most profound truths of natural and revealed religion? The result may be easily anticipated; if this empty vanity, this presumptuous pride of intellect, reject not Christianity at once, it ordinarily takes an heretical direction, and assuming the specious guise of love of investigation, and value for the powers of reason, it makes the deep and awful mysteries of our holy faith the subject of crude theories and daring speculations; and with powers confessedly unequal to the explanation of some of the lowest wonders of the material world, seeks to penetrate within the veil drawn around the Godhead, and reduce to the level of human comprehension the very nature of the Divine essence. Should it, however, take one step further, and that an easy step, it rejects the truths it had long distorted, it resigns the shadow of which it had never known the substance, and declaring Christianity to be “a cunningly devised fable,” it becomes the advocate of heartless, hopeless infidelity. This is no imaginary picture, but one, of the reality and fidelity of which the present state of society affords too abundant proof. Not that superficial acquaintance with science is a thing of new occurrence; not that pride of intellect—ever a luxuriant weed in rich but ill-cultivated soils,—is a growth peculiar to our times; not that heresy and infidelity, its bitterest fruits, never till now spread their poison through our land; but never before was the field so large, the weeds more rank, and the crop so abundant. Formerly, science flowed in a few deep and noble rivers, of whose copious waters the nation at large sparingly drank; we still have many rich streams which fertilize the land, but in addition to them there is an infinity of small rivulets, some of which, like mountain torrents, after a thunder-storm, are brawling and turbulent, covered with much foam, mixed with much impurity, often rising over their banks, and spreading havoc and barrenness, where all was fertility and beauty. Such streams may serve to illustrate the effects, upon society, of the violence and turbulence of those, whose imperfect acquaintance with science has first shaken their own belief, and has then been made instrumental to the spread of infidel doctrines, amongst those who had lived in happy ignorance of “science, falsely so called.” But would any one, therefore, be so unwise as to endeavour to keep these turbulent brooks pent up? The destruction would be only wider and heavier when they at last burst over the mounds that restrained them: but it is at once the course of wisdom and of humanity to confine them within their banks, and give them a due direction, and then, as they descend towards the plain, gradually the brawling ceases, the froth disappears, the mud subsides, and you have a pure and quiet stream diffusing the riches, refreshment, and beauty of science over the land. No calumny has, perhaps, been more frequently repeated in the present day than that those