If the mere sensation of fear, and the recognition that there are probably other beings more powerful than man, are sufficient alone to constitute a religion, then we must, I think, admit that religion is general to the human race.

The concession is grudgingly made, and many of the words used, and the forms and terms of expression, show how reluctantly and painfully the admission came from his pen. But it came. And it serves us a good purpose. If Lubbock concedes the point, nobody else is likely to deny it. it as no longer in dispute.

We, at least, may safely assume

What I mean, however, is that no race or tribe has been found that did not either believe in unseen beings, or ascribe to seen and visible things some supernatural powers, which constituted the basis of fetichism. There was, at all events, a belief in the unseen, a fear of it, a reverence for it, a deference to it, and a regulation of the life and actions in accordance with it.

I think that fetichism is manifestly a degradation. I think that the glimpses that we get in one way and another into the early condition of man-I speak, of course, entirely irrespective of Revelation-go to show that man was at first a believer in a One Being an "unconscious monotheist," as Max Müller calls him, believing in a one God, without knowing that he was One, without so much as having asked himself whether He was One or many. There came, as I think, a two-fold development; one in each of two different directions, though both in a sense, and that a most important one, downwards. With the Aryan and the Semitic races the development and growth of language led to a form of polytheism, in which there came to be as many gods as there had been attributes or actions ascribed to the One. Thus, from omnipotent, they come to believe in Omnipotence as a god, from creation, Creator, from ruling, a Ruler, and thus these-Omnipotence, Creator and Ruler-were supposed to be different deities. Some nations, as did the Aryans for the most part, holding to many or all of them; and others, as the Semitics, each nation taking one, as the El of the Hebrews, the Moloch of the Ammonites, Baal of the Sidonians, Rimmon of the Damascenes, etc., etc. But in the other direction, among the two other great families of man-two, and unlike in many respects, but most marvellously alike in others; I mean the Mongols of Northeastern Asia and

the Negroes of Africa-the development of language took another course. Insight and reasoning seem to have been less active, words did not begin to assume derivative forms and to be distinguished by inflections and tense or case endings. Few or no really abstract terms were formed, no new names for their gods grew up, and they degenerated into ascribing supernatural powers and virtues to animals and inanimate things, and became mere fetich worshippers and so remain to this day.

Among the Semitics we have Abraham and Moses, teaching a monotheism, consciously and designedly, with an intensely deep feeling of its importance, and upon authority, as a command. Among the Aryans we have (to speak only of the Greeks) a Socrates, a Plato, and a Plutarch, teaching as a philosophy the Oneness of God, the existence of a Supreme Being over all the gods of the popular theology, or mythology rather, of the age. And in our day we have science confirming this doctrine in all the varied arguments produced in the department of science known as Natural Theology.

The Greeks, a few of the wisest and best of them, attained to monotheism as a living principle, by reasoning; the Jews, by faith and obedience. In Christianity the two were united, and the problem of modern civilization is to reconcile these two elements, theology and science, faith and religion-the belief in a worship of God and the exercise of observation and reason, in all the affairs of life; a rational faith and a faithful reason. But as for the other two great families, the Negro and the Asiatic, it is our work to elevate them to a better life.

There can be no civilization without the industry that creates wealth, and the faith that believes in and submits to the One Supreme Ruler of the Universe. Nor do I see any way in which this faith can be spread abroad and maintained among mankind, except by just such missionary work as we are now doing-just such, only far more zealous and persistent. I speak, of course, from a purely scientific point of view; the same may be said with tenfold energy and clearness, from a Christian point of view, and from the heart that has experienced the blessed influences of the spirit of grace.

Of course, it is not possible to confirm the view I have pre

sented of the first step towards civilization by any considerable array of historic facts. We are speaking of a time far back of any authentic history. Even the few rays of light which comparative philology sheds upon that early period are not such as to be of much use. Long since, in the animal world each habitat has been as full of the animals of each species as the amount of food, the number and character of enemies and physical circumstances will allow. The same is true of savage man, they can increase in numbers only by a resort to some process of productive industry that will increase the supplies of food, clothing, etc. Nay, there is no abode of savage man in which the population has not long since reached the point where either some form of laborious industry or some means of preventing increase by inhuman and unnatural life-taking, had become a necessity and had been put in practice. Nor can there be any doubt that the former, viz.: habits of industry, toil and labor, assumed for the generous and magnanimous purpose of benefitting others, would exert a good, an elevating tendency, while the others, unnatural and inhuman life-taking, would harden the heart, deaden the sensibilities, and degrade man so that under such influences he would become worse morally and in his instinctive tendencies, though he might become sharper and more cunning in his mental habits. The crisis or turning point could not fail to come, and when it had once arrived it could not fail to bring with it influences that would be powerful for good or for evil; influences which could not leave man as they found him, or allow him to be any longer what he was before. From this time onward civilized or savage he must become. He was neither before, and could not have been or become either without the influences of an increasing density of population.

