“Telumque imbelle sine ictu Conjecit.” But there is another explanation of the successive accumulation of doctrines and practices in the church which will perhaps come more within the reach of Dr. Draper’s appreciation, as it throws light on the history of science itself, and underlies the growth of every system of philosophy. We speak of the doctrine of development. Draper unfolded, even pathetically, the impressive picture of science springing from very humble beginnings, and growing dauntlessly, despite bigotry and persecutions, into that colossal structure of to-day which, according to him, shelters the highest hopes and aspirations of men, and assures to them a glorious future of absorption into the universal spirit--viz., annihilation. “Ab exiguis profecta initiis, eo creverit ut jam magnitudine laboret sua.” This gradual development he proclaims to be the natural expansion and growth of science, on which theory he predicts for it an unending career of glory--“crescit occulto velut arbor ævo.” But he is indignant that the church did not spring into existence, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, armed cap-a-pie, in the full bloom of her maturity and charms. Because she did not do so, every advance on her part was retrogressive, and her growth was the addition of “a horse’s neck to a human head.” She borrowed, compromised, and substituted; so that, if we believe Dr. Draper, no _olla podrida_ could be composed of more heterogeneous elements than the Christian Church. She placed under contribution not only paganism, but Mahometanism, and filched a few thoughts from Buddha, Lao-Tse, and Confucius. The least courtesy we might expect from Dr. Draper is that we may be allowed to attempt to prove that Christianity, like every system entrusted to the custody of men, is necessarily affected on its secular side by that wardship, and so far is subject to the same conditions. But no; he condemns in advance, and so fastens the gyves of his condemnation on the church as apparently not to leave even a loop-hole of escape, or a possible rational explanation of the successive events of her history.