has free scope for its loftiest aspirations and its widest and deepest sympathies, strongest incentives to zeal, surest guidance for activity, solace in every distress, support under every difficulty, added cause for exultation in every success, renewed resolution in every defeat. Still, it is here offered, not as ascertained truth, but merely as a sample of those guesses at truth by which alone ordinary mortals need hope to promote the common cause of humanity in any of its higher bearings. Such guesses, however, when harmonising with all the conditions of their subject-matter, may fairly claim to be provisionally regarded as truths--nay, to be adopted as working hypotheses until superseded by new hypotheses capable of doing the same work better; in which supercession none ought to rejoice, nor, if sincere truth-seekers, will rejoice, more cordially than the propounders of the discredited doctrines. It is in this spirit and with these reservations that the articles of faith above recited are submitted for consideration. How much soever they may fall short of the truth, they are, I feel, in the absence of any nearer approach to the truth, capable of rendering excellent service. However faintly and hazily the outlines of Deity be shown in them, the Deity whom they so imperfectly delineate is yet one to whom may justly be ascribed glory in the highest, one worthy of all trust, love, and adoration--of an adoration, too, inclusive not more of praise than prayer. If the divine claim to the last-named tribute be disputed, it had better be by arguments other than those on which certain writers, with Mr. Galton for their leader and Professor Tyndall for their backer, have been recently expending much misapplied ingenuity. If the efficacy of prayer be, as the foremost of these declares it to be, 'a perfectly appropriate and legitimate subject of scientific enquiry,' the enquiry ought at least to be conducted according to scientific rules. On this point Mr. Galton himself lays much stress, intimating that whereas an unscientific reasoner may be expected to be 'guided by a confused recollection of crude experience, a scientific reasoner will scrutinise each separate experience before he admits it as evidence, and will compare all the cases he has selected on a methodical system.' Nevertheless, a brief examination of the experiences on which he and his principal associate rely, may suggest some doubt as to which of the two specified classes of reasoners it is that they themselves belong.