he lordly yet tender eye! How he submits to the boisterous
caresses of children, because he knows their weakness and shares their
spirit of play! Let their elders do the same, and he will at once show
resentment. See him peril his life ungrudgingly for those he loves, or
even for comparative strangers! And shall we deny him the epithet of
_noble or good?_ Whatever theologians may say, the sound heart of common
men and women will answer _No!_

Lastly, we are told that "the religious sentiment is characteristically
and supremely human." But here again we must complain of his lordship's
mental confusion. The religious sentiment is not a simple but a highly
complex emotion. Resolve it into its elemental feelings, and it will be
found that all these are possessed in some degree by lower animals. The
feeling of a dog who bays the moon is probably very similar to that of
the savage who cowers and moans beneath an eclipse; and if the savage
has superstitious ideas as well as awesome feelings, it is only because
he possesses a higher development of thought and imagination.

Canon Battersby, who moved the vote of thanks to the Bishop, ridiculed
the biologists, and likened them to Topsy who accounted for her
existence by saying "Specs I growed." Just so. That is precisely how we
all did come into existence. Growth and not making is the law for man as
well as for every other form of life. Moses stands for manufacture and
Darwin stands for growth. And if the great biologist finds himself in
the company of Topsy, he will not mind. Perhaps, indeed, as he is said
to enjoy a joke and to be able to crack one, might he jocularly observe
to "tremendous personages" like the Bishop of Carlisle, that this is not
the first instance of truths being hidden from the "wise" and revealed
unto babes.

PROFESSOR FLINT ON ATHEISM.

(January, 1877.)

Professor Flint delivered last week the first of the present year's
course of Baird lectures to a numerous audience in Blythswood Church,
Glasgow, taking for his subject "The Theories opposed to Theism."
Anti-Theism, he said, is more general now than Atheism, and includes
all systems opposed to Theism. Atheism he defined as "the system which
teaches that there is no God, and that it is impossible for man to know
that there is a God." At least this is how Professor Flint is reported
in the newspapers, although we hope he was not guilty of so idiotic a
jumble.

Where are the Atheists who