times,
influenced by erroneous teachings, wasted their time and energies in
idle questionings of the stars, vain efforts to find Arcana of
mysterious power, and to acquire magical authority over the elements. Is
it altogether clear that in these our times men are not hampered,
prevented to some degree from doing all the good they might do in the
short life-time allotted to them, by doctrines of another kind? Is there
in our day no undue sacrifice of present good in idle questionings? is
there no tendency to trust in a vain fetishism to prevent or remove
evils which energy could avert or remedy? The time will come, in my
belief, when the waste of those energies which in these days are devoted
(not merely with the sanction, but the high approval, of some of the
best among us) to idle aims, will be deplored as regretfully--but, alas,
as idly--as the wasted speculations and labours of those whom Whewell
has justly called the most intelligent and profound reasoners of the
'stationary age' of science. The words with which Whewell closes his
chapter on the 'Mysticism of the Middle Ages' have their application to
the mysticism of the nineteenth century:--'Experience collects her
stores in vain, or ceases to collect them, when she can only pour them
into the flimsy folds of the lap of Mysticism, who is, in truth, so much
absorbed in looking for the treasures which are to fall from the skies,
that she heeds little how scantily she obtains, or how loosely she
holds, such riches as she might find beside her.'

II.

_THE RELIGION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID._

During the last few years a new sect has appeared which, though as yet
small in numbers, is full of zeal and fervour. The faith professed by
this sect may be called the religion of the Great Pyramid, the chief
article of their creed being the doctrine that that remarkable edifice
was built for the purpose of revealing--in the fulness of time, now
nearly accomplished--certain noteworthy truths to the human race. The
founder of the pyramid religion is described by one of the present
leaders of the sect as 'the late worthy John Taylor, of Gower Street,
London;' but hitherto the chief prophets of the new faith have been in
this country Professor Smyth, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and in
France the Abbe Moigno. I propose to examine here some of the facts most
confidently urged by pyramidalists in support of their views.

But it will be well first to indicate briefly the doc