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caudal extremity becomes the property of a chimpanzee, or the flintstone writes a book, we may take refuge under the existing order of things. Still not without danger, for Lamarck does not scruple to say, I have no doubt that all the mammalia have originally sprung from the ocean, and that that is the true cradle of the whole animal kingdom. In fact, we see that the least perfect animals are not only the most numerous, but that they either live solely in the water, or in those very moist places where nature has performed, and continues to perform, under favourable circumstances, her direct and spontaneous generations; and there, in the first place, she gives rise to the most simple animalcules, from which have proceeded all the animal creation.' We never before felt so thankful for living in an inland town. knew that there were creeping things innumerable, as well as great beasts, in the deep unfathomed caves of ocean, but that new mammalia might arise thence to till, or to fill the earth, is so frightful an idea, that we are almost deterred from our annual visit to the sea-side. Happily for us, it is only under favourable circumstances' that this feat of making mammalia can be performed, and we can choose an unfavourable watering place; but, perhaps, Lamarck's theory gave rise to the parental ideas connected with father Thames;' the father of mammalia!'

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Professor Agassiz also has his theory of man; he tells us that the 'different races of men are descended from different stocks, and that this position is sustained by divine revelation; that the Jewish history is not the history of divers races, but of one race of mankind; and that the existence of other races is distinctly implied, if not absolutely asserted, in the sacred volume.' (Quoted by Smyth, p. 168.) Such being some of the theories that have risen concerning man, we are not surprised that many Daniels have arisen to judgment on this case. One good result of this superabundant folly, has been the addition to our national literature of standard books on the races of man, the titles of some of which we will indicate for the guidance of our readers. There is that grammatical giant and linguist leviathan, Dr. Latham, in his Natural History of the Varieties of Man,' coming down with his sledge-hammer of multiplats protoplasts'-a man who can use such words as dolichocephalic' and 'brachycephalic,' and not get out of breath, dismissing all physiology and natural history, as houses over the way, with which he has no connexion, and assuring us that 'ethnology must be the chief investigator of the unity of the races.' This work of Dr. Latham, and his subsequent one on Man and his Migrations,' gives us all that could be desired, as proof of the essential oneness of the races, founded upon the spoken or recognised languages

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There is, also, in Bohn's Illustrated Library, a charming and delightful book-Dr. Pickering's Races of Men, and their Geographical Distribution;' to which is prefixed, An Analytical Synopsis of the Natural History of Man,' by Dr. Hall, of Sheffield. Of this book we cannot speak too highly, both for its physiological and ethnographical research, and for the unaffected simplicity of its style-in which vast

treasures of literary wealth, the accumulations of a highly cultured mind, are unostentatiously displayed. We are tempted to give the following extract from Dr. Hall's introductory essay :.. When we observe that all the races of man, civilized and savage, have the same powers of utterance that both speak naturally, and are equally understood; when we find all languages, dialects, and tongues reduced to a few families, and pointing, so far as human wisdom yet can trace, to one common origin; when we see in all men, whatever the climate they inhabit and the colour of their skin, a belief in a world beyond the grave; when even the poor Bushmen exhibit some glimmerings of family relations and habits, and some mingling of human sentiments; when we discover the use of fire, artificial clothing, instruments by which the labours necessary to procure food and raiment are facilitated; weapons of offence and defence-the club, the spear, the sickle, and the fishing-hook-characteristic of mankind; when we see objects of worship, prayers to the gods, sacrifices to obtain real or imaginary blessings, sacred festivities, pilgrimages, the priests and priestesses upon whom the divine services of the negroes depend, and who are supposed to have confidential intercourse with the gods; when we find in the negro's breast some belief in the immortality of the soul, and a state of retribution; when we hear the savage describing his abode beyond the grave as a fertile hunting-ground, and the Christian speaking of his paradise as a place, the joys of which eye hath not seen, nor the mind of man conceived; when everywhere are presented funeral rites for the dead, burning, sepulchres, or embalming mummies; when we behold mounds without number scattered over all the Northern nations of the world, the only remaining records of races now extinct; when we examine the wonderfully constructed pyramids of Egypt, the graves of the ancient Peruvians, and the monuments of the Polynesians; when certain religious observances are considered— it may be the worship of the sun, or the petition of the savage to the great Spirit, or the prayers, masses, and litanies offered for the dead and the living in the churches of Europe, temples of Eastern climes, or the mysterious rites of Pagan altars; and when all these are regarded as phenomena in the history of the most refined and barbarous nations, and as springing from those common faculties and sensibilities of feeling, passion, and of hope, which speak of close and unalterable resemblance, and attest the great natural relation of all men to each other, forming "a piece of divinity within us-something that was before the elements, and owes no homage to the sun;" and when, lastly, in the joyful laughter, and in those bitter tears, which are common alike to the civilized and cultivated citizen of London, and to the untutored savage of the desert, are furnished proofs of family identify, which convince the mind far more powerfully than all the subtleties of argument, for

