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Christ. The obedience of Christ to the law in the stead of man, or that his righteousness was in any sense vicarious,' is denied, and the atonement is limited to his sufferings on the cross; and even here a distinction is introduced between atoning and nonatoning sufferings. The mystical error of Brethrenism is difficult to understand; but some of its advocates seem to maintain that Christ was under the judgment of God otherwise than atoningly— that in dying he had the experience of a penitent sinner, or of a saint under the conviction of sin.' Mr. Darby says, 'There is a double character of suffering besides atoning work, which Christ has entered into, and which others can feel-the sufferings arising from the sense of chastenings in respect of sin, and these mixed with the pressure of Satan's power in the soul, and the terror of foreseen wrath. In the former we suffer with Christ as a privilege; in the latter we suffer for our folly and under God's hand, but Christ has entered into it. He sympathises with us. But all this is distinct from suffering instead of us, so as to save us from the suffering, undergoing God's wrath that we might not.' Christ is said to have had distress under the sense of sins,' and that ' in distresses about sin and agony of mind he felt with us, and all this has to be distinguished from His atoning work. A sense of sin belongs only to a guilty person, and to say that Christ experienced it is to say he was sinful. But the Scriptures declare Him to have been without sin. He could neither enter into, pass through, nor have a sense of sin, for He was undefiled and separate from sinners. The Prince of this world cometh,' said He himself, and hath nothing in Me.' There is a radical misconception of Christ's relation to us, as our substitute, in this doctrine of the nonatoning sufferings.

In respect to Christian life, and eschatological doctrine, the Brethren offer mystical speculations, embodying long exploded errors in the place of sober theology. Extreme perfectionism is a favourite dogma of the Plymouth teachers. Not a perfection that may be attained, but a perfection actually gained by every believer. Sometimes this perfection appears to result from union with Christ. And ye are complete in Him.' This means, we are told, filled up or perfect, so that every true believer who is really in Christ by union with Him is perfect. Nothing is wanting; Christ and believers are one-one not merely in figure or appearance, but actually one body, one spirit. Yes, one now and one for ever-so says the Rev. E. Boys. At other times this perfection seems to result from the impartation of a siniess nature on believing. Mr. Darby writes: 'There is no cleansing of the old nature, no mending of the old Adam; we have got the new nature that cannot sin; the flesh is there, but the new nature is a sinless nature.' And again :- True it is that Christ is our life, and that we have received a nature

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which in itself is sinless, and that, looked at as born of God, we cannot sin, because we are born of God. It is a life holy in itself as born of Him.' This and like teaching proceeds upon a misconception of the nature of the union between believers and Christ. It is not a union of essence or person creating such a oneness as implies a transference of moral character and qualities. This is in the nature of things impossible. The union is a legal and spiritual union. Legally believers are so united to Christ by faith that on the ground of His work they are treated as righteous. Spiritually believers are so united to Christ as to be made partakers of His grace. He is perfect to whom all who believe are united, but this does not confer on them the perfection of personal moral excellence. There is also a confusion in this teaching between depravity and a depraved nature. Depravity cannot be made better, but a depraved nature can. This talk about the old and the new is seriously misleading. The new nature is a sinless nature, but is he sinless in whom it dwells? Can he commit no sin? Between regeneration and perfect holiness there is difference as great as between any form of life in its primeval condition and its full development. The divine principle or new nature comes in conflict with a depraved nature, which in the economy of grace it is destined only gradually to subdue. Perfection is the aim of Christian life and the result of growth, to the attainment of which all who believe are exhorted to give diligence. In violation of all forms of interpretation a difference is introduced between the coming of the Lord and His manifestation at the last day for the purpose of propounding, in the interests of the saints, an experience of a secret rapture of some kind or other, though what is the character of this rapture, or the purpose of it, it is difficult to comprehend.

