Carthage, not stopping to consider what Biblical men will do with his facts; never more than touching upon their religious bearings; intent only on ascertaining what the facts are, and what they teach. This, we say, is the spirit and temper of the true philosopher—this betokens the genuine son of science. As well might we demand of Watt, or Fulton, or Davy, or Brewster, or Faraday, in pursuing their inquiries into the nature and laws of steam, electricity, galvanism, or light, to be careful that their discoveries impinge not on the teachings of religion or the creed of orthodoxy, as to demand of Lyell to investigate the antiquity of man in humble deference to the well-established belief of the whole Christian world that he has no such antiquity. Not a bitter thing is said in the whole book against any traditional belief; the Scriptures are scarcely more than alluded to; he seems scarcely conscious that he is attempting to establish conclusions at variance with the cherished creeds of vast multitudes of men. To some this may seem the callousness of infidelity; to us it seems the sublime composure of science. To him, the fact in the case is everything; and he is content to leave it to work its own results.

What now, on the other hand, have been the spirit and temper of the religious press and the pulpit touching the progress of science, and especially its encroachments upon the ancient landmarks of traditional belief? We are sorry to be compelled to say that, with some honorable exceptions, the spirit manifested by religious journals and clergymen generally, has not been worthy of unqualified admiration. In many instances they have shown a dogged determination to hear nothing on the subject. Assuming, with absolute confidence, not only that the Scriptures are what the Church claims them to be, but that their interpretation of them is infallible, they have affected to ignore all the findings of science, and to treat them, in their bearing on Biblical interpretation, as profane intermeddling with divine things. They seem to imagine that their safety consists in not seeing danger, like the ostrich hiding its head in the sand, and supposing that thereby its whole body is protected. In other instances, while professing a willingness to hear—to seek truth—to not be afraid of the light—to boast of science even as the handmaid of religion—they have shown a disposition to decry the alleged discoveries of science, to ridicule its supposed facts, to make light of a whole concatenation of evidence, to prate of the uncertainties and vacillations of science, to sneer at 'sciolists,' or 'mere men of science,' to warn against the 'babblings of science' and 'philosophy falsely so called,' and meantime they have betrayed a nervous sensitiveness with regard to certain alleged discoveries and facts coming to the popular ear. They affect to sneer at the 'wise week' of the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and to turn the proceedings of that body into ridicule, by caricaturing the importance attached to some minor organ of the human or animal frame, in the determination of specific identity or difference. While absolutely ignorant of the true state of the case as it stands in the scientific world, they thunder from the pulpit in the ears of their people—a position where they are safe from reply—crudities and monstrosities of science at which the humblest member of the aforesaid Association would smile. In other instances, with a most unfortunate or misguided zeal, they would fain compel Christian faith to override and traverse all those great laws of evidence which regulate human belief in other matters. They do not dispute the facts of science when clearly established—they will concede to them an existence as facts in their own sphere—but they hold the Scriptures, as being inspired and infallible, to be transcendent and paramount, and not to be affected by any possible combination of facts. That is to say, if the Scriptures teach the unity of the race, or the universality of the deluge, or the modern origin of man—and if they understand them to teach these things, they do teach them for them—they hold that no amount of evidence which science may adduce can be of any avail, even though it might amount to absolute certainty, did not the Scriptures stand in the way. You may believe the facts of science, if you choose, but the Scriptures must be believed to the contrary notwithstanding. If science does not agree with the Scriptures, so much the worse for science—that is its own affair. This is the sentiment, distinctly uttered not long since by a learned American Professor. Consistently with this view, they maintain that the Scriptures are to be held as an authority in scientific matters; that science must order its conclusions in accordance with them; and that any facts are to be distrusted which conflict with the declarations of the Bible. They would thus place the Scriptures and nature in a posture of antagonism; and require Christian faith to trample upon and triumph over the evidence of the senses, as it is required to triumph over the world, the flesh, and the devil. What must be thought of an otherwise educated body of men who would willingly reduce the faith of the Christian world to such a posture as that?

Furthermore, in the general spirit and temper of the religious press with reference to science and scientific men, there is much to criticize and condemn. It is often snappish, petulant, ill-humored, unfair, and sometimes malicious in the extreme. Such opprobrious terms as infidelity, irreligion, rationalizing tendencies, naturalism, contempt for the Scriptures, etc., are freely used. Scientific men are called infidel pretenders, and are charged with a secret conspiracy to overthrow the faith of the Christian world. A respectable religious weekly paper in this country, in noticing Sir Charles Lyell's work, while carefully withholding from its readers the slightest notion of the array of evidence adduced in the book, is prompt to inform them that the learned author shows his want of respect for the Word of God. Another, in noticing the account of the last hours of Mr. Buckle, is almost ready to exult in the fact that in the wreck and prostration of his great powers he whined out piteously: 'I am going mad!' and intimates that his mental sufferings are to be attributed to the judicial visitation of God, inflicted as a punishment for the employment of those powers in the service of infidelity. An able, though generally absurd quarterly journal, in reviewing Hugh Miller's 'Testimony of the Rocks,' finds in some of his gorgeous speculations premonitions of that mental aberration which ended his life, and does not hesitate to attribute the final catastrophe to the overworking of his powers in the service of pretentious and unsanctified science. Noble and true-hearted son of the Church though he was, and though laboring with herculean strength to set the Bible and science in harmony, he has not escaped the envenomed shafts of a portion of the religious press. By some he has been openly branded as a traitor in the camp.

Now this unseemly heat and this unbecoming spirit and temper may be cloaked under a zeal for religion. It may be said that we are to 'contend earnestly for the faith.' We answer, verily, but never with the weapons of malice and wickedness. This mode of treating science, if persisted in, must end only in chagrin and defeat to the parties employing it, for the simple reason that it does violence to reason, nature, and all the laws of man's being. Science cannot be turned aside in her strenuous and ever-successful progress by any such impediments thrown in her way. The clear, calm, cogent facts and inferences of the philosopher cannot be met successfully by the half-suppressed shriek of the mere Biblicist. And it must be at once perceived that any such treatment of science, any such half-concealed fear of the progress of science, any such