'One touch of nature makes the whole world kin;'

we are fully satisfied, that all the races of mankind are, as the gospel

expresses it, "of one blood,”—that the black man, red man, and the white man, are links in one great chain of relationship, and alike children which have descended from one common parent.'

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But we must return to books; our intention was simply to review Dr. Smyth's book, and we find ourselves wandering in other, and, to say the truth, far better company. But of that presently. There is another book on this subject, or, rather, fragment, by Dr. Knox, read before the National Academy of France, of which we can only judge by the extracts we have seen. Dr. Knox's idea is the same as Bendizzy's,' that race is every thing,' none but those who believe the Bible think otherwise; all long-received doctrines, stereotyped prejudices, national delusions, are based on a fantastic myth, as old as the Hebrew record;' none but the hard-handed, spatula-fingered, Saxon utilitarian, whose best plea for religion and sound morals, and philanthropy, is the profitableness thereof,' dream of the idea that God has, in very deed, made of one blood all nations of men, or believe the poet, when he sings that man is God's offspring. We do, however, receive the thought that there is not only one blood, but one family in all the varieties of the human race, civilized or nomade, and we cherish the hope of uniting in one song, when from these peoples the innumerable company shall be gathered into the presence of their Redeemer, King, and Creator. We are much of the old Scotchman's opinion, who left directions for the following inscription to be placed on his tombstone :

'Here lies Johnnie Carnaghie,

Descended from Adam and Eve;
If any man can gang any higher,
He willingly gives him leave.'

Let us now turn to Dr. Smyth's work. It is with extreme reluctance that the truth extorts from us a decided opinion otherwise than in its favour. The book itself is a redaction of redactions. Half the volume consists of extracts from all sources, indiscriminately huddled together, and laid before the reader in the most undigested manner. There is no beginning, middle, or end, about the whole affair. The glottological argument for the unity of the races is so jumbled with the physiological, and the historical with the theological, that we soon found ourselves in wandering mazes lost, to which there was no end, except by rubbing our eyes and beginning the book again. Twentyseven pages of close type, occupied by letters laudatory and recommendatory, from various English and American ministers of high repute introduce the book. Generally speaking, scientific books are not advertised like Holloway's ointment. Generally speaking, there is a dignified reserve in minds of a high order, that prevents their giving private correspondence to the public. Then after these pages comes the portrait of the author! Proh pudor! There is a class of writers who do this; but laborious Christian ministers are generally averse to this sort of portrait puffing. Dr. Smyth tells us he

labours under the growing infirmities of ill health;' we should have thought that a good reason for omitting the daguerreotype.