Hence the preposterous absurdity, as it seems to me, of supposing as Lubbock, and the men generally of the materialistic school are disposed to do, that the lowest savages we can find anywhere on the earth now are the most nearly like what the earliest men were-like what all men were in their earliest stage, and that those next above them in the scale are the representatives of the second stage in human history, chronologically considered. Primitive man, "Man primeval," has doubtless descended as far downwards in his moral character in becoming a savage as he was ad

vanced or improved intellectually and in scientific attainments by becoming the civilized inhabitant of this Nineteenth Century.

I have not been aiming in this article to vindicate the historic character or the accuracy of the Mosaic narrative contained in the book of Genesis. I have aimed to show rather that the Darwinian or evolution theory of the origin of man is, in our present state of the knowledge of facts, simply preposterous, and will be seen to be so whenever our attention is directed to the weak but most fundamental point in the theory. I have endeavored to show also that any theory of the early condition of man and of the origin of his civilization, which assumes that he was at first. a savage as low as, or possibly lower than, any of the savages now in existence, is not only inconsistent with the facts that have been brought to light by historic and philological researches, but also that it is inconsistent with the very nature of the case. Man could not have been at first such as he is now, whether savage or civilized, or such as he became soon after the time when the human inhabitants had grown to be so numerous that either labor and self-denial, or something worse had become a necessity. From that moment onward, he must of necessity and inevitably become better or worse. The struggle for life would inevitably develop the heroic virtues implied in the sacrifice of self for the good of others, or the baser vices of selfishness and a hardened disregard of the life and welfare of others. From this dilemma there was no escape.

And the doctrine here deduced from scientific facts and principles is, in a general way, in harmony with the Mosaic narrative. Or rather, perhaps, we had better say that it is not inconsistent with that narrative. The relation is about the same as that between the statements in Genesis and the facts that have been brought to light by the researches of geologists. The Scriptures do not teach science as such; they do not descend to scientific detail, nor do they use scientific or technical terms. So with regard to history and the early condition of man; only the case is somewhat reversed, as in fact its very nature would seem to require.

Here we can ascertain from facts and reasoning, only the most vague and general outline of what may, or perhaps we had better say, what must have been; the Scriptures could give and may

have given the historic detail of date, place, and the names of persons and participators in the events which, certainly in some form or another, must have occurred. According to the Scriptures, primitive man-man primeval was neither savage nor civilized; he was merely the beginning, the material out of which by obedience to the laws of God, civilized men, and something even better than that, holy men could be made; or from which by disobedience and sin something worse than any of the brutes then created, would be the inevitable result.

One thing, however, is certain. Science and the Bible both concur in teaching that man must have had a Creator, and that when he came from that Creator's hands he was "good," good and upright, capable of becoming, in some respects at least, better, and yet liable, through disobedience and transgression, to become worse, much worse.

And science and theology are in harmony in other respects as well. To elevate the savage we must not only change his heart and raise his views, from the mere fetich which he worships, to the God Whom he should adore; but we want science also to teach him what those mere sticks and stones, those mere plants and animals are; how much superior to them he is, how utterly idle are the feelings with which he has been accustomed to regard them. Science is a powerful means of clearing away superstition. It led the Greeks from polytheism and mythology up to monotheism and moral philosophy. It has done its full share towards delivering the Protestant world of this Nineteenth Century from the superstitions and puerilities of the worship in the middle ages. It will be no less powerful as a means of converting the heathen and bringing them up to a mental status in which their old fetichism will be impossible. Perhaps science is rather sceptical in its nature; but then the whole history of man shows that 'he needs some antidote to superstition, something to keep him from the mental weakness in which superstition is possible and perhaps inevitable. Between the two extremes man seems destined to oscillate until he can settle down in the happy medium, where faith will supplement science, and science itself will guard faith from settling down into a mere superstition. If it is true, as it most certainly is, that science or mere knowledge can never