under the influence of comparatively high civilization, yet they lost it. The ancient Irish had a better style than that described by Fynes Morgan, about A.D. 1600. The lords of the wild, or "meere" Irish, dwell in poor clay houses, or cabins of boughs covered with turf. In many parts, both men and women have but a linen rag about the loins, and a woollen mantle on their bodies. "It turns a man's stomach before breakfast to see an old woman in the morning." There are instances of civilised men taking to wild life in outlying districts of the world; and degeneration acts more destructively on lower than on higher culture. The small knowledge and the few appliances of savage hordes render them peculiarly susceptible of degrading influences, and incapable of the efforts necessary to attain and maintain high physical and mental state. The colossal figures of hewn stone in Easter Island were shaped by ancestors of men now incapable of such gigantic works. Ancient Negro kingdoms of extended political organisation, preceded the existing small communities of blacks which possess little or no tradition of their previous greatness. The Red Indians were surpassed by the Mount-Builders, those former inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley. The Chinese and rude Indian, appealing to the authority of ancestors against modern civilisation and science, testify of a good time that is past. The degradation of Arabians and Spaniards is historic. If it be said, "All these have fallen, but none became savage," the reply is crushing, "The miserable Digger Indians of North America, the Bushmen of South Africapersecuted remnants of tribes who have seen better days— are degraded into savage life. The Algonquin Indians look back to golden days, when life was less bitter and manners less rude. The rough Kamchadal counts that the world has grown worse and is growing worse. There is, indeed, abundant evidence of degradation and fall amongst nations. The splendid days of Augustine and Trajan were speedily darkened by clouds of ignorance when barbarians 1 "Schoolcraft Algic Res," vol. i. p. 50; quoted in "Primitive Culture," Vol. i., p. 43, E. B. Tylor. 2 "Steller Kamtschatka," p. 272; do., do. subverted Roman laws and palaces. There is proof of degeneration, but not one example of any nation advancing from savagery to civilisation. If, moreover, modern savages are direct descendants of the primitive race, no man of science regarding them as a late development from brutes, they must be a degeneration from the old race; for the utter impossibility of civilising them destroys the hypothesis of evolution from brute to savage, and from savage to cultured man. Sir Charles Lyell, in his "Antiquity of Man" (cap. xix.), argues that, if the original stock had been endowed with superior powers, inspired knowledge, and the improvable nature of their posterity, we should now, instead of digging up rudest pottery and flint implements, find sculptured forms surpassing in beauty the masterpieces of Phidias or Praxiteles, lines of buried railway and electric telegraphs, with astronomical instruments and microscopes, examples of perfection in art and science. He forgot that Scripture states the high condition was lost, and that men were degraded by iniquity. He forgot that history reveals, and relics from buried cities bring to light, a grand and very ancient civilisation; a civilisation of such splendour and power that we are apt to think the old builders were giants,—the moderns pigmies. Those who prefer evolution as a more satisfactory explanation of man's origin, thinking thereby to avoid everything miraculous, do not get rid of mystery, nor of Divine interference; they, indeed, establish mystery and render interference perpetual: for as matter cannot create more matter, it is equally certain that vegetable life cannot of itself create animal life; nor can brutes, by any effort of their own, acquire the intellectual and moral powers of human beings. This is all that Christians contend for: not that men were created mechanics, astronomers, philosophers; but, having common sense, were childlike and of no experience. The laws of mind were the same in the days of Abraham's fathers as they are now. There was a making of men, and a marring of men, as they did good or evil-the evil tending to degeneration, the good advancing to civilisation. If civilisation became separated from faith and purity the people perished. The Mystery of Advance. 289 View the argument somewhat differently. There is definite progress not only in the genesis of the earth, but in the genesis of life. The advance is from darkness and chaos to light and beauty; from low forms of vegetation to the higher; from the life that swarms in water to the fish, the reptile, the bird; from the living creatures on land to those of increased definite complexity in structure and function; until, in man, we have intellectual and emotional changes. It would be in the highest degree unscriptural and unscientific to deny that the progress from the less special to the more specialised may have been wrought by means of natural orderly causes during a long course of time, and by well-nigh insensible gradation. So far, therefore, Evolution may have been that long creative process of organic advance, by minute increments, until perfection of form was attained. Concerning this organic advance, experience shows that out of the general web of existence special threads may be drawn and woven into a new and peculiar pattern. The elements of the new organism, however differently arranged, are