mankind, especially the right to assail a people's religion, has other
and very rigid conditions, which will not, we are persuaded, justify
this new outbreak of the restless spirit of Infidelity. Certainly, it
would have become Prof. Agassiz, before venturing upon the course he
has adopted, to dissociate himself from a University to which so many
of the youth of the country have been sent without any thought on the
part of their parents that they were to be exposed there to influences
which they would dread above all others. There is no right to offer,
except to _men_, capable of its thorough apprehension, any new or
questionable or unsettled doctrine. Prof. Agassiz should have been in
a condition to receive in his own person the consequences of a failure
to establish his theory. We have no fears as to the result of the
controversy upon which he has entered. No man worthy to be called a
Christian scholar, deprecates the subjection of the Bible to any tests
that are possible. It has withstood in the last two centuries quite
too much of sham science to be in any way affected by the logic of
Prof. Agassiz. Still, the appearance of such a paper in the _Christian
Examiner_--the chief organ of American Unitarianism--is significant of
a state of feeling and opinion to be regretted, and it should summon
to the conflict the men whose predecessors made every similar wave
of Infidelity bring support and strength to the bases of the rock of
Christianity.

* * * * *

Letters from Dr. Layard have been received in London, to the 10th of
April, dated from Arban, on the River Khabour. The last account from
this quarter mentioned his purpose of penetrating into the desert,
which he has explored for three weeks, meeting with numerous traces
of ancient population, though not so many antiquities as he expected.