But we have a more serious objection to the man than to the book. Dr. Smyth is a minister of religion, in Charleston, South America, and well known to be a pro-slavery man. He was once a student at Highbury College; and on his taking up his residence in America, the climate of the south had such an effect on him, that he forgot slaves could not breathe in England. During his recent visit to England, he was in a perpetual state of alarm lest his pro-slavery tenets should be known. Practically, he does not believe in the unity of the races, whatever he may write his whole life gives the contra.. diction to such a doctrine. Although he tells us that it was in the family of Ham that Satan first raised the standard of rebellion' (p. 354), he does not condescend to say how that justifies his Christian congregation in becoming the executioners of a supposed divine decree. For such a man to write a book about the unity of the races is preposterous: let him call some Christian slave in Charleston his brother; let him abolish the negro pew; let him admit white and black at the same time to the table of their common Lord; let him honestly deliver himself from all participation with the buying and the selling what is woman born, and then we shall believe him and other American priests to be orthodox on this point-not before. This book, why it weighs light as a feather in the scale of the grand moralities of the Bible. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Dr: Smyth tells us that the degradation of the black races is the result of forgetfulness of God, his law, and his worship;' but he hopes, in proportion' (the italics are his) to the direct and efficient inculcation of moral and religious truth, and their enjoyment of the social and religious blessings of Christian cultivation,' these degraded races will manifest signs of an awakening progress.' We believe so too; but with pro-slavery Bible societies, pro-slavery tract societies, and pro-slavery clergy to uphold them, and, in fact, that clergy being the most bitter enemies of the anti-slavery principle, that 'proportion' will be just what it long has been-namely, none at all. We can respect and understand infidels; when they tell us they don't believe the Hebrew myth; when men (or women either) tell us they have got far beyond all that sort of thing, we can account easily for the phases of their faith and practice; but when a man professes to believe the Bible, undertakes to expound it, and then comes forward as the laborious champion of the unity of the races, we neither understand nor respect such a man, winking all the while at the most gigantic iniquity that exists upon the earth, and calmly and even prayerfully ignoring the claims of three millions and a half of men, women, and children, of as good blood as his own, and of the same parentage, according to his own book, to any participation in the first and highest right of man, the right of personal liberty. Such men are worse than infidels; they make infidels; and our literature must not be weary in speaking out the truth concerning

6

HISTORY OF A CHURCH FOR THE POOR.

them. We would rather have this bit from Festus than all Dr. Smyth's book of redactions:

"Man is one;

And he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel,
With a gigantic throb athwart the sea,

Each other's rights and wrongs; thus are we men.
Let us think less of men and more of God.'

Bistory of a Church for the Poor.

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IN former numbers of this journal, we have pressed upon the earnest attention of our readers the great question of the evangelization of the masses. Taking our stand upon existing and acknowledged facts, we have endeavoured to show that the Church has been lamentably deficient in her evangelical duties. She alone has almost stood still, while the world and society have been moving with rapid and ever quickening pace towards the goal of human life and hope. who once heard HIM'gladly,' hear his message now with doubting The common people,' ears or repulsive looks. It neither attracts nor convinces them. They care nothing for it, and many hope for nothing from it. Thousands know not that ever such a message has been delivered, much less do they understand its character and purport. How should they know, unless there be a preacher? And who has taken the trouble, or gone out of his way, to preach it to them? Acknowledging that a great and very perceptible increase in the agencies of the Church has taken place, and that much success has attended the working of the many and multiplied forces of Christianity which have been brought to bear upon our heathen poor in the past and present generation, it must be mournfully conceded that those means are still frightfully deficient, and their success miserably small. Why is this? Not because Christianity has lost its virtue, and can no more heal. Not because it is less adapted now than formerly to meet the various and multiplied wants of humanity. Not because the Father of all careth less for his children; the Lord of all less for his servants; or the Spirit of all less for the spirits of men. place in the affections of the great Creator for his created ones, the We believe that, if any change can take change will be, that his boundless love will be ever deepening as the channel of a mighty river through which the waters have rolled from ages before the Flood. his truth. Nothing does he leave undone: no error is there that truth No fault or deficiency can be found in him or cannot conquer. In his agents will be found the secret of weakness. They have been unfaithful. They have lacked earnestness. has taken the place of spirit. Outward organization has taken the Form

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