As to his treatment of the Bible, it evinces everywhere the crudest anthropomorphic method of interpretation such as we should expect to find in a child or very ignorant person. In truth, Mr. Laing is in a perfectly childish state of mind both as regards the Christian religion and as regards philosophy, sciences, and all the subjects he dabbles with. For our own part we have at most a general idea as to what exactly the Church does teach or may teach with regard to the interpretation of the Scripture. That she has so far acquiesced in the larger interpretation of Genesiacal cosmogony, that now the literal six-day theory would be very unsafe, forbids us to judge any present interpretation of other parts by the number, noise, or notoriety of its adherents. The universality of the Deluge is by no means the only tolerable interpretation now; though the doctrine of a partial deluge would have been most unsafe a century ago. All this does not mean giving up the inspiration of the record, but determining gradually what is meant by inspiration and the record. What could be less important to Christian dogma than the date of the Deluge or of Adam's creation? If it were proved that the original text _in this point_ had been hopelessly corrupted, as the discrepancies between the LXX. numbers and the Hebrew hint to be true to some extent, it would not touch the guaranteed integrity of Christian dogma. If Christ is the "son" of David, and Zachæus is "son" of Abraham, what period may not an apparent single generation stand for, especially in regard to the earlier Patriarchs? As far as the prophetic import of the Deluge is concerned, a very small local affair might be mystically large with foreshadowings, as we see with regard to the enacted prophecies of the later prophets. For the rest, we are quite weary of Mr. Laing, and are content to have shown that everywhere he is the same biassed, inconsequent, untrustworthy writer. His only power is a certain superficial clearness of diction and brilliancy of style, and this is brought to bear on a mass of information drawn confessedly from the labours of others, and selected in the interest of a foregone conclusion, without a single attempt at a fair presentment of the other side.