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

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 Life 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 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

touch on these topics only in a quite incidental and informal, as well as brief, manner, in connection with a notice of the religious character of one of the most illustrious men who have cultivated science in our day, or, in fact, at any time; a man whose genius and merits are conceded on all hands; the author of uncontested discoveries of striking interest and value; whose life, moreover, is in more than one respect instructive and encouraging to students, especially to those who have to contend with poverty or social disadvantages. We refer to Faraday. As is generally known, he was the son of a poor blacksmith, a journeyman laborer, who removed from Clapham, in Yorkshire, to London, where the distinguished philosopher was born in 1791. His parents were pious members of a small denomination of Nonconformists. His father died in 1810; but his ⚫ mother long survived to enjoy the fame of her son and to receive from him the most fond and respectful care. Young Faraday had no school education, except in the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic. When he was thirteen, he went to live as an errand boy with a bookseller whose shop was near the humble rooms, over a coach house, where his parents resided. A part of his work was to take round newspapers that were lent out by his master. Afterwards, with much feeling, he recalled the days when, on a Sunday morning, he would rise early to carry his newspapers, which he called for at a later hour; and remembered how unhappy he was if he found himself unable to get home, to make himself neat, and to attend his parents to their place of worship. In after life he seldom met a newspaper boy in the street without speaking a kind word to him. "I always feel," he said to his niece, on one of these occasions, "a tenderness for these boys, because I once carried newspapers myself." Something in this incident may remind one of Luther, who when a student sang for alms at the doors of the houses in Eisenach, according to an old German custom, and said, later in life: Let no one despise these poor students; I was one myself once! After a year, Faraday became an apprentice of his employer; and while at his daily work as a bookbinder and stationer, he read such works in science as fell in his way, tried chemical experiments with such apparatus as he could construct himself, and, by assiduous self

improvement, not only advanced in the knowledge of the branches for which he had an irresistible taste and an extraordinary aptitude, but cultivated himself in other directions. He had too catholic a mind not to appreciate metaphysical study; and he told a friend that "Watts on the Mind" first made him think. Thus he went on-dividing his time between toil and study-until, having heard some of Sir Humphrey Davy's lectures, he attracted the attention of this celebrated chemist, was made his assistant at the Royal Institution, traveled with him through Europe, was appointed Director of the Laboratory, and afterward Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution, where he remained until he resigned his offices, shortly before his death, which occurred in 1867. His favorite objects of investigation were magnetism, electricity, and the other imponderable agents. He sought for hidden links of connection and a ground of unity between these mysterious forces. His discoveries-acknowledged by the scientific bodies of all civilized nations, which showered upon him their honors-were due to the fact that he mingled careful and rigid experiment with a scientific imagination, which anticipated and suggested experiments, an inner sense of the deep harmonies of nature, a quick eye to detect analogies-a sort of divination, on which, however, he was too sober and truth-loving to rely, until he had brought its intimations to a strict empirical test. In a lecture on Education, he declares his opinion that "deficiencies of judgment are the chief hindrance in the way of successful researches, and everywhere the prime fountain of error; and that the leading aim of education should be to apply a remedy to this pervading evil. One thing that confirmed him in this conviction was the delusion of spiritualism and table-tipping, which at one time gained so many adherents. He constructed a delicate index to denote the conscious or unconscious motions of the muscles of the hand when placed upon the table, and also the motion of the table itself; and he found that invariably the hand moved first. But the spread of superstitions of this nature in the midst of an enlightened community impressed him with the feeling that there is some striking defect in the education of the people; and this he deemed to be the lack of a thorough training of the judgment. Nothing was more repug