But because all our faculties admit of abuse, and the higher they are, the greater, this forms no reason for rejecting their legitimate use, or the entire subject‐matter on which they operate. As I have observed, the principle is found energizing wherever man exists. Although in one age it may be more active than in another, it is alike the inheritance of the civilized man and the savage. It has displayed itself in the creations of the poet and the writer of fiction; in the various forms of religious thought; in the production of ghost‐stories and pictures of the under‐ world; in the creation of the various forms of demonology, witchcraft and magic; in the milder form of fairy‐tales; in charms and incantations, and in efforts to pry into the future. Even in philosophy and science we may trace its influence, not only in aiding and suggesting their great discoveries, but in propounding multitudes of startling theories, erected on the smallest basis of fact. These not only gratify this feeling, but promise an apparently royal road to knowledge, which avoids the long and tedious one of only propounding theories after a careful investigation of facts. But in the regions of intellectual pursuit, its abnormal manifestations are pre‐eminently in the science of historical criticism, in those numerous departments of historical inquiry where the facts are few and vague. Here nothing is easier than to supply the absence of facts by theory, and to erect a magnificent edifice on a foundation of sand. The ancient soothsayer gratified vulgar curiosity by guessing at the events of the future. There is a species of modern soothsaying which expends its energies in guessing at the events of the past. Such guessing presents an unspeakable fascination to a large number of minds, by its happy mixture of fiction and fact, and is the true analogue to many of the forms of ancient thought. It has been necessary to draw attention to these things for the purpose of proving the widespread influence of this principle on human nature. Its action has manifested itself in different forms in different ages; but the cause is the same in all, the existence in man of a principle which points to the existence of God, and which can only receive its adequate gratification in Him.