drudge in business is but little
better: whereas, natural philosophy, mathematical and mechanical
science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure, and in spite of
the gloomy dogmas of priests, and of superstition, the study of those
things is the study of the true theology; it teaches man to know and to
admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation,
and are unchangeable, and of divine origin.

Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect, that his mind was
ever young; his temper ever serene; science, that never grows grey, was
always his mistress. He was never without an object; for when we cease
to have an object we become like an invalid in an hospital waiting for
death.

Solomon's Songs, amorous and foolish enough, but which wrinkled
fanaticism has called divine.--The compilers of the Bible have placed
these songs after the book of Ecclesiastes; and the chronologists have
affixed to them the aera of B.C. 1014, at which time Solomon, according
to the same chronology, was nineteen years of age, and was then
forming his seraglio of wives and concubines. The Bible-makers and
the chronologists should have managed this matter a little better,
and either have said nothing about the time, or chosen a time less
inconsistent with the supposed divinity of those songs; for Solomon was
then in the honey-moon of one thousand debaucheries.

It should also have occurred to them, that as he wrote, if he did
write, the book of Ecclesiastes, long after these songs, and in which
he exclaims that all is vanity and vexation of spirit, that he included
those songs in that description. This is the more probable, because he
says, or somebody for him, Ecclesiastes ii. 8, I got me men-singers,
and women-singers [most probably to sing those songs], and musical
instruments of all sorts; and behold (Ver. ii), "all was vanity and
vexation of spirit." The compilers however have done their work but by
halves; for as they have given us the songs they should have given us
the tunes, that we might sing them.

The books called the books of the Prophets fill up all the remaining
part of the Bible; they are sixteen in number, beginning with Isaiah and
ending with Malachi, of which I have given a list in the observations
upon Chronicles. Of these sixteen prophets, all of whom except the
last three lived within the time the books of Kings and Chronicles were
written, two only, Isaiah and Jeremiah, are mentioned in the his