Three problems left unsolved by the Egyptians have been handed down to our generation: (1) the duplication of the cube; (2) the trisection of the angle; (3) the quadrature of the circle. Dr. Johnson: “Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none; and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.” Hood spoke of Dr. Johnson’s “Contradictionary,” which had both “interiour” and “exterior.” Sir William Thompson (Lord Kelvin) at the fiftieth anniversary of his professorship said: “One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science which I have made perseveringly through fifty-five years: that word is _failure_; I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relations between ether, electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew and tried to teach my students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in my first session as professor.” Allen, Religious Progress, mentions three tendencies. “The first says: Destroy the new! The second says: Destroy the old! The third says: Destroy nothing! Let the old gradually and quietly grow into the new, as Erasmus wished. We should accept contradictions, whether they can be intellectually reconciled or not. The truth has never prospered by enforcing some ’via media.’ Truth lies rather in the union of opposite propositions, as in Christ’s divinity and humanity, and in grace and freedom. Blanco White went from Rome to infidelity; Orestes Brownson from infidelity to Rome; so the brothers John Henry Newman and Francis W. Newman, and the brothers George Herbert of Bemerton and Lord Herbert of Cherbury. One would secularize the divine, the other would divinize the secular. But if one is true, so is the other. Let us adopt both. All progress is a deeper penetration into the meaning of old truth, and a larger appropriation of it.” (_b_) _Theology is nevertheless progressive._ It is progressive in the sense that our subjective understanding of the facts with regard to God, and our consequent expositions of these facts, may and do become more perfect. But theology is not progressive in the sense that its objective facts change, either in their number or their nature. With Martineau we may say: “Religion has been reproached with not being progressive; it makes amends by being imperishable.” Though our knowledge may be imperfect, it will have great value still. Our success in constructing a theology will depend upon the proportion which clearly expressed facts of Scripture bear to mere inferences, and upon the degree in which they all cohere about Christ, the central person and theme.