But ere the Churches can be prepared competently to deal with it, or with the other objections of a similar class which the infidelity of an age so largely engaged as the present in physical pursuits will be from time to time originating they must greatly extend their educational walks into the field of physical science. The mighty change which has taken place during the present century, in the direction in which the minds of the first order are operating, though indicated on the face of the country in characters which cannot be mistaken, seems to have too much escaped the notice of our theologians. Speculative theology and the metaphysics are cognate branches of the same science; and when, as in the last and the preceding ages, the higher philosophy of the world was metaphysical, the Churches took ready cognizance of the fact, and, in due accordance with the requirements of the time, the battle of the Evidences was fought on metaphysical ground. But, judging from the preparations made in their colleges and halls, they do not now seem sufficiently aware—though the low thunder of every railway, and the snort of every steam engine, and the whistle of the wind amid the wires of every electric telegraph, serve to publish the fact—that it is in the departments of physics, not of metaphysics, that the greater minds of the age are engaged,—that the Lockes, Humes, Kants, Berkeleys, Dugald Stewarts, and Thomas Browns, belong to the past,—and that the philosophers of the present time, tall enough to be seen all the world over, are the Humboldts, the Aragos, the Agassizes, the Liebigs, the Owens, the Herschels, the Bucklands, and the Brewsters. In that educational course through which, in this country, candidates for the ministry pass, in preparation for their office, I find every group of great minds which has in turn influenced and directed the mind of Europe for the last three centuries, represented, more or less adequately, save the last. It is an epitome of all kinds of learning, with the exception of the kind most imperatively required, because most in accordance with the genius of the time. The restorers of classic literature—the Buchanans and Erasmuses—we see represented in our Universities by the Greek and what are termed the Humanity courses; the Galileos, Boyles, and Newtons, by the Mathematical and Natural Philosophy courses; and the Lockes, Kants, Humes, and Berkeleys, by the Metaphysical course. But the Cuviers, the Huttons, the Cavendishes, and the Watts, with their successors, the practical philosophers of the present age,—men whose achievements in physical science we find marked on the surface of the country in characters which might be read from the moon,—are _not_ adequately represented. It would be perhaps more correct to say, that they are not represented at all;[7] and the clergy, as a class, suffer themselves to linger far in the rear of an intelligent and accomplished laity—a full age behind the requirements of the time.