its earliest attacks, and approaches like the tiger, crouching; but when it makes its spring, the bound is the more dangerous and fatal.

This mask is not always the same. It is changed according to times and circumstances, or according to the attainments and taste of the men who wear it. Some have objected to the Bible on the plea that it teaches a loose morality, and declare their better feelings to be shocked at practices which it tolerates and seems to commend. Others hesitate to avow their faith in the Holy Book, because it teaches doctrines which, if not irrational, in their view are mysterious and unintelligible, and therefore not entitled to our belief. A still different class are found catching at every seeming inconsistency between one part of Scripture and another; and instead of inquiring as candid judges, how the discrepancy may be explained and removed, they strive, by every art of special pleading, to render it glaring and repulsive.

But often as Infidelity has fled to these and similar subterfuges, there is no covering under which it has assailed Christianity more injuriously, than when it hides itself under the show of Learning;

nor is there a branch of Letters or Science which has not sooner or later been pressed into the unholy service. The stores of antiquarian lore have been ransacked, and weapons of attack brought forth, the weakness of which it was hoped, might be hidden under the rust of ages which covered them. In generations which have but lately passed by, the war was maintained in the abstruse and bewildering region of metaphysics; and when such assaults have been repelled, and all that is certain and fixed in metaphysical science was proved to be on the side of Revelation, the enemy has made new demonstrations. He has torn open the bowels of the earth to discover fossil remains that might say something against the Bible; he has carried his unwearied observations into the heavens, in hopes that he could persuade "the stars in their courses" to contradict the word of their Creator; he has even dissected and analyzed the human frame, in hopes to find something in the complexion or figure of the diversified tribes of our race which might contradict the inspired account of the original creation of man.

It is generally known that in this noble and

ennobling department of knowledge- Physical Science the Infidelity of the present day is most ambitious to display itself. It has here a field which is not only wide, but which is constantly and rapidly widening. The impulse that has lately been given to discoveries in the material world, is without a parallel. They are pervading "the heavens above and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth;" and in this wide range which Science is now taking, contributing at every step to enlarge the boundaries of human knowledge and human happiness, Infidelity still aspires to follow, and views nothing too high or too sacred for its profane purposes. It would lay its hand on both the telescope and the microscope, and reaching from the stars and suns that are the centres of other worlds, down to the tiny insect which is invisible to the naked eye, it seems to hope that its career may be prolonged by the amplitude of the field before it; and that, if detected and exposed in one fallacy, it fly to another, and hide itself under some new subterfuge of deceit.

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In these profligate flights too, it has derived advantages not only from the excitement always

attending new and vast discoveries, but also from that spirit of haste which impels all classes of mankind in the present age of the world. Onward, onward seems to be the great watch word of our times. The traveller listens to it as he steams his way over land and sea with a speed that outstrips the wind. The merchant listens to it as he makes haste to be rich, and turns away with disgust from patient toil. And while all such pursuits of life are stimulated into increased rapidity of progress; notwithstanding the prescriptive right of the philosopher to be calm and deliberate, he also is often carried away by the same ambition which animates men around him. He would have the fable of "Mercury on wings" ripen into reality. He will be satisfied with nothing short of a railroad speed on the highway of knowledge, and the lightning of the telegraph must make discoveries in science with the same despatch that it communicates the common occurrences of the passing hours.

But while this spirit of progress with men of learning is to be hailed as the harbinger and means of invaluable good, it is at the same time attended

with dangers which should never be overlooked. The great truths of Nature often lie deep, very deeply hidden; and we are liable to imagine that we have fathomed them to their depths, when we have only just touched their surface. Her works and laws also are far from standing alone, or isolated one from another. They are all combined into a harmonious system, of which the parts might be considered as deformities or imperfections, if viewed by themselves; and yet when viewed in their relation to the whole, are essential to its beauty and perfection. In this way our Creator has enstamped upon his own works the image of himself, shewing that "he sees the end from the beginning, and makes all things work together for good." And there is danger, great danger, that in discoveries recently made, and investigations hastily conducted by short sighted man, we may leave many of them in a crude undigested state, neither reduced to their proper form, nor carried home to their proper place in the great systems of truth and wisdom.

Now it should always be remembered that it is just when scientific attainments are yet imper