The theology of Brethrenism is not only positively erroneous, but exceedingly defective and negative in its character. We meet with little in the writings of this sect concerning the evil of sin and the personal responsibility of men in relation to it. Where mentioned, it is considered chiefly in its hereditary aspect as the 'first Adam condition,' the Adam state,' 'the death state of sin,' 6 the old man.' It is seldom referred to as of personal demerit, involving personal guilt, and necessitating on the part of man a penitent and contrite acknowledgment. This defect leads to a partial representation of the Divine character, and the kingly and magisterial relations of God to men are permitted to fall into dim obscurity. There is a lack of strength and muscularity in the Plymouth theology. Repentance, regeneration, and the work of the Holy Ghost developing inward and outward holiness in the life of man are entirely overlooked. Plymouthism has no place for them. Such a theology is fatally defective, and comes far short of meeting the deep necessities of humanity.

The attention of the Churches to the doings and teachings of this sect is much needed. It cannot be matter of indifference, whether its foolish principles and erroneous theology are propagated throughout the land. By searching exposure, by faithful preaching of the gospel, and careful instruction of the people in apostolic doctrine, the mischievous operations of these sectaries may, in some measure, be prevented. We welcome Dr. Reid's volume as a contribution in this direction, and trust it may obtain the careful and studious perusal it deserves.

A. J.

THERE

ART. IX. THE RELIGIOUS NATURE OF

SAVAGES.

HERE are reasons for supposing that some of the lowest savages have undergone a degeneracy. The Arctic Highlanders and Boothians on the north, and the Fuegians and Chonos Indians of the far south, occupying positions respectively on the farthest confines of the continent, surrounded by rocks and sterility, pinched by frost, and driven by the rigours of nature to seek a sole and precarious subsistence from the sea, would seem to be restrained within their bleak and comfortless limits by some power which they have not the ability to resist. That power is probably some hostile tribe, which stands between them and a fairer land. Oppressed and crushed by the cruelty of savage neighbours, driven upon desolate shores where the reign of nature is even more relentless than that of their savage rivals, they must have sunken, through despair, fear, hunger, exposure, and every species of want, to a mental condition lower than that which they held under more favoured circumstances. The struggle for supremacy, which is everywhere actively carried on among savage tribes, must, of necessity, reduce the weakest to the borders of extermination, where it is no longer possible that they exemplify the proper characteristics of man. It is quite comprehensible that, even in regions more favoured by nature, feeble tribes may have been so oppressed and worried by their hostile neighbours as to have sunken to a mental and moral state far below the norm of primitive peoples. Some of the wild men of the interior of Borneo, according to Dalton,* living absolutely like brutes, without habitations and without society, are looked on and treated by the other Dyaks as wild beasts.'

Curtis says of the Esquimaux of Labrador, that they are so pressed upon, as bearded strangers, by the beardless American Indians around them, that their mode of life is most toilsome and precarious. So hard is their fate that in winter they are often * Moor: 'Notices of the Indian Army,' p. 49.

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obliged to support themselves in their caves by sucking their own blood. The cannibal Jagas of the interior of Africa are, like the wild Dyaks of Borneo, an artificial tribe, composed of the outcasts of several other tribes, and hunted and despised by all.* The negrilloes of some of the Asiatic islands seem to be remnants of the aboriginal inhabitants, driven by invading tribes to the remote and mountainous districts, and reduced by misery to the most abject condition.† The degeneracy of the Toupinambas, of Brazil, under the oppressions of the Portuguese, and of the Peruvians and Mexicans under the inhuman treatment of the Spaniards, is something notorious in history. †

'If there had ever been, or if there still anywhere existed,' says Adolf Pictet, a people entirely destitute of religion, it would be in consequence of an exceptional downfall, which would be tantamount to a lapse into animality.'§ Traces of religion,' says Herder, however different its garb may be, are found even among the poorest and rudest nations on the verge of the earth. The Greenlander and the Kamtchatdale, the Pesherza and the Papoo, have notions of religion, as customs or traditions show; nay, were there a single people totally destitute of religion among the Ansicans, or those savages of the Indian islands who have been compelled to hide themselves in the woods, this very want would be a proof of the highly savage state to which they were reduced.' ||

