skill which He once had? Who will say He has? Or, will it be said that He could have made a better job of this, but preferred to put us in our present shape, and let us grow better? Experimenting, then, was He? If that be so, there is no hazard of the truth in saying, that if he desired us to grow up to wisdom and perfection, and so hereafter fill a better and more exalted position than our present one, He will never make such another experiment. In that case, a more signal failure, on the part of one of His most unskillful human creatures, can scarcely be imagined. For, if any reliance is to be placed on biblical affirmation, or the most perfect dictates of natural reason, based on daily observation, an enormous majority of us grow worse instead of better in this life, and when we leave we will take the downward train, and not that which runs on an up grade, in like greater numbers.

Or, to say that He created us with the desire of populating an unoccupied and vacant region of hell with a race which was well adapted to that use, will not relieve the subject of any part of the embarrassment which surrounds it in the first view.

The same objection applies to this hypothesis as to the other, and another also which is much worse. If He designed us for that region, why not put us there at first? Why deceive us with false hopes of heaven, if to hell we were doomed when created?

Then,

But it is said some will be saved, and others lost. why create any but those whom IIe intended to save? The salvation of a few will be but poor comfort to those who are lost. Their condition will be just as bad as if no others had been made. Therefore, none of the objections which apply to that theory, if all be lost, lose any of their force, if any are so unfortunate, so far as they are concerned. If there be cruelty in creating a whole race for no other purpose than to witness their torments in hell, it would be cruel to make one poor immortal soul for that purpose.

These suggestions are not made, my Christian friends, in any spirit of irreverence for that almighty, all-wise, and exceedingly merciful God, whom we so highly venerate, and should so dearly love,

They are submitted with full confidence that He who observes, with an all-seeing eye, every black mark I am making on this paper, fully comprehends and at the same time approves the pure motives which direct this pen. I charge not my God with imperfection, or with that want of ample power or wisdom, which the thought that he is experimenting necessarily implies. Far, indeed, be it from me to charge Him with taking upon himself the office of the deceiver. That is the business of the common enemy of God and man. And, above all other things, would I dread to accuse Him of cruelty to His own creatures! The very thought of such fiendish irreverence should, and probably would, shock the moral sense of the devil!

No, reader, I have no such taste. My sole object in adopting this line of argument is to expose, in the best way under review is founded; and to point out some of the absurd, not to say ridiculous conclusions, which must necessarily present themselves on a critical investigation of its claims to our confidence. This is done, also, with the humble hope that good may be done in this way, by inducing great and good men, as well as the less favored, to examine for themselves the sandy foundation on which their whole religious creed rests.

I can, the gross errors on which the theory now

I hope this explanation will be accepted as a sufficient apology (so far, at least, as intention is concerned) for other apparently light, quaint, waggish, or irreverent remarks which may have been, or may further on be, found in this imperfect work. That some of a more grave and dignified cast of mind than I possess, will take exception to certain forms of expression and illustration indulged by me, I have no doubt. All I ask of such good friends is, that they believe I aim well, even if constrained to say that such things look odd in a work on such a serious subject.

I admit that I am somewhat "a man o'the world," as Sam. Weller would say. For me to put on the form of dignity and gravity, which is natural with some men, would

be arrant hypocrisy; a thing which God hates. But, verbum sat sapienti, I must proceed.

If we never existed in a different capacity, but are newly created beings, why did God make us so wicked? Or, if contaminated by Satan since we came into life, why did God suffer him to spoil His perfect work so completely and so soon?

Satan is a creature of His, and is as fully subject to His power as we are. If God makes all His creatures pure and good, and we are as first made, who made Caligula, John A. Murrell, and some of our contemporaries, such as we all wot of?

If the soul is made as simple, even unconscious as is that of the young infant, it can properly be considered as but the cion from which the tree grows; if that be pure and holy, the fruit must be so too, or it was error to say: "A good tree can not bring forth evil fruit."-Matt. 7: 18. Some, however, admit the fruit to be sometimes a little sour which we bear in this life, but it is said there is a purgatory to which some of us are sent, after leaving this world, for a spell, and where all that is cured, and we then come out all right. If so, that is a much better place for the preparation of souls for heaven than this. Would it not, therefore, have been best to have sent us all to purgatory at first? This work of creating new creatures, according to that hypothesis, has been going on a great while, and with like bad success all the time. If a mere experiment when first commenced, is it not most reasonable to believe that God would have discovered that it was not working well very soon, and tried some other plan? Would He not have been more likely to have done so, than to have persisted in a work, which cost the life of His Son to repair a part of the damage so done?

My Christian friend, allow me, if you have suffered yourself thus far to sleep soundly under a fabric so rickety, as such faith certainly is, to urge you to awake, arouse yourself to the sensibility of one just out of a death-like slumber, and examine the old castle in which you and

your fathers have resided so long, without ever taking care to examine the foundation on which it stands.

God is the author of human reason. He has endowed us with a little of that God-like faculty which He possesses in perfection. He can not err. Nor can He be disappointed in the working of any of His plans. If we hold to any opinion, on any subject whatever, which is involved in so much inconsistency, even when examined before the light of human reason, we should know that we are wrong, and look in some other direction for the truth.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Propagation of the Soul-Unphilosophical-Not within the Natural Course of Reproduction-Inconsistencies Encountered by Her Advocates-Phrenology Introduced-Physiognomy but an Art-Analogies between Men and Other Animals-Different Characteristics Observable in Families Accounted for—Various Orders of Angels and Devils-Regular Gradations of all Classes of Creatures For Each Spirit a Body Expressly ProvidedDissimilarities in the Same Family-The Skull Accommodates Itself to the Brain-Native Depravity.

THE next and last of the old theories, as presented in the second chapter, is, "The hypothesis of the propagation of the soul." That is, that the souls and bodies of all children are, together and alike, propagated from their pa

rents.

The first great, and, as I think, self-sufficient objection to this hypothesis is, that it is perfectly unphilosophical and unreasonable. How it is that immortal spirits can be produced by mortal bodies, no man, whether now living or dead, has ever yet been able to answer, with any tolerable degree of satisfaction. The best reply which its advocates have made, or probably ever can make, to this stubborn difficulty in their way is, that nothing is impossible with God. That is true. But many things are so with man; and to create, or bring into being a spirit which had never existed before, and yet shall live forever, is one of the many things that man can not do.

The reader will perceive that this is not within the natural course of reproduction, which pervades both vegetable and animal life. The acorn falls to the ground, sprouts, springs up, grows, and in due time becomes an oak, which, in turn, bears seed and dies. The hen lays her eggs, sits,