she impels only man. Why? Because man only has soul, and Soul seeks to
commune with the Everlasting, as a fountain struggles up to its source.
Burn your book. It would found you a reputation for learning and
intellect and courage, I allow; but learning and intellect and courage
wasted against a truth, like spray against a rock! A truth valuable to
the world, the world will never part with. You will not injure the truth,
but you will mislead and may destroy many, whose best security is in the
truth which you so eruditely insinuate to be a fable. Soul and Hereafter
are the heritage of all men; the humblest, journeyman in those streets,
the pettiest trader behind those counters, have in those beliefs their
prerogatives of royalty. You would dethrone and embrute the lords of the
earth by your theories. For my part, having given the greater part of my
life to the study and analysis of facts, I would rather be the author of
the tritest homily, or the baldest poem, that inculcated that imperishable
essence of the soul to which I have neither scalpel nor probe, than be the
founder of the subtlest school, or the framer of the loftiest verse, that
robbed my fellow-men of their faith in a spirit that eludes the
dissecting-knife,--in a being that escapes the grave-digger. Burn your
book! Accept This Book instead; Read and Pray."

He placed his Bible in my hand, embraced me, and, an hour afterwards, the
old man and the child left my hearth solitary once more.

[1] The summary of this distinguished lecturer's objections to phrenology
is to be found in the Appendix to vol i. of "Lectures on Metaphysics," p.
404, et seq. Edition 1859.

[2] The change of length of iron girders caused by variation of
temperature has not unfrequently brought down the whole edifice into which
they were admitted. Good engineers and architects allow for such changes