what is now a reasonable exercise of faith may one day be rewarded by a knowledge which on those particular points may terminate it.  And, in such ways, it is surely conceivable that a great part of the objections against Revelation may, in time, disappear; and, though other objections may be the result of the progress of the other sciences or the origination of new, the solution of previous objections, together with the additions to the evidences of Christianity, external and internal, which the study of history and of the Scriptures may supply, and the still brighter light cast by the progress of Christianity and the fulfilment of its prophecies, may inspire increasing confidence that the new objections are also destined to yield to similar solvents.  Meanwhile, such new difficulties, and those more awful and gigantic shadows which we have no reason to believe will ever be chased from the sacred page,—­mysteries which probably could not be explained from the necessary limitation of our faculties, and are, at all events, submitted to us as a salutary discipline of our humility,—­will continue to form that exercise of faith which is probably nearly equal in every age—­and necessary in all ages, if we would be made ‘little children,’ qualified ’to enter the kingdom of God.’

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+ It contains, let us recollect, (after all causes of changes, including a conquest, have been at work upon it,) a vast majority of the Saxon words spoken in the time of Alfred—­nearly a thousand years ago!

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In conclusion we may remark, that while many are proclaiming that Christianity is effete, and that, in the language of Mr. Proudhon (who complacently says it amidst the ignominious failure of a thousand social panaceas or his own age and country), it will certainly ’die out in about three hundred years;’ and while many more proclaim that, as a religion of supernatural origin and supernatural evidence, it is already dying, if not dead; we must beg leave to remind them that, even if ’Christianity be false, as they allege, they are utterly forgetting the maxims of a cautious induction in saying that it will therefore cease to exert dominion over mankind.  What proof is there of this?  Whether true or false, it has already survived numberless revolutions of human opinions, and all sorts of changes and assaults.  It is not confined, like other religions, to any one race—­to any one clime—­or any one form of political constitution.  While it transmigrates freely from race to race, and clime to clime, its chief home; too, is still in the bosom of enterprise, wealth, science, and civilisation; and it is at this moment most powerful amongst the nations that have most of these.  If not true, it has such an appearance of truth as to have satisfied many of the acutest and most powerful intellects of the species;—­a Bacon, a Pascal, a Leibnitz, a Locke, a Newton, a Butler;—­such an appearance of truth as to have enlisted in its support an immense army of