Nor is this irreligious tendency confined to literary publications; it finds numerous and powerful advocates in men of scientific pursuits, who strive to make the worse appear the better cause. The chemist has never found in his crucible that intangible something which men call spirit; so, in the name of science, he pronounces it a myth. The anatomist has dissected the human frame; but, failing to meet the immaterial substance--the soul--he denies its existence. The physicist has weighed the conflicting theories of his predecessors in the scale of criticism, and finally decides that bodies are nothing more than the accidental assemblage of atoms, and rejects the very idea of a Creator. The geologist, after investigating the secrets of the earth, triumphantly tells us that he has accumulated an overwhelming mass of facts to refute the biblical cosmogony, and thus subvert the authority of the inspired record. The astronomer flatters himself that he has discovered natural and necessary laws, which do away with the necessity of admitting that a Divine Hand once launched the heavenly bodies into space, and still guides them in their courses; the stenographer has studied the peculiarities of the races; he has met with widely-different conformations, and believes himself sufficiently authorized to deny the unity of the human family; in a word, they conclude that nothing exists but matter, that God is a myth, and the soul "the dream of a dream." Thus do men attack these sacred truths, which cannot be shaken without greatly injuring, and finally destroying, the social edifice.