have heard only one side of the question, and will be
surprised at their own ignorance of matters which they ought to have
known.

Books on the Evidences are not generally circulated. Ministers perhaps
have some volumes in their libraries; but in a hundred houses, it would
be hard to find half a dozen containing as many as would give an
inquiring youth a fair view of the historical evidences of the truth of
the gospel. Nor, where they are to be found, are they generally read.
Being deemed heavy reading, the magazine, or the newspaper is preferred.
Ministers do not in general devote enough of their time to such sound
teaching as will stop the mouths of gainsayers. I have been assured by
skeptical gentlemen, who in the early part of their lives had attended
church regularly for twenty-two years, that during all that time they
had never heard a single discourse on the Evidences. Moreover, the
protean forms of Infidelity are so various, and many of its present
positions so novel, that books or discourses prepared only twenty years
ago miss the mark; and rather expose to the charge of misrepresentation,
than produce conviction. New books on Infidelity are needed for every
generation.

The lectures expanded into this volume were delivered in Cincinnati, in
1858. Replying to different, and discordant systems of error, whose only
bond is opposition to the gospel, they are necessarily somewhat
disconnected. No attempt was made to mold them into a suit of royal
armor, but merely to select a few smooth pebbles from the brook of
truth, which any Christian lad might sling at the giant defiers of the
armies of the living God. Having proved acceptable for this purpose, and
a steadily increasing demand for repeated editions wearing out the
original plates, the author has been requested by British and American
publishers to revise the work in the light of the recent discoveries of
science. This he has attempted; with what success the reader will judge.
Conscious of its many defects, yet grateful to God for the good which he
has done to many souls by its instrumentality, the author again commends
the book to the Father of Lights, praying him to use it as a mirror to
flash such a ray of light into many dark souls as may lead them into the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 1875.

* * * * *

The author having been repeatedly asked by inquire