'I am not exactly satisfied, even now; yet I do not mean to find fault with your reasoning, nor your conclusion. Only I must say that you have not answered my question. If I remember rightly, your sermon, Mr. Parson, intimated throughout that there existed a certain mutual dependence between all truths, and that they threw light on each other. Now I will admit that some do. The fact, when discovered, that two lenses placed in a certain position relative to each other, and to the human eye, would enable it to discover objects before invisible from their great distance, assisted to prove the truth which the Copernican system affirmed, and otherwise shed much light on astronomy. The truths developed by comparative anatomy throw much light on the facts of geology and the history of the globe constructed from them. Even it helps to clear up some few popular superstitions. It is said that Cuvier was a trifle skeptical, in his childhood, with regard to the existence of his Satanic Majesty; the solemn asseverations of his pious mother, and the awful warnings of the family priest, to the contrary notwithstanding. There is a myth which affirms, that when in his manhood, and in the height of his celebrity, and when his skepticism on this point had hardened into settled unbelief, he really saw the devil. Cuvier was walking, near night-fall, in a park near Monticello, and had just picked up a snail-shell, partially crushed by what appeared, from the tracks in the gravelled walk, to have been the tread of a deer; when all at once, directly in front of him, appeared approaching, the Grand-duke of Pandemonium, with red-hot glowing eyes, and the appendages with which the old Catholic painters represented him. The walk was narrow, and one or the other must turn out. Cuvier merely looked at the snail-shell, and advanced with meditative step. The devil stalked up to meet him, with his mouth, set with enormous teeth and vomiting sulphurous flame, wide open, and in a fierce under-toné, growled out:

You are the philosopher, are you, that do n't believe in the DEVIL? Turn out, or I'll eat you for supper!'

"You'll eat me, will you?' said Cuvier, composedly, taking out his spectacles and adjusting them, and then coolly surveying the 'Old Nick's' figure from top to toe; 'you 'll EAT me, will you? Let me see: Horns-Cloven feet-HERBIVEROUS. Can't be done!'

His Majesty instantly vanished in a blue vapor, and has not since been seen any where in the vicinity of Monticello. Doubtless his High Mightiness was deeply chagrined that science should thus convict him of a want of taste in the choice of a costume, in which, time out of mind, he had delighted to appear, and which was so much in keeping with his other well-known eccentricities. But although we find nine facts in ten that mutually elucidate each other, (and this is a large proportion to suppose, for hardly two in ten can be shown to do so,) we must not therefore incontinently conclude that in the nature of things all facts bear upon each other. We cannot show that they do; and we should rest satisfied with merely stating that some do. From this view of the matter, I think you were hardly justified in the statement implied in your phrase, Al

truths are akin;' that all facts (or truths, if you will have it thus,) mutually throw light on each other. It is, after all, a matter of small importance; but I hope you will think of the thing in your sermons hereafter, and be a little careful not to draw conclusions hastily.'

You are right,' said the Parson; but I do not believe another man in the congregation noticed what you have pointed out. A minister has hardly time so to pare down his phrases and arrange his thoughts as to avoid some few such blunders, almost any Sunday.'

What! what!' gruffly interposed the 'Squire; 'what! what! do you pretend to preach the Truth, and at the same time excuse yourself in this way? Is want of time a good excuse for preaching falsehood from the pulpit? But stop; I am a little too abrupt, and I ask your pardon. Yet this subject of truthfulness is one on which I am very obstinate. I think I ought to be. Perhaps you have never looked at it in the way that I do. I hold that a man is guilty of falsehood just as much when he says a thing is true, without proof of its truth, as when he says a thing is true which he knows to be false. Above all others, a minister should be truthful. He preaches the great truths of the Gospel, insists on their acceptance, and declares God to be a lover of truthfulness. The minister pretends to be a teacher of truth, and I hold that he should be also a speaker of the truth. Now I know that you, Mr. Parson, would not for your right hand say a thing was true when you knew it was not; ought you then to say a thing is true when you have no good proof of its truth?'

'Really, Jack,' answered the Parson, I cannot find any fault with you. Your idea is a good one; but I fear that if all ministers should confine themselves strictly to what they actually know from having proved it, there would be but little material for any thing like eloquence left to them. How could we paint the tortures of the damned, or the felicities of the saints in heaven, if we confined ourselves within the limits of your rule?'

