whatever in the essay referred to that justifies the statement.  Indeed, no occasion offered; for the writer was discussing evolution in its relations to theism, not to Biblical theology, and probably would not be disposed to intermix arguments so different in kind as those from natural science and those from revelation.  To pursue each independently, according to its own method, and then to compare the results, is thought to be the better mode of proceeding.  The weighing of probabilities we had regarded as a proper exercise of the mind preparatory to forming an opinion.  Probabilities, hypotheses, and even surmises, whatever they may be worth, are just what, as it seems to us, theologians ought not to be foremost in decrying, particularly those who deal with the reconciliation of science with Scripture, Genesis with geology, and the like.  As soon as they go beyond the literal statements even of the English text, and enter into the details of the subject, they find ample occasion and display a special aptitude for producing and using them, not always with very satisfactory results.  It is not, perhaps, for us to suggest that the theological army in the past has been too much encumbered with impedimenta for effective aggression in the conflict against atheistic tendencies in modern science; and that in resisting attack it has endeavored to hold too much ground, so wasting strength in the obstinate defense of positions which have become unimportant as well as untenable.  Some of the arguments, as well as the guns, which well served a former generation, need to be replaced by others of longer range and greater penetration.

If the theologians are slow to discern the signs and exigencies of the times, the religious philosophical naturalists must be looked to.  Since the above remarks were written, Prof.  Le Conte’s “Religion and Science,” just issued, has come to our hands.  It is a series of nineteen Sunday lectures on the relation of natural and revealed religion, prepared in the first instance for a Bible-class of young men, his pupils in the University of South Carolina, repeated to similar classes at the University of California, and finally delivered to a larger and general audience.  They are printed, the preface states, from a verbatim report, with only verbal alterations and corrections of some redundancies consequent upon extemporaneous delivery.  They are not, we find, lectures on science under a religious aspect, but discourses upon Christian theology and its foundations from a scientific layman’s point of view, with illustrations from his own lines of study.  As the headings show, they cover, or, more correctly speaking, range over, almost the whole field of theological thought, beginning with the personality of Deity as revealed in Nature, the spiritual nature and attributes of Deity, and the incarnation; discussing by the way the general relations of theology to science, man, and his place in Nature; and ending with a discussion