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seem to indicate that moral laws are an essential and not an accidental part of human nature; that they are an indestructible portion of man's constitution and not something engrafted thereon.

That the moral sense possesses an authority such as is not possible to inherited tendencies, even should they become a powerful bias regularly transmitted, is the nearly unanimous conviction of moral philosophers. The approval of right and the disapprobation of wrong are accompanied with a deep-seated persuasion of supernatural authority. Truth, honesty, the spirit of self-sacrificeall the virtures-are considered praise-worthy and obligatory, not merely, nor mainly, because the noblest of the human family have commended them, but in a pre-eminent degree because they are believed to have the sanction of a Supreme Being, by whom the love of them was inwoven with man's better nature. In like manner, falsehood, envy, selfishness, rascality-all the vices-are deemed despicable, not simply because moralists have dared to condemn them, nor because of a wide-spread conviction that they are poorly adapted to secure either present or future advantages, but because most persons are forced to conclude that man's nobler nature, as it came from the hand of its Creator, involuntarily condemns them. It would be difficult to assign any other satisfactory reason. Certainly the most brilliant success has sometimes accompanied craft, dissimulation, knavery, and selfishness.

Again: if the social instincts are the basis of conscience, all persons, or nearly all, ought to approve what society recognizes as right. Such, however, is not the case. Every person, besides being capable of forming estimates respecting his own acts, also forms judgments in reference to the conduct of others, thoroughly persuaded

that right is right and wrong is wrong independent of man's beliefs and practices. His judgment is independent. He believes himself accountable to God alone. As a right delegated from heaven he exercises the privilege of holding others to a standard of rectitude, though he admits that man's conceptions of duty vary, owing to prejudice and ignorance. Whilst deeming it folly to condemn the conduct of brutes, because they possess no moral sense, he is impelled by an inward necessity to entertain an opinion respecting the moral acts of every sane person. Convinced that all possess conscience, which, though often resembling a palace in ruins, yet speaks of a more glorious past and invites to a nobler future, he considers no argument necessary to prove that it is an original element in human nature. The denial of this, on the part of an occasional reasoner, has little or no effect in destroying his faith in the validity of the argument. Atheists exist. They have advanced labored arguments to substantiate their position. This has not induced theologians to concede that there is no argument in the testimony of the human family to the existence of a Supreme Being.

Will any one pretend to affirm that this "social instinct" theory accounts for the fact that an act is deemed praise-worthy in exact proportion to the unselfishness that characterizes it? The existence of unselfish qualities in our ape-like progenitors would have impeded the improvement of the species. The development of useful qualities is perhaps conceivable, but the development of qualities tending to deterioration is irreconcilable with the theory. We may safely challenge the evolutionist to furnish an instance in which "the disadvantageous" has been transmuted into conscience. His chances for success are slight.

So cogent is the argument which we have attempted to outline, that most persons, even those who deny a supernatural revelation, are ready to admit that the clearest evidences of man's having been created in God's image are found in his moral nature. To see beauty in goodness, and charity, and forgiveness, and love; to admire them even when they are not permitted to mold the life; to condemn wrong-doing, even when practicing it, these are strong proofs that conscience is an essential element of human nature, the direct workmanship of “a hand divine."

CHAPTER VI.

MAN'S RELIGIOUS NATURE.

It is nearly impossible to resist the conviction that the hypothesis of man's origin from the ape-family is environed with difficulties more numerous and more serious than those which connect themselves with the theory of his immediate creation. Nor is any one disposed to deny that difficulties which are formidable in connection with the assumed transmutation of animal instincts into reason and conscience become nearly or quite insurmountable in conjunction with the question, "Is man's religious nature an evolution?" Moreover, every unbiased investigator will be inclined to concede that the arguments presented by the advocates of the development-theory become fewer and feebler in exact proportion as the more intricate portions of the problem come under review, the reasoning being weakest just where it should be the most powerful. The greatest force is laid upon the evolution of the physical nature, where confessedly man approximates most nearly to the brute-creation; less, upon that of the mental, where manifestly the difference is wider; still less, upon that of the moral, where the divergence is even greater; least of all, upon that of the religious, where the difference amounts to a measureless chasm. This will become apparent if we present in succinct form all the arguments we have been able to discover in the many books which assert or assume

man's evolution from inferior animals. These arguments, as we might expect, proceed upon the assumption that civilized man, in reaching his present advanced position, has passed through a state of absolute savagery.

The task now before us is to answer the following argument:

"There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God" (Darwin's Descent of Man, vol. i. p. 62). "There is abundant evidence that nu

merous races have existed and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their language to express such an idea" (Idem, p. 63). The Paraguay Indians, according to Azara, had no ideas of religion. Sir John Lubbock says, "According to the missionaries, neither the Patagonians nor the Araucanians had any ideas of prayer, or any vestige of religious worship" (Prehistoric Times, p. 536). Among the Fuegians, Admiral Fitzroy "never witnessed or heard of any act of a decidedly religious nature" (Idem, p. 541). According to Crantz, the Greenland Eskimos "have neither a religious nor idolatrous worship, nor SO much as any ceremonies to be perceived tending thereto." Herne states that the North American Indians had no religion: Colden, that the celebrated "five nations" of Canada had no religion and no word for God. "Burnet," says Lubbock, "found no semblance of worship among the Comanches." "The Andaman Indians are stated," says Lubbock, "to have no idea of a Supreme Being" (Prehistoric Times, p. 437). "The Australians have no systematized religion, nor any worship or prayer" (Idem, p. 447). Some savages, it thus appears, have been discovered who have no religion whatever-some say very many. What follows? "Such," says

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