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Huxley, in a paper in the Fortnightly Review, on "The Methods and Results of Ethnology," says, concerning the Mosaic account of the creation of Adam and Eve, "Now, I do not believe this, and I know no scientific person, or well-instructed person, who does." Yet Professor Huxley is, undesignedly, constrainedly orthodox so far as the substance of the first page of Genesis is concerned. He has no scientific objection to the unity of the human race. It was long held that the doctrine of its unity was unphilosophical, for it was impossible to derive a black man from a white one; but since the Professor has believed it possible to trace a black man to a monkey, he has had no difficulty in deriving a black man out of a white man. He objects to the theory that mankind must have come from several centres; and holds that, from comparative anatomy, you have overwhelming evidence of the unity of the human race.*

Professor Max Müller, as a philologist, is also "among the prophets." He is one of the " scientific and well-instructed," who would reject the Bible story of Adam and Eve, and yet he has come to the conclusion, from inductive reasoning upon the internal evidence furnished by analysing the roots and structure of all the various languages of the world, that they must have had one common origin.† Darwin also is a strenuous defender of the theory of single centres of creation. He maintains that all men, animals, plants have spread from one parent source. Hear his own statement concerning geographical distribution: "We are thus brought to the question which has been largely discussed by naturalists, namely, whether species have been created at one or more points of the earth's surface. Undoubtedly there are very many cases of extreme difficulty in understanding how the same species could possibly have migrated from some one point to the several distant and isolated points, where now found. Nevertheless, the simplicity of the view that each species was first produced within a single region, captivates the mind. He who rejects it, rejects the vera causa of ordinary generation with subsequent migration, and calls in the agency of a miracle."‡

It is true that there exists a class of Darwinian Polygenists, philosophers who derive mankind from three kinds of apes, or from more apes than one; but Darwin, Huxley, and Wallace, are pledged to the monogenist theory, and are so far in agreement with orthodoxy. It must indeed be painful to our great sceptical thinkers to find themselves not only on this, but on several other

"Journal of Transactions of the Victoria Institute," vol. ii., p. 365. +"Journal of Victoria Institute," vol. ii., p. 192.

"Origin of Species,” p. 352.

important particulars be ides, in agreement with Genesis. They must wonder by what sange coincidence that mythical poetry of the Hebrews ca ne to foreshadow with so much accuracy the grand truths which t'ey consider them elves to have demonstrated by a stern and sceptical science. However, so it is. The unbelieving scientists of our times would be content to bear any reproach rather than to be eproached with orthodoxy, but, undesignedly, unwillingly they find themselves on many fundamental questions in substantial accordance with those "non-scientific and illinstructed" Christians who confess faith in the cosmogony of Moses.

Let us now turn to the doctrine of Natural Depravity. The Christian Church teaches that "we are born in sin, and shapen in iniquity;" that our whole nature is irregular and depraved. It is unnecessary to say that this dogma has given the greatest offence to all schools of scepticism, and that these schools have loudly asserted the essential purity of human nature. Thus speaks Voltaire: "Bring together all the children of the universe, you will see nothing in them but innocence, gentleness, and fear: were they born wicked, spiteful, and cruel, some signs of it would come from them; as little snakes strive to bite and little tigers to tear. But nature having been as sparing of offensive weapons to men as to pigeons and rabbits, it cannot have given them an instinct to mischief and destruction." Such are the rose-coloured pictures of humanity to which we have been long accustomed from the pencil of scepticism. But let us find consolation in the pages of more modern heresy. The dogma of human depravity they now find far less objectionable when considered from another standpoint. Miss Frances Power Cobbe, whose attitude toward Christianity is sufficiently indicated by the fact that she edited the Collected Works of Theodore Parker, has recently written an article in one of the Reviews, in which she gives her estimate of our nature as seen from the stand-point of the evolutionists. The extract is long, perhaps, but so instructive that it ought scarcely to be abbreviated: "Passing now from the brute and the savage, we must inquire whether any faint trace of heteropathy * yet lingers amongst ourselves. Let us take a young child, the offspring of a cultivated English gentleman and tender-hearted English lady, and observe what are the emotions it exhibits when it sees its baby-brother receive an injury, and cry aloud in pain. That child's sentiments are, we cannot doubt, considerably modified from those of its barbarian ancestors,

• The impulse to destroy.

'When wild in woods the noble savage ran;'

just as the instincts of the kitten of a domestic cat, or puppy of a lap-dog, differ from those of the cub of a cat-o'-mountain or the whelp of a wolf. Even yet, however, an impartial study may leave us room to hesitate before we count the grey barbarian' so very far lower than the Christian child,' as that no signs of savage impulse shall betray the old leaven in the curled darling of the British nursery. If narrowly watched, the usually gentle little creature will be seen to be very abnormally excited by the sight of his brother's pain......There is no softness or tenderness in the looks which he casts at his suffering companion; nor will he usually spontaneously make the slightest effort to help or comfort him by the caresses which he is wont to lavish on him to excess at other moments. On the contrary, a disposition will generally be manifested to add by a good hard blow or sharp, vicious scratch to the woe of his unfortunate friend.

