rest of those perspicuous German hieroglyphics, whether entombed in
their native pyramids for the amazement of succeeding generations, by
Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel, or "worshiping in the great cathedral of
the immensities," "with their heads uplifted into infinite space," or
"lying on the plane of their own consciousness," in the writings of
Carlyle, Emerson, and Parker. They are myths, the whole of them, for
they "are couched in symbolical language;" and Bauer, De Wette, and
Strauss have pronounced every thing couched in symbolical language to be
mythical. Let us henceforth deliver our minds from all anxiety about
history, philosophy, or religion, and stick to the price current and the
multiplication table, the only accounts that are not "couched in
symbolical language."

Such is the sort of trash that passes for profound philosophy when once
it is made unintelligible, and such are the canons of interpretation
with which men calling themselves philosophers and Christians sit down
to investigate the claims of the Bible as a revelation from God. If they
would speak out their true sentiments, they would say, "There can not be
any revelation from God, because there is no God." But they could not
call themselves professors of Christian colleges, and pastors of
Christian churches, and reap the emoluments of such situations, if they
would honestly avow their Atheism. Besides, the world would see too
plainly the drift of their teaching; therefore it is cloaked under a
profession of belief in God, the Creator, who however is to be
carefully prevented from ever showing himself again in the world he has
made.

No proof is attempted for the declaration that miracles are impossible.
Yet, surely, if it implies a contradiction to say so, that contradiction
could be shown. That it is not self-evident is shown by the general
belief of mankind that miracles have occurred. No man who believes in a
supernatural being can deny the possibility of supernatural actings. The
creation of the world is the most stupendous of all miracles, utterly
beyond the power of any finite causes, and entirely beyond the reach of
our experience, yet some of these men admit that this miracle occurred.
Supernatural events then are not impossible, nor unprecedented.

The vain notion that God, having created the world at first, left it for
ever after to the operation of natural laws, is conclusively demolished
by the discoveries of geology. These discoverie