defects, inconsistencies, superfluities, erroneous combinations, and objects as diverse and various as the capacities, tastes, and circumstances of the several builders. If this, as an illustration of the modern German method of studying the Hebrew Scriptures, is in any degree exaggerated, it is yet probably exact enough to account for the worse than Rabbinical, worse than Popish, worse than Mohammedan results--neological infidelity, both with respect to the Old and the New Testaments, and atheism with respect to their Author. Doubtless there are exceptions--here and there a Lot escaping for his life from this critical Sodom. The reference is to the general and notorious results. The system virtually begins with a denial of the Divine origin and authority of the Scriptures, and a degradation of them to the level of the works of heathen authors, and as a system, pursued under the influences above referred to, is no better calculated to lead the student to a right apprehension and knowledge of the great theme and connected chain of things revealed, than the study of insects, under the name of the science of entomology, is calculated to enable the student to conceive, understand, and comprehend the doctrines of the Newtonian philosophy. Among the results of this course of things, it is obvious to notice the wide-spread, notorious, and effective sentiment of doubt and uncertainty as to the claims of the Scriptures in respect to the most important facts and doctrines, among the learned, scientific and professional men extensively on both sides of the Atlantic. Hence the origin, popularity, and influence of the geological doctrines concerning the antiquity of the earth, successive creations or developments, diversity of origin of different families of the human race, and various kindred matters. The excited minds of scientific men, unsatisfied, unestablished, and misled by the results of Rabbinical and neological study and criticism, have appealed from the Scripture records to the fossil relics of what they fancy to have been a world of immeasurably higher antiquity than that of whose creation Moses is the historian. They seek there, and imagine that they discover, engraven on the rocks, an earlier revelation, a more correct chronology, a higher and more intelligible theory of the origin, progress, uses, and ends of the earth, its changes, and its families of rational and irrational inhabitants. And finally the better portion of this great school, as the only means left of guarding the rising generation from blank atheism, recommend the institution of professorships of Natural Theology, that, by a due exhibition to them of the evidences of geological and other natural sciences, they may, if possible, be convinced that there is a God!