"A gentle and affectionate little girl of three years old has been seen by the writer to exhibit these emotions of heteropathy as distinctly as any angry bull or cannibal savage. The child's baby-sister of two years old fell off the lofty bed on which both were amicably playing, and of course set up a wail of fright and pain on the floor. Instantly the elder child let herself slip down on the opposite side, ran round the bed, and pounced on the poor little one on the floor, whom she proceeded incontinently to belabour violently with both hands before rescue could arrive. Of course, eventually both parties joined in a roar; but the baby's was a wail of pain and terror, the elder child's a tempest of indignation. Mothers and nurses, on being strictly interrogated, will generally confess to having witnessed similar unmistakable symptoms of heteropathy still lurking in the sweetest-tempered children. Fond mothers naturally explain all such disagreeable exhibitions as resulting from the inability of innocent little children to understand pain and sorrow. But the fact is, that they do, to a certain extent, understand what they see; but the exalted emotion of reflected sympathy is yet lacking, and in place of it there are traces of the merely animal and savage instinct. In a similar, though less marked manner, the sight of another person's pleasure produces in the childish and yet uncultured mind something much more like displeasure than reflex happiness. Enough of envy is betrayed in every school-room and play-ground to corroborate the assertion, that our earliest emotion is not pleasure in another's pleasure, any more than pain in another's pain."* After the fancy portraits of

Theological Review," January, 1874, pp. 8-10.

humanity which the old Deism delighted to draw, this bit of vigorous, realistic painting is indeed startling. When heterodoxy does become orthodox, it does so with a vengeance: in this example it out-Herods Herod. Did Calvin, or Boston, or Jonathan Edwards, or Wesley, or any other stern theologian, ever draw the human likeness in severer lines or darker colours? Surely the "curled darling of the British nursery" is not placed lower by the ecclesiastic than by the evolutionist! The orthodox have long been scorned for asserting the "brute and devil," in sweet childhood and noble manhood, but the sceptical scientist at last joins the orthodox, for he finds in affectionate children "animal and savage instincts," the "ferocity of the angry bull, and the cannibal savage."

Comte's estimate of human nature is likewise strongly Scriptural: "Of course there is no doubt but that the fine definition of virtue given by a moralist of the eighteenth century, as an effort over oneself in favour of others, will always remain applicable. We are so imperfect by nature that we shall always need a real effort to subordinate our personal to our social tendencies."* Comte thus recognises the "imperfection" of our nature, and places that imperfection in what he regards as the sum of all evil, namely, the prevalence of egoism. What is this but the old orthodoxy stated in new phraseology? And we may conclude, on this point, with a sketch of the child-nature from the pages of Professor Huxley: "The child does not worship either father or mother, dog or doll. On the contrary, nothing is more curious than the absolute irreverence, if I may so say, of a kindly-treated young child; its tendency to believe in itself as the centre of the universe, and its disposition to exercise despotic tyranny over those who could crush it with a finger." Not so long ago, and childhood, as well as human nature in general, was transfigured on the pages of philosophy; but a new theory has been adopted, and the philosopher subjects his old idol to sad degradations.

It is not for us to criticise the explanation which the evolutionists give of the disorder of human nature, enough for us just now to note how fully they have recognised that disorder. But yesterday, and it was as delightful to contemplate the "curled darling of the British nursery" on the pages of deistic reasoners as on the charming canvases of Reynolds; but, alas! the deistic optimist has joined the gloomy theologian, and paints humanity, even at its best estate, in the colours of the night. How often has Chris

"The Catechism of Positive Religion. Translated by Congreve," p. 311. ↑ Huxley's "Selected Essays," p. 105.

tianity been censured for insisting on the Psalmist's declaration, "Man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish." But nothing is more common now than to find in our sceptical masters the brute exalted above the man. Take the following from Mr. Greg as a specimen :-"It would seem impossible to frame any scheme of a future life, at once equitable and rational, which should include all human beings and exclude all the rest of the animal creation. Those among us who are most really intimate with dogs, horses, elephants, and other élite of the fauna of the world, know that there are many animals far more richly endowed with those intellectual and moral qualities which are worth preserving, and which imply capacity of cultivation, than mary men,-higher, richer, and, above all, more unselfish, and devo.cd, and t'erefore, we may almost say, more Christian (!) natures. I have seen, in the same day, brutes on the summit and men as the foot of the Great St. Bernard, with regard to whom no one would hesitate to assign to the quadruped the superiority in all that we desire should live."* We smile when we hear the Arab admitting to Paradise the ram sacrificed in place of Isaac, Moses' cow, the Queen of Sheba's parrot, Ezra's ass, Jonah's whale, the dog of the seven sleepers, etc.; but in our day the prophets of culture are admitting dogs, horses, birds, elephants, to Paradise in droves, whilst they coldly shut the golden gates on the more unfortunate of the sons of Adam. The Church has pointed out in strong terms the sad degradation of humanity, but always with a view to its restoration; the enemies of the Church at length admit this degradation, but, going far beyond the orthodoxy of which they complained, they glorify the brute, and annihilate the sinner.

And is not the Scriptural doctrine, That man was created in the image of God, but that he has fallen under the power of error and sin, fully and eloqerly corroborated by the representations which Mr. Greg gives of the actual state and history of humanity?" The world does seem such a stumbling botch and muddle; man himself is such a 'pie-bald miscellany' with his

'Bursts of great heart, and slips in sensual mire;'

the discrepancy is so vast between our highest actual and our most moderate ideal; the follies of men are so utterly astounding, to one who has seen them close; their weaknesses so profoundly despicable; their vices so unspeakably revolting; their virtues, even, so casual, halting, and hollow; life is such a comedy to

'Enigmas of Life." Fourth Edit., pp. xiv., xv.

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