science I have at different times encountered, the real worshippers and genuine lovers of it, for its own sake, have all been men of the most single, candid, unprejudiced, and inquiring minds, willing to listen to all new suggestions, and investigate all new facts; not bold and self-sufficient, but humble and reverent suitors, aware of their own ignorance and unworthiness, and that they are yet but in the primer of Nature’s works, they do not permit themselves to pronounce upon her disclosures, or set limits to her decrees. They are content to admit that things new and unsuspected may yet be true; that their own knowledge of facts being extremely circumscribed, the systems attempted to be established on such uncertain data, must needs be very imperfect, and frequently altogether erroneous; and that it is therefore their duty, as it ought to be their pleasure, to welcome as a stranger every gleam of light that appears in the horizon, let it loom from whatever quarter it may. But, alas! poor Science has few such lovers! _Les beaux yeux de sa cassette_, I fear, are much more frequently the objects of attraction than her own fair face. The belief in a God, and in the immortality of what we call the soul, is common to all nations; but our own intellect does not enable us to form any conception of either one or the other. All the information we have on these subjects is comprised in such hints as the Scripture here and there give us: whatever other conclusions we draw, must be the result of observation and experience. Unless founded upon these, the opinion of the most learned theologian or the most profound student of science that ever lived, is worth no more than that of any other person. They know nothing whatever about these mysteries; and all _a priori_ reasoning on them is utterly valueless. The only way, therefore, of attaining any glimpses of the truth in an inquiry of this nature, where our intellect can serve us so little, is to enter on it with the conviction that, knowing nothing, we are not entitled to reject any evidence that may be offered to us, till it has been thoroughly sifted, and proved to be fallacious. That the facts presented to our notice appear to us absurd, and altogether inconsistent with the notions our intellects would have enabled us to form, should have no weight whatever in the investigation. Our intellects are no measure of God Almighty’s designs; and, I must say, that I do think one of the most irreverent, dangerous, and sinful things man or woman can be guilty of, is to reject with scorn and laughter any intimation which, however strangely it may strike upon our minds, and however adverse it may be to our opinions, may possibly be showing us the way to one of God’s truths. Not knowing all the conditions, and wanting so many links of the chain, it is impossible for us to pronounce on what is probable and consistent, and what is not; and, this being the case, I think the time is ripe for drawing attention