Without pretending to comment on which strange utterances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies beside them much of a still more questionable character; unsuited to the general apprehension; nay wherein he himself does not see his way.  Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not without bursts of splendor; on the “perennial continuance of Inspiration;” on Prophecy; that there are “true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day:”  with more of the like sort.  We select some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago.

“Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire,” thus apostrophizes the Professor:  “shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished.  Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise:  That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth.  Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little!  But what next?  Wilt thou help us to embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live?  What! thou hast no faculty in that kind?  Only a torch for burning, no hammer for building?  Take our thanks, then, and—­thyself away.

“Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me?  Or is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me; or dispute into me?  To the ‘Worship of Sorrow’ ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship originated, and been generated; is it not here?  Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it is of God!  This is Belief; all else is Opinion,—­for which latter whoso will, let him worry and be worried.”

“Neither,” observes he elsewhere, “shall ye tear out one another’s eyes, struggling over ‘Plenary Inspiration,’ and such like:  try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself.  One BIBLE I know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible; nay with my own eyes I saw the God’s-Hand writing it:  thereof all other Bibles are but Leaves,—­say, in Picture-Writing to assist the weaker faculty.”

Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible passage:—­

“To me, in this our life,” says the Professor, “which is an internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable.  Hast thou in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning thereof is.  If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this:  ’Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of Happiness in the world, something from my share:  which, by the Heavens, thou shalt not; nay I will fight thee rather.’—­Alas, and the