ep to our facts. The truth is that not Paul and
Barnabas were more driven to part company than the disputant who sets
up as of any authority a theological dogma, no matter what, or a
metaphysical abstraction, no matter what, and the man who studies
nature scientifically. One believes because he believes, and really at
bottom from no other reason; the other is in a chronic state of
inquiry; he believes nothing in regard to any subject of inquiry but
that which rests upon the ground of absolute knowledge. Mr. Braden's
book, although it is filled with evidences of wide reading and high
education, reads like a book of metaphysical and theological
commonplace. It reminds us of our college days in the lecture room of
the professor of moral philosophy. It is well enough in its way, but it
will attract little attention in the pending controversy. Of its style
we must say that, considering the position of its author, we wish it
were better, and that in the use of language it were an example more
worthy to be followed. Its first sentence is: "One of the _wise_
utterances of one _whom_ his contemporaries declared spoke as never man
spoke, was that no _wise_ man would begin," etc. On the next page we
have such vulgar error as "_transpiring_ before our eyes," "decay and
dissolution _transpiring_ in every department of nature"; and as to
_shall_ and _will_ the author seems to have no conception of their
proper functions in English speech. This, for the president of Abingdon
college, is not well.

--Of a somewhat different character, and of much greater importance, is
a little book which presents James Martineau's last utterances on this
subject.[9] It is made up of an address delivered in Manchester New
College, October 6, 1874, and two papers which appeared subsequently in
the "Contemporary Review." Dr. Bellows, in his introduction, expresses
the feeling with which religious minds will read these papers when he
says, "it is refreshing in the midst of the crude replies which alarmed
religionists are hastily hurling at the scientific assailants of faith
in a living God, to hear one thoroughly furnished scholar, profound
metaphysician, and earnest Christian entering his thoughtful and deeply
considered protest against the tendencies or conclusions of modern
materialism." Mr. Martineau may now be justly regarded as the leading
champion of faith. He has this distinction because he is not hampered by
creeds, or articles, or hierarchal res