e Israelites, in their battle with the Philistines,
he has presumptuously and without warrant brought down the ark of God
into the camp as a means of ensuring victory:--and the consequence of
this profanation is that, when the battle is lost, the ark is taken.

In every age the Church has been cautioned against this fatal and
impious rashness by its most illustrious members,--by the fervid
Augustin, by the subtle Aquinas, by the all-accomplished Pascal. The
warning has been given in vain. That close alliance which, under
the disguise of the most deadly enmity, has always subsisted between
fanaticism and atheism is still unbroken. At one time, the cry was,--"If
you hold that the earth moves round the sun, you deny the truth of the
Bible." Popes, conclaves, and religious orders, rose up against the
Copernican heresy. But, as Pascal said, they could not prevent the
earth from moving, or themselves from moving along with it. One thing,
however, they could do, and they did. They could teach numbers to
consider the Bible as a collection of old women's stories which the
progress of civilisation and knowledge was refuting one by one. They
had attempted to show that the Ptolemaic system was as much a part of
Christianity as the resurrection of the dead. Was it strange, then, that
when the Ptolemaic system became an object of ridicule to every man of
education in Catholic countries, the doctrine of the resurrection should
be in peril? In the present generation, and in our own country, the
prevailing system of geology has been, with equal folly, attacked on the
ground that it is inconsistent with the Mosaic dates. And here we have
Mr Sadler, out of his especial zeal for religion, first proving that the
doctrine of superfecundity is irreconcilable with the goodness of God,
and then laying down principles, and stating facts, from which the
doctrine of superfecundity necessarily follows. This blundering piety
reminds us of the adventures of a certain missionary who went to convert
the inhabitants of Madagascar. The good father had an audience of the
king, and began to instruct his majesty in the history of the human race
as given in the Scriptures. "Thus, sir," said he, "was woman made out
of the rib of man, and ever since that time a woman has had one rib
more than a man." "Surely, father, you must be mistaken there," said the
king. "Mistaken!" said the missionary. "It is an indisputable fact.
My faith upon it! My life upon it!" The