'Well, I believe you would be at fault,' answered the 'Squire; but, after all, I do n't believe you need any such helps in the pulpit. The Scriptures do not describe the future state; nobody has ever come back from the dead to tell us or any one about it; and you yourself do n't know any thing of it, as yet; so if you attempt to describe it, it is all guess-work, and ought to pass for such with sensible men. I hold that the good will be happy and the bad miserable in another world, just as they are in this. Farther I do not inquire; I do not wish to be wise above what is written.' But what I am obstinate about is this: I want every man in the pulpit to tell the truth. If he has got any thing to say that he knows to be true, let him say it, and do somebody a little real good. I have heard men who would shrink from saying a thing was false when they did not know it to be so; and yet these same men would, Sunday after Sunday, declare a thing to be true of which they actually knew nothing. The falsehood is as great in the one case as in the

other, and I hold these men as (unconscious) liars. This is strong language; but I cannot use any milder phraseology. When I see a man get up in the pulpit, and launch out into fiction, I set him down as either a knave or a fool, in so far as he departs from the truth.

'You say that you do n't believe another man in the congregation noticed what the Doctor pointed out; but I did: and I have no doubt a dozen others in the church did so too. There are few who

care to speak out; but every such blunder,' as you term it, Mr. Parson, increases the strong under-current of distrust toward a minister of this sort; and if he persists in loose declamation, he must not be surprised when at length he finds a majority of his congregation entirely dissatisfied, both with his preaching and himself. If half the world are fools, one half are men of sense; and in the long run, the men of sense carry the day.'

Though you are very severe, Jack, against the cloth, yet I must own that you are right. I never took your view of the matter before, but I deem it the right one.'

'I find that I have not been mistaken in you, by the way in which you take my rough hints; and if I have wounded your feelings in the least, suffer me to disclaim any intention to do so.'

'Not in the least, Jack. Both you and the Doctor are in the right, and I do not complain.'

Then I will go on,' said the 'Squire, while he resumed his comfortable seat, after poking the grate a little; being reminded of the fire by the storm of snow which beat against the windows. I can bear almost any thing from the pulpit except falsehood. Even coarseness itself is the more acceptable. By the way, I recollect an instance of coarseness in the pulpit which at the time shocked me not a little. I am not over fastidious, but this was a trifle more than I could bear; and to change the subject, a moment, I will tell the thing.

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When I was an under-graduate in College, Protracted Meetings' were all the rage in that part of the country, and our good faculty used to suspend the college exercises, sometimes for a whole week, that we might attend the preachment of some great gun,' and share in the general excitement, for the good of our souls.' This term, by-the-by, 'good of the soul,' is somewhat more ancient than some imagine. Plato, in his ' Tenth Dialogue on Law,' uses it in the same sense in which it is used now-a-days. Well, to go on; one winter term a terrible 'Revival' broke out down-town, among the Methodists and Baptists, and we were all turned loose to hear ' BROTHER SMITH,' 'the new preacher, just from the West.'

For two or three days I stuck to my room, and read the Attic Nights' of Aulus Gellius; but finding my 'section' entirely deserted, and hearing more and more of the wonderful powers of Brother Smith,' I put on my over-coat one evening, and floundered through the snow down to the Baptist' meeting-house,' just before the services began. The house was crammed; students, towns-people, professors, and a pretty good sprinkling' of mischievous-looking

farmers' daughters from the country around. After much elbowing and squeezing, I got a stand in the broad-aisle near the pulpit; and in a few minutes the preacher came up, enveloped in a huge buffalo over-coat, buttoned with half-dollars, and a red-and-yellow muffler about his neck and face, each particular fibre of which stood out stiff and white with frost. As he was a little late, he gave out the hymn in his full dress, minus the red-and-yellow muffler.

While the audience was singing, Brother Smith' denuded himself of the over-coat; and made the prayer and read the Scriptures in a pepper-and-salt surtout with red velvet cuffs and collar. His voice had a peculiar twang; whether entirely original or modified by back-woods association, I could not make out, but at any rate it was the most singular voice that I ever heard. He chose for his text: The way of the transgressor is hard;' and evinced one good habit of mind, in sticking to it through thick and thin. There was indeed beside this a certain eloquence about the man, which forced you to listen to, and remember all he said. His imagination was strong and vivid, yet so admirably was it in control, that you could not if you would lose sight of what he was driving at: but his utter ignorance of every thing save the more obvious spirit of the Gospel, and the scenes and characters of western life, filled you with perfect amazement that so much native talent and logical power could be found in one whose knowledge was so limited.

He began his discourse by telling us that he did not know the alphabet until he was twenty-three, and that he acquired it then from the printed advertisements on his powder-canisters, and the stamps on his lead and rifle-barrel, with the learned assistance of a fellow trapper, who, in his younger days, had been to a woman's school' one quarter, in some part of the Eastern States. Then he adduced the life and fortunes of this fur-capped forest teacher as an illustration of the truth of the text. Crooked Jim' indulged in whiskey, and while making the present of a kiss to a young Indian woman, was shot through the head by her husband. His description of the scene was thrilling; and I ceased to wonder at the good people for crowding to hear him. Indeed I lost all thought of his pepper-and-salt surtout until he began to pull it off, with the remark, that it was all-nation hot inside the clap-boards,' but not a 'priming' to what it was 'down where the rich man is crying for water;' another illustration of the truth that the way of the transgressor is hard.'

'It was not long before he pulled off his coat also; telling us that the apostles never wore coats when they preached; as it was always warm weather, where they travelled; and for his part, he did not see why, if he was too warm, he could not 'go in shirt-sleeves, as well as they.'

'After dwelling on the individual transgressor for an hour or so, in his rapid, extemporaneous, and forcibly-gesticulated manner, he passed to mankind at large; and drew a picture of the last times and the judgment day. Really, I have never heard so sublime a description; yet it was so interspersed with idiosyncracies, as to ex

cite one to uncontrollable laughter, at the same time that the heart was beating with fear.

"When the last trump shall sound,' said he, 'the inhabitants of the earth shall come from the four quarters of the globe, from the sea and from the grave, before their Judge: and when he gives his sentence, while the good shall march in platoons and battalions into Heaven, the wicked shall be rim-racked and hub-broken, and shall wheel by kingdoms into hell!'

'Then he alluded to the Holy Scriptures, as our only guide to salvation 'The Bible,' said he, is so called, because it is a by- Bill, laid by by the apostles; and in 'that day' if you have not paid it to the last copper, you will find it an almighty hard bill to settle.'

'In conclusion, he compared human life to a game at cards. I wish I could recollect the whole picture which he drew, but it was as just and terrible, and as profoundly original as Retz's picture of The Game of Life.' It is not education nor refinement which gives ideas to genius, although they do give the appropriate dress in which these ideas are preserved.

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"My friends,' said he, after what we have seen, we may liken this life to a game at old sledge,' (all-fours, I believe ;) where the devil and his angels, and JESUS and his angels are standing, looking on to see the righteous playing with the wicked.'

'Here he described their appearance, and the emotions which appeared in every face; and then finally ended by saying, that' while the righteous get High, Low, Jack, and the Game, the sinner gets skunked to d.

.n!'

'I can readily conceive,' said the Parson, 'how much you must have been shocked by the coarseness of this man; but I want to know if, on the whole, you were not made better by him?'

'Whether better or worse, at any rate I remember his thoughts, and sympathize with his evident genius for oratory. I was not converted,' if that is what you mean,' said the 'Squire. There was but one in college who was so; and the last instance of his regeneration, that came to my knowledge, was six months after the 'revival,' when he staid away from chapel, one Sunday, on the plea of sickness, and as I was told, remained all day in the rooms of a wild Soph., playing Brag,' at eighteen-pence a corner!'

'I am sorry, Jack,' said the Parson, fidgetting about on the lounge, arranging his dickey and tapping the carpet with his foot, I am sorry, Jack, that you have so bad an opinion of revivals.' To be sure, I have my own doubts of their usefulness, as at present car. ried on, but I must think that in themselves they are of great value. Men seldom perform great actions unless under the influence of powerful excitement; and it is certainly a great action to conquer one's self, and turn the whole current of one's life into an entirely new channel. I have often wished that there was power enough in my preaching to create a constant revival in my own church and congregation.'

I don't!' answered the 'Squire. There is nonsense enough in the world now, and I don't want to see any addition to it, The