The 'Essays and reviews' examined Author:James Buchanan Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: No. III. ' THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY.' The author of this Essay is no longer in the midst of us. He has been removed by the hand of death... more ». He cannot now be brought in person before the bar of public opinion, nor is he amenable to any earthly tribunal; he can be judged only by Him who is ' Lord of the conscience.' But his writings remain, and must exert some influence, for good or for evil, long after his removal from the busy haunts of men ; and we owe a duty to the living as well as to the dead,—to those who are entering on the thorny path of life, not less than to the memory of those who have already finished their course. That duty must be faithfully discharged, on the principle of strict and impartial justice, although it may well be undertaken with that chastened spirit which his recent removal from the midst of us is fitted to produce, and conducted with that forbearance which every generous mind will feel to be due in the case of one who is no longer present to defend himself. Our remarks, therefore, must relate exclusively to his works, with- By Baden Powell, M.A., F.B.S., Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of Oxford. out the slightest reference to his previous position or character as a man, or as a minister of the Church of England. Looking, then, to this Essay, and viewing it in the light which is reflected on it by several previous works from the same pen on similar or cognate topics of inquiry, it will be our object to analyse and arrange its very miscellaneous and somewhat contradictory contents, to ascertain and place clearly before our readers the ground principles on which his argument depends, and to enable them to form a just estimate of the amount of weight which belongs to it as a reason for discrediting or rejec...« less