directly opposite in character, be reconciled? Oil and water alone will not combine--mix them by violence as we may, they will again separate when allowed to rest. Call oil oil, and water water, and acknowledge them to be distinct in nature and value; but let no “hodge-podge” be attempted, and passed off as a genuine compound of oil and water. Call Scripture the Word of God--the Creator and Ruler of all things, and the Fountain of all Truth; and call the Newtonian or Copernican Astronomy the word and work of man, of man, too, in his vainest mood--so vain and conceited as not to be content with the direct and simple teachings of his Maker, but who must rise up in rebellion and conjure into existence a fanciful complicated fabric, which being insisted upon as true, creates and necessitates the dark and horrible interrogatives--Is God a deceiver? Has He spoken direct and unequivocal falsehood? Can we no longer indulge in the beautiful and consoling thought that God’s justice, and love, and truth are unchanging and reliable for ever? Let Christians--for Sceptics and Atheists may be left out of the question--to whatever division of the Church they belong, look at this matter calmly and earnestly. Let them determine to uproot the deception which has led them to think that they can altogether ignore the plainest astronomical teaching of Scripture, and endorse a system to which it is in every sense opposed. The following language is quoted as an instance of the manner in which the doctrine of the Earth’s rotundity and the plurality of worlds interferes with Scriptural teachings:--“The theory of original sin is confuted (by our astronomical and geological knowledge), and I cannot permit the belief, when I know that our world is but a mere speck, a perishable atom in the vast space of creation, that God should just select this little spot to descend upon and assume our form, and clothe Himself in our flesh, to become visible to human eyes, to the tiny beings of this comparatively insignificant world.... Thus millions of distant worlds, with the beings allotted to them, were to be extirpated and destroyed in consequence of the original sin of Adam. No sentiment of the human mind can surely be more derogatory to the Divine attributes of the Creator, nor more repugnant to the known economy of the celestial bodies. For in the first place, who is to say, among the infinity of worlds, whether Adam was the _only creature_ who was tempted by Satan and fell, and by his fall involved all the other worlds in his guilt.”[42] [42] Encyclopædia Londenensis, p. 457, vol. 2.