Descartes was certainly not much inferior to Newton as a mathematician, and thousands insist that he was his superior; yet he was not a Christian. Euclid, if I remember right, was not a Christian, and yet he had quite a turn for mathematics. As a matter of fact, Christianity got its idea of algebra from the Mohammedans, and, without algebra, astronomical knowledge of to-day would have been impossible. Christianity did not even invent figures. We got those from the Arabs. The very word "algebra" is Arabic. The decimal system, I believe, however, was due to a German, but whether he was a Christian or not, I do not know. We find that the Chinese calculated eclipses long before Christ was born; and, exactness being the rule at that time, there is an account of two astronomers having been beheaded for failing to tell the coming of an eclipse to the minute; yet they were not Christians. There is another fact connected with Newton, and that is that he wrote a commentary on the Book of Revelation. The probability is that a sillier commentary was never written. It was so perfectly absurd and laughable that some one--I believe it was Voltaire--said that while Newton had excited the envy of the intellectual world by his mathematical accomplishments, it had gotten even with him the moment his commentaries were published. Spinoza was not a mathematician, particularly. He was a metaphysician, an honest thinker, whose influence is felt, and will be felt so long as these great questions have the slightest interest for the human brain. He also compares Chalmers with Hume. Chalmers gained his notoriety from preaching what are known as the astronomical sermons, and, I suppose, was quite a preacher in his day. But Hume was a thinker, and his works will live for ages after Mr. Chalmers' sermons will have been forgotten. Mr. Chalmers has never been prominent enough to have been well known by many people. He may have been an exceedingly good man, and derived, during his life, great consolation from a belief in the damnation of infants. Mr. Newman also compares Wesley with Thomas Paine. When Thomas Paine was in favor of human liberty, Wesley was against it. Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called "Common Sense," urging the colonies to separate themselves from Great Britain. Wesley wrote a treatise on the other side. He was the enemy of human liberty; and if his advice could have been followed we would have been the colonies of Great Britain still. We never would have had a President in need of a private chaplain. Mr. Wesley had not a scientific mind. He preached a sermon once on the cause and cure of earthquakes, taking the ground that earthquakes were caused by sins, and that the only way to stop them was to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. He also laid down some excellent rules for rearing children, that is, from a Methodist standpoint. His rules amounted to about this: