The science of phrenology explains most beautifully the cause and nature of sin or crime, and demonstrates that it is simply the perverted or unbalanced action of the natural faculties of the mind. Combativeness when excessively developed or unduly excited, prompts to quarrels and fighting; destructiveness, under similar circumstances, leads to war and bloodshed; amativeness, when not properly restrained, leads to the various forms of licentiousness; over-active acquisitiveness is the main-spring in most cases of theft and robbery, and all crimes committed for the acquisition of property or money. And other crimes are prompted by the over-active condition of these and, other mental faculties unrestrained by the moral faculties, every act and every species of crime are in this way most satisfactorily accounted for by this now generally received and thoroughly established science of mental philosophy; so that "the mystery of godliness," comprehended in the word sin, which for ages perplexed the student of theology, is now unraveled and understood by the scientific men of the age, and known to have a natural basis and natural origin. And this all-important discovery has driven the old orthodox Devil from the arena of human action. He no longer walks "to and fro in the earth, seeking whom he may devour." He is dead--dead,--killed by the sledge-hammer of science. And yet the fifty thousand clergymen who still "defend the faith once delivered to the saints" are (many of them) so far behind the march of human progress that the news of the mortal exit of his Satanic Majesty seems not yet to have reached them; or, if it has, it is because they are unwilling to lose the services of a long-cherished and highly valued friend that they refuse to credit the report of his demise. Take away their Devil, and their whole theological scaffolding falls to the ground. Revivals could no more be carried on without his aid, than a watch could be kept running without a main-spring. And with the departure of the Devil must go "salvation by Christ," as there is then nothing, in a theological sense, to be saved from. It is an important fact, of which the clergy seem to be ignorant, that the march of science has exploded all their old theological dogmas. Phrenology has banished the Devil; physiology explains the _modus operandi_ of repentance; psychology, the process of "getting religion;" philosophy analyzes their Bible miracles; geology has expanded their six days of creation into six thousand years; astronomy has displaced Moses' theory of creation, and demolished St. John's little eight-by-ten heaven. (See Rev. chap. 21.) And yet the orthodox clergy refuse to shorten their creeds by leaving out these old, exploded dogmas. Like moles, they continue rooting and digging away among their musty creeds, dogmas, and catechisms, seemingly unconscious that the sun of science is now shining with dazzling brilliancy in the moral heavens.