The Doctrine of Chances. No Mathematical Figures in Nature. The French Metric System. The Lowell Turbine Wheel.   2. Errors of Astronomy. Kant's Predictions; Le Verrier's. Herschel's Enumeration of Errors. Sun's Distance; Other Measurements. The Moon's Structure and Influence. La Place's Proposed Improvement. The Sun's Structure, Heat, Etc. The Sizes, Distances, and Densities of the Planets. Errors About the Nebulæ. Errors About Comets. The Cosmical Ether. The Cold of Infinite Space. From This Chaos Springs the Theory of Development.   3. Errors of Geology. No Fact of Geology Anti-Biblical. All Anti-Biblical Theories Based on an If. No Geological Measure of Time.   4. Errors of Zoology. Lamarck's Vestiges; Tremaux; Darwin's Contradictions; Huxley; Mivart, and Wallace. Blunders of the French Academy, Denouncing Quinine, Vaccination, Lightning Rods, and Steam Engines. Uncertainty of Science Increases in Human Concerns. Second-hand Science Founded on Somebody's Say So.   5. All Science Founded on Faith. Reason Also Based on Faith. This Life Depends on Faith. We Demand Truths of which Science is Ignorant. All Our Chief Concerns in the Domain of Faith. Religion the Most Experimental of the Sciences. The Only Science which can Make You Happy. Try for Yourself.

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PREFACE.

This is not so much a volume upon the Evidences of Christianity, as an examination of the Evidences of Infidelity. When the Infidel tells us that Christianity is false, and asks us to reject it, he is bound of course to provide us with something better and truer instead; under penalty of being considered a knave trying to swindle us out of our birthright, and laughed at as a fool, for imagining that he could persuade mankind to live and die without religion. Suppose he had proved to the world's satisfaction that all religion is a hoax, and all men professing it are liars, how does that comfort me in my hour of sorrow? Scoffing will not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, and venerate, and trust.

A glimmering idea of this necessity seems lately to have dawned upon some of them. It is quite possible that they have also felt the want of something for their own souls to believe; for an Infidel has a soul, a poor, hungry, starved soul, just like other men. At any rate, having grown tired of pelting the Church with the dirtballs of Voltaire and Paine, they begin to acknowledge that it is, after all, an institution; and that the Bible is an influential book, both popular and useful in its way. Mankind, it seems, will have a Church and a Bible of some sort; why not go to work and make a Church and a Bible of their own? Accordingly they have gone to work, and in a very short time have prepared a variety of ungodly religions, so various that the worldly-minded man who can not be suited with one to his taste must be very hard to please. Discordant and contradictory in their positive statements, they are agreed only in negatives; denying the God of the Bible, the resurrection of the dead, and judgment to come. Nevertheless each discoverer or constructor presents his system to the world with great confidence, large claims to superior benevolence, vast pretensions to learning and science, and no little cant about duty and piety. Wonderful to tell, some of them are very fond of clothing their ungodliness in the language of Scripture.

No pains are spared to secure the wide spread of these notions. Prominent Infidels are invited to deliver courses of scientific lectures, in which the science is made the medium of conveying the Infidelity. Scientific books, novels, magazines, daily newspapers, and common school books, are all enlisted in the work. The disciples of Infidelity are numerous and zealous. It would be hard to find a factory, boarding-house, steamboat or hotel where twelve persons are employed, without an Infidel; and harder still to find an Infidel who will not use his influence to poison his associates.

These systems are well adapted to the depraved tastes of the age. The business man, whose whole soul is set on money-making and spending, is right glad to meet the Secularist, who will prove to him on scientific principles, that a man is much profited by gaining the whole world, even at the risk of his soul, if he has such a thing. The young and ill-instructed professor of Christianity, whose longings for forbidden joys are strong, has a natural kindliness toward nationalism, which befogs the serene light of God's holy law, and gives the directing power to his own inner liking. The sentimental young lady, who would recoil from the grossness of the Deist, is attracted by the poetry of Pantheism. Infidelity has had, in consequence, a degree of success very little suspected by simple-minded pastors and parents, and which is often discovered too late for remedy.

This book is written to expose the folly of some of these novel systems of Infidelity—leaving others to show their wickedness. It may surprise some who would glory in being esteemed fiends, to learn that they are only fools. If they should be awakened now to a sense of the absurdities which they cherish as philosophy, it might save them from awaking another day to the shame and everlasting contempt of the