If Carlyle be correct in his declaration that "Truly a thinking man is the worst enemy the prince of darkness can have, and every time such a one announces himself there runs a shudder through the nether empire, where new emissaries are trained with new tactics, to hoodwink and handcuff him," who can doubt that the long dynasty of Eblis will instantly terminate, when every pulpit in Christendom, from the frozen shores of Spitzbergen to the green dells of Owhyhee, from the shining spires of Europe to the rocky battlements that front the Pacific, shall be filled with meek and holy men of ripe scholarship and resistless eloquence, whose scientific erudition keeps pace with their evangelical piety, and whose irreproachable lives attest that their hearts are indeed hallowed temples of that loving charity "that suffereth long and is kind; that vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up; thinketh no evil; beareth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things?"
While Christ walked to and fro among the palms and poppies of Palestine, glorifying anew an accursed and degraded human nature, unlettered fishermen, who mended their nets and trimmed their sails along the blue waves of Galilee, were fit instruments, in his guiding hands, for the dissemination of his Gospel; but when the days of the Incarnation ended, and Jesus returned to the Father, all the learning and the mighty genius of Saul of Tarsus were required to confront and refute the scoffing sophists who, replete with philhellenic lore, and within sight of the marvellous triglyphs and metopes of the Parthenon, gathered on Mars Hill to defend their marble altars to the Unknown God.