Instances of degeneracy among peoples more or less civilized are well understood. The most recently established cases are not the least interesting. Dr. Schlimann, in the progress of his excavations upon the site of ancient Troy, has disclosed four successive horizons of occupation at different depths, the oldest of which reflects the highest state of civilization, while the others, in succession, manifest a gradual decline. The indefatigable explorations of M. Mariette, on the upper Nile, seem also to have revealed an older civilization, whose ruins reflect a culture strikingly superior to that which characterised the ancient Egypt known in popular archæology.*

+ Curtis, Roger: 'Account of Labrador.' Proyart: History of Loango, Congo,' etc.

+ Reisen um die Welt. Leipzig, 1775. Vol. i., p. 554.

Robertson: 'History of America,' vol. i., p. 537, etc.; Dobritzhoffer, etc.; Prescott: Conquest of Peru,' vol. ii., chap. vii.; Wilson: New History of the Conquest of Mexico,' p. 33. On the Koriaks and the gradual disappearance of races in contact with invaders, see 'American Exchange and Review,' vol. xx., p. 77. Some indications of an Australian degeneracy are hinted at by Bleek in * Journal of Anthropological Institute,' vol. i., p. 102.

§ Pictet: Les origines Indo-européennes, vol. ii., p. 651.

|| Herder: 'Philosophy of History,' vol. i., p. 452. See also vol. i., p. 508. ¶ See Bayard Taylor's Letter in 'Tribune Extra,' No. 15,

*

Taylor: Egypt and Iceland,' chap. ix.

It is scarcely supposable that the progenitors of the human family were placed by the Creator, or were developed by any force of evolution, in any quarter of the world where the very elements would be at war with their existence. On any theory of human origin, the first generations must have occupied the most favoured portions of the earth, and in those situations must have displayed a vastly higher order of manhood than is possible under the oppressive conditions of existence in Northern Greenland or Terra del Fuego. We should utterly dissent, therefore, from the opinion of Sir John Lubbock,* when he says of the Fuegians, that, while they certainly appear to be among the most miserable specimens of the human race their habits are of especial interest from the probable similarity to those of the ancient Danish shell-mound builders,' unless, perchance, it can be rendered probable that the shell-mound builders were far removed in time and distance from the earliest representatives of our race, and had been subjected to the grievous oppression of hostile neighbours.

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It is no more supposable that the nature of the first generations of men was such as to predispose them to cannibalism. Whatever power called man into being-whether a beneficent, intelligent Creator, or some power of development-it is obvious that the tendency of the power must, of necessity, have been conservative instead of destructive. No species, in a state of nature, preys upon itself. It seems to need little argument to make it appear that cannibalism is a degeneracy, and that all those tribes who practise it are unsuitable examples to illustrate the primitive condition of man.

But while suggesting that probably the most ignoble representatives of the human family have been sunken by circumstances, perhaps very far below the human norm, we do not wish to be understood as embracing the theory that all barbarism is a degeneracy. We hold a middle ground between Sir John Lubbock and the Duke of Argyll. The extreme of barbarism is a great departure from the primitive norm, and so is the extreme of knowledge and intellect. We have, it appears, all requisite proof that the career of man, as a race, has always been forward, and reaches back to a condition of ignorance and barbaric intelligence. We may dislike to call it barbarism; it was the infancy of the race. At that beginning everything was yet to be learned. But man was in the full possession of all those powers, whose continued exercise has made him all that which we call a civilized moral intelligence.

This view is corroborated by the Mosaic representations of Adam. He is pictured to us as destitute of clothing, and attempting to cover himself with leaves. He is represented as yielding to

*Lubbock: Prehistoric Times,' p. 439.