ion of the audience; while we know that they grieved
and offended some intelligent and candid men who thoroughly agreed with
his views. It is time that Christians and clergymen had learned that men
whom they regard as heretics and infidels have not forfeited all claims
to the respect and courtesies of social life by their errors of opinion,
and that insolence and arrogance, contemptuous sneers and impeachment of
motives and character towards such men, are not effective means of grace
for their enlightenment and conversion.

"There was a large number of men among the audience who lost their
self-control in their dislike of Mr. Barker's views, and he was often
interrupted, and sometimes checked in his argument, by hisses, groans,
sneers, vulgar cries, and clamors, though through all these annoyances
and repeated provocations, he maintained his wonted composure of manner
and his clearness of thought. On the other hand, Dr. Berg was heard with
general quiet by his opponents, and greeted with clamorous applause by
his friends."

I am afraid the above remarks were true. Still, Dr. Berg was almost a
gentleman compared with Dr. McCalla, and he was vastly more of a scholar
and debater, far as he was from being a model disputant.

Dr. Berg had the right side; he stood for the defence of all that was
good, and true, and great, and glorious; but the way in which he went
about his work was by no means the best one. He took a wrong
position,--a position which it was impossible for him to maintain. His
doctrine was that the Bible was absolutely perfect,--that the
inspiration of the Book was such as not only to make it a fit and proper
instrument for the religious instruction, and the moral and spiritual
renovation, of mankind, but such as to preserve it from all the
innocent, harmless, and unimportant weaknesses, imperfections, and
errors of regenerate and sanctified humanity. He even contended for a
kind or a degree of perfection which many of the most highly esteemed
professors and theologians of orthodox churches had relinquished. He
held to views about the creation and the universality of the deluge,
which orthodox Christian Geologists like Professor Hitchcock of America,
as well as Dr. Pye Smith of England, had given up as untenable. He
contended for a perfection which, in fact, is physically impossible, and
which, in truth, was inconsistent with his own acknowledgments in other
parts of the discussion. I have no wish to dispar