the same substances as contained in the original mass; neverthless, by new grouping surprisingly novel phenomena emerge. We do not think, when the physical motions of molecules are grouped in chemical actions, that any addition is made to the primitive energies; nor do biologists generally suppose, when physical and chemical actions are specially grouped and vital phenomena emerge, that any essential addition is made b eyond that of the new grouping of old material and of ol energy. So in the emergence or creation of man, and afterwards in the development of social life, there is no casting away of the old threads: they are rewoven into more beautiful patterns. As the flower which comes into existence, and grows by energy imparted by the sun, is but a reproduction of that which was imparted; so sentient organisms reproduce all that produced them, and this is the mystery-something more in every advance for without this something more could be no evolution from low to higher degree, from vegetable to mammal, from mammal to man. How long the process, how slow and gradual the development, science can but guess. Scripture defines all these advances, wrought by means of T nature, as essentially a Divine process. Now, when despite the evident differences presented by light, heat, sound-as quantitative phenomena; they were, by a triumph of analysis, identified under one common form-undulation; it was a beautiful greeting of the spirit: so when Moses laid aside idolatry, gave up nature worship, identified all things as possessing Divinity in their origin and progress, there was that triumph of genius, that greeting of the spirit, which devout men and scientific men are alike bound to revere. Undulations, however manipulated, will only yield undulations: nevertheless, out of things with limited and peculiar range are brought those varied aspects of existence and real existences which are impossible to uniformity, and are irreducible to one another. For example-our notion of light can never be resolved into that of heat, nor into that of sound, though all three are reducible to undulations. Noises are the irregular mingling of vibrations, and tones are that regular recurrence of vibrations out of which music is constructed : so, between heat and light, as undulations of æther, there is only quantitative difference; nevertheless æther, of luminous rapidity, beats in vain on the skin-nerves-no light is felt or seen; nor do transverse vibrations, of whatever rapidity, produce heat through the retina. Hence, essential differences grow out of original unity, and as this is impossible, for things equal in themselves are equal to one another, something must come in from without. Behind this complexity of visible and invisible facts is the whole universe; nor is any explanation possible without that greeting of the spirit, seen in the genius and piety of Moses, by which we are conscious that there is the Weaver's side of the tapestry. All flesh is not the same flesh, nor all life the same life, beasts are not low men, nor are their sensations capable of being prolonged into human intelligence and emotion. Man, then, being man by God's creative energy acting according to law upon matter, fashioning it into life, and inspiring it with spirit, is that Adam, the tree of humanity of whom we are branches; is that living soul by whose soul our souls are kindled, as light at a light. Was this man the first man? We may argue, indeed it is seriously maintained by some that D, Adam, is the word for Adamites; , man is the word for men, mankind, not Adamites. This will not hold as establishing two races: for Adam uses the feminine of the latter for Eve (Gen. iii. 16); and Eve uses, man, -"I have gotten a man" (Gen. iv. 1)—in speaking of Cain, her first born. The two words are often used in contrast (Ps. xlix. 1, 2; lxii. 9; Is. ii. 9; v. 15), but never as of separate races. "The daughters of men" (Gen. vi. 2) were certainly daughters of Adam, not of a savage pre-Adamite race. On the other hand, "the sons of God" cannot be children of brutal ancestry; for such to marry Adam's daughters would be an elevation, but God's anger was moved at it as a degradation. We are shut up to one of these conclusions: either the pious sons of Adam married the daughters of Cain, the murderer; or, in some mysterious way, there was unholy communion by Angels-this latter interpretation, which some considered to be favoured by Jude 6, is universally given up. The following has been asserted with some confidenceCain, having done a dark deed, was not slain, but branded for preservation and execration. He went forth, married, and built a city. A city required men to build it, and his going forth to be a fugitive and vagabond among men who might kill him, seems to show that there were other people, and that from them he took a wife. If it were so, we answer "The shrewd Contriver, who first sweated at the forge, And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel had not a pleasant pedigree in murderous father, and mother who was but little removed from the brute: but to reply soberly-Cain married a sister, as is admitted, of Seth. The building of a city would be of lowly beginning-of one hut, cottage, or house; great gaps in the Scripture record are acknowledged; and the children of Cain called the city by his name. If any race, moreover, could be proved of brute ancestry, say the Negro, there would be an argument for slavery founded on natural and essential inferiority; for the fact of God making men of "one blood" does not prove that all mankind |