sixth and seventh columns are formed by adding the preceding ones, and express the mortuary experience up to 1872, of the 812 graduates. The total number of years of experienee is 18913, and the number of deaths is 197, or (if John Graham, 1833, is counted) 198. The sixth and seventh columns of the table are therefore to be thus read. Of the 188 former members of the school, who at the completed age of 25 years entered upon their 26th year of life, and so are exposed to risk, one, and only one, died before the close of the year. Again, of the 627 persons who entered upon the 31st year of life, 8 died before the close of the year, and the rest survived; and so on throughout the table. How does this experience compare with that of other classes of persons? The experience of 20 English Life Assurance Companies has recently been collected, which covers 1,350,762 years of risk, in which there have been 23,856 deaths. A table of mortality* derived therefrom is given in the last column on p. 307, and beside it in the last column but one, is a table from the experience of the former members of the Divinity School. The tables are to be read thus: of 93,070 assured persons living at the 24th birthday, 88,898 may be expected to live to the 30th birthday; 81,373 may be expected to live to the 40th birthday, and so on. But if the mortality was to be year by year in the proportion actually experienced among the graduates of the Divinity School, the numbers attaining these ages would be 88111, 79886, &c. Comparing these columns we see that the mortality is the greater for the first table, up to about the age of 32; that for the next seven or eight years the two tables represent about equal mortality, while from that time the numbers in the first column gain steadily and largely upon those of the second. The ground lost in the first years is not fully regained till the age of 45. Not much credit of course can be given to the last eight or ten numbers of the first column, as the number of lives at risk was so small for these older ages. There is another and perhaps a better way of comparing the experience with the standard table. The mortality to be ex * Samuel Brown, Esq., in Assurance Magazine, vol. xvi, p. 429. pected for the number of lives at risk in each year is readily computed from the given table. The results along with the actual mortality grouped in periods of five years, are as follows: The same general conclusions are evident from this table which were noticed in comparing the two tables of mortality. Up to an age between 40 and 45, the total expected and actual mortality are equal. Above that age the actual mortality is about three-fifths of the expected. It should perhaps be noticed in passing, that the standard table was made from assured lives, that the benefits of medical selection in the early years were not eliminated, and that therefore the table to that extent does not express the law for common lives. The only fact that implies a corresponding influence of selection in the group of lives we have been considering, is that each person had health enough at some time during the three years before entering the group to begin seminary studies. Other causes, I think, belong to the law of mortality of the group. That mortality among the clergy was less than among men of equal ages in other occupations has been well known. Mr. Neison, in a very important and interesting Article* upon the influence of occupation upon health as shown by the mortality experienced in England and Wales in 1860 and 1861, gives the following per centages of mortality per annum for males * Assurance Magazine, July, 1872, vol. xvii, p. 95. in the classes and occupations named. I select a few among similar figures: To discuss causes is outside my purpose. I close with one remark upon a money aspect of the subject. The law of mortality among the clergy is probably such that the actual cost of life insurance is less for them than for men in other occupations. If the exact amount of the difference can be shown they are justly entitled to the benefit of it, and the insurance companies would undoubtedly in some way give it to them. But before the companies can justly make such a concession, the law of mortality for the profession among the several denominations in this country must be better known than at present. Is it not worth while for the clergy to collect the facts needed to make such a table of mortality? ARTICLE VI.—THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF FARADAY. The Lafe and Letters of Faraday. By Dr. BENCE JONES, Secretary of the Royal Institution. In two volumes. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1870. Michael Faraday. By J. H. GLADSTONE, Ph.D., F.R.S. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1872. THE intense activity which we see directed to the study of natural and physical science, is one of the characteristic features of the present time. It is not peculiar to England or America; it is equally observed on the continent of Europe, and in as marked a way in Germany as anywhere else. The brilliant applications of natural force--for example, the use of steam in ships, and on lines of railway that stretch across a continent, and of lightning to carry messages over the land and beneath the ocean-are at once an effect of these studies, and a stimulus to their further prosecution. To be sure, the sanguine prophets who hope for the perfection of man and society from material improvements alone, must have their ardor chilled somewhat, by the occasional exposure of fraud and chicanery employed on a grand scale in some of these stupendous works of our modern civilization. But this is no fault of science, which offers great benefits, even though it cannot pretend to regenerate human character, and though it may even furnish incidentally instruments of vastly augmented strength for selfishness to wield in behalf of its own ends. The forces of inorganic nature and their relation to each other; the origin of man on the material side; the connection of all living species with one another and with things inanimate; the genesis of the globe itself and of the entire physical universe-these are among the branches of that study of matter and of its laws, which absorbs the attention of a myriad of explorers, and which will go on, and ought to go on, until the human mind has ascertained all that it is competent to learn of the outward world. Much has been written of late upon the bearing of the sciences of nature on religion, and of the spirit in which they should be studied. We propose to |