3. There is a constant tendency on the part of discoverers to invest new facts with a fictitious interest, and those who are hostile to the Bible eagerly parade them for the discomfiture of Christians. Every fact is to be welcomed, but it is to be treasured up only that it may be adjusted to other facts, and become in part the foundation of a new truth. Isolated and unexplained facts have been too often unceremoniously dragged in to give testimony against some scripture statement, and have too easily been held sufficient to push aside those accumulated evidences to its truth, which history, or science, or both, had indisputably established. It is not, indeed, surprising that the faith of many young men has failed, when they have observed the too ready acquiescence of prominent Christian writers in theories which necessitate the abandonment of some of the impregnable fortresses which have been raised by exact scholarship around those portions of scripture which had longest been exposed to the fiercest assaults. Were this method common, no permanent foundation could be laid, and progress in any science would be impossible. Is it not absurd to be displacing cornerstones, and disowning, at random, first principles? No system of philosophy, no science, not even mathematical, the exactest, and in one sense the most permanent of all the sciences, could have any weight or make the least progress if subjected to such changes in both its principles and their applications, as have marked the history of Bible assaults, concessions and defenses. When facts, which are utterly inexplicable are presented, we should retain the fact in science and also the relative statement in scripture, assured that in due time the solution will come. [_October 21._]