d teachers must not think it strange, if their hearers
and readers are slow to change. Nor must they despond even though no
signs of improvement appear for months or years. A change for the better
in a student may not be manifest till it has been in progress for years.
It may not be perfected for many years. You cannot force a change of
mind, as you can force the growth of a plant in a hot-house. An attempt
to do so might stop it altogether. Baxter said, two hundred years ago,
'Nothing so much hindereth the reception of the truth, as urging it on
men with too much importunity, and falling too heavily on their errors.'

'Have patience, then. Teach, as your pupil may be prepared to learn, but
respect the laws of the Eternal, which have fixed long intervals for
slow and silent processes, between the seed-time and the harvest-home.'

While I am in doubt as to whether I have put into my book too much on
some subjects, I am thoroughly convinced that I have put into it too
little on others. I have not said enough, nor half enough, on Atheism. I
ought to have exposed its groundlessness, its folly, and its mischievous
and miserable tendency at considerable length.

This defect I shall try to remedy as soon as possible, and in the best
way I can.

Some weeks ago I read a paper before the M. E. Preachers' Meeting of
Philadelphia, on ATHEISM,--what can it say for itself? The
paper was received with great favor, and many asked for its publication.
It will form the first article in my next volume.

I expect, in fact, to give the subject of Atheism a pretty thorough
examination in that volume, and to show that it is irrational and
demoralizing from beginning to end, and to the last extreme.

John Stuart Mill, the head and representative of English Literary and
Philosophical Atheists, has left us a history of his life, and of his
father's life. In this work he presents us with full length portraits of
himself and his father, and both gives us their reasons for being
Atheists, and reveals to us the influence of their Atheism on their
hearts and characters, as well as on their views on morality, politics,
and other important subjects.

And though the painter, as we might expect, flatters to some extent both
himself and his father, yet he gives us the more important features of
both so truthfully, that we have no difficulty in learning from them,
what kind of creatures great Philosophical Atheists are, or in gathering
from their wo