A “LEAD TREE.”Ex.—Place in a glass a dilute solution of acetate of lead; suspend in it a strip of zinc. Some of the lead will be precipitated in crystals upon the zinc. This is caused by the zinc taking a portion of the acetic acid, and thus forming a new compound called zinc acetate, thereby liberating some of the lead.
A “LEAD TREE.”
Ex.—Place in a glass a dilute solution of acetate of lead; suspend in it a strip of zinc. Some of the lead will be precipitated in crystals upon the zinc. This is caused by the zinc taking a portion of the acetic acid, and thus forming a new compound called zinc acetate, thereby liberating some of the lead.
Besides, that awful, fiery sea within is subject to tides, currents and convulsions that constantly threaten to disrupt and destroy this crust. It is supposed that masses of water percolate through cracks and fissures until they reach the internal fires and are suddenly converted into steam at an enormously high temperature, which gives it such tremendous expansive force as to shake the globe itself. This action, combined with the violent explosion of gases, creates the sublime and dreadful phenomena of
The destruction of Lisbon and many other cities is matter of history. But last year a charming city in the Mediterranean was destroyed in a few seconds, and the stricken inhabitants of Spain are still trembling with horror at the recent shocks that have desolated their fair country.
Man looks in vain elsewhere for such exhibitions of the power of chemical forces as are here displayed.
Lord Lytton[12]gives a most impressive description of an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, in “The Last Days of Pompeii:”
“In proportion as the blackness gathered, did the lightnings around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and scorching glare. Nor was their horrible beauty confined to the usual hues of fire; no rainbow ever rivaled their varying and prodigal dyes. Now brightly blue as the most azure depth of a southern sky, now of a livid and snake-like green, darting restlessly to and fro as the folds of an enormous serpent; now of a lurid and intolerable crimson, gushing forth through the columns of smoke, far and wide, and lighting up the whole city from arch to arch; then suddenly dying into sickly paleness, like the ghosts of their own life!
“In the pauses of the showers you heard the rumblings of the earth beneath, and the groaning waves of the tortured sea; or, lower still, and audible but to the watch of intensest fear, the grinding, hissing murmur of the escaping gases through the chasms of the distant mountain.
“Sometimes the cloud seemed to break from its solid mass, and, by the lightning to assume quaint and vast mimicries of human or of monster shapes, striding across the gloom, hurtling one upon the other, and vanishing swiftly into the turbulent abyss of shade; so that, to the eyes and fancies of the affrighted wanderers, the unsubstantial vapors were as the bodily forms of gigantic foes—the agents of terror and death.”
TESTING FOR GOLD WITH PURPLE OF CASSIUS.Ex.—When gold is placed in a solution of Stannon’s chloride and ferric chloride, a precipitate called Purple Cassius appears. Sometimes the color varies to brown or blue.
TESTING FOR GOLD WITH PURPLE OF CASSIUS.
Ex.—When gold is placed in a solution of Stannon’s chloride and ferric chloride, a precipitate called Purple Cassius appears. Sometimes the color varies to brown or blue.
It is claimed that there are about three hundred extinct volcanoes, and many facts indicate that the convulsions in the earth’s crust are much less frequent than formerly, yet one can easily conceive of its destruction by internal forces, when, as the poet has said,
“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples,the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And like the baseless fabric of a vision,Leave not a wreck behind.”
“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples,the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And like the baseless fabric of a vision,Leave not a wreck behind.”
“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples,the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,And like the baseless fabric of a vision,Leave not a wreck behind.”
“The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples,the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wreck behind.”
Revelation clearly announces the destruction of the earth: “In the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
Is the mind’s knowledge of itself, of its faculties, and states.Psychologyis now generally accepted as the most appropriate term to indicate that knowledge, and the studies that lead to its attainment. Thepsyche, as used by those ignorant of man’s higher nature, means the vital principle supposed to animate all living bodies, whether of men or the lower animals. It is, with them, the same aslife, and is regarded as a result of the organizations they see, and not their cause. Others more consistently hold that, even in the lowest sense, vital forces precede, secure, and determine the organisms they animate; and that in the case of man there is a nobler endowment, a superadded, distinct, self-conscious, personal intelligence. “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.” Thispsyche, or living soul, is a distinct, spiritual existence, however closely, for a time, allied with matter, and acting through bodily organs. It is capable of a separate existence, and while in the body, presents for our study phenomena peculiarly its own. Intellectual processes may be more subtle, and their analysis more difficult, than that of things external, because in the attempt the mind is, at once, subject and object, the observer and the observed. And, moreover, when greatly excited, it does not submit to immediate and direct investigation, as the effort at once arrests the excited feeling, and lowers the temperature, so that the state can be analyzed only as it is remembered. But, difficult of attainment as it is, the science that discusses the mind, proposing to show all that is known or may be learned respecting it, certainly challenges the interested attention of all who desire to know themselves. Whatever may be thought of the substance, or immediate origin of the active, thinking soul, consciousness affirms its presence, and its power to know and feel. When in a calm, thoughtful state, the phenomena are as real and as manifest as anything in physics or material things that are open to scientific investigation. By thorough introspection, the inquirer findshimselfan invisible person, quite distinct from what is merely corporeal in his belongings, and of which he at once says: It is I; a person or being that he not only distinguishes from all others, but also from his own mental acts and states that are not himself. It needs no argumentto prove that the physical frame, made of such material substances as gases, salts, earths, and metals, the particles of which are constantly changing, is not the man. It is not in the highest, truest sense, the body. Every particle of that frame may pass away while the body still remains. The real body is that which retains its organic sameness, amidst the incessant change of its materials. It is not the aggregation of gross substances, visible and tangible, but rather their connection and the life that unites them, that constitute a human body. We need not hesitate to say this life is the gift of God to man, made in his own image, and in his purpose an endowment far higher than mere animal life. When it is withdrawn, the organic structure built up as its earthly habitation is a ruin, and its material elements are scattered, the dust returning to dust again. Others may inquire for the “origin of souls,” asking questions over which many have wearied themselves in vain, we here only confess our faith that the sovereign Lord, “God of the spirits of all flesh,” has the relation of Fatherhood to his human children.
A perfect mental science would require first, the normal action of the intellectual faculties to give phenomena, and then the accurate observation, and orderly arrangement of the phenomena given. To have a starting place there must be the feeling that we are, and can distinguish between ourselves and the mental acts of which we are capable. This consciousness is the root of all our soul science, and without it there could be no fruitful study of the human intellect. It is more than mere feeling, as it implies that activity of mind by which a man distinguishes between his body and soul, the senses and their possessor. It is the self-conscious act of knowing what is within; and when the phenomena or state is presented, the knowledge is intuitive or immediate. No reasoning, or other mental process, is required. The soul confronts itself and its acts face to face, and knows them as they are. The endowment is natural and universal. Though a child at first may show no sign of the possession, it has the capacity, and if normally developed, soon claims the right to be itself and not another. Like other human powers, this also is capable of culture, and may be raised to a state of higher activity and clearer discernment. This improved reflective consciousness brings to view the more occult phenomena within, comparing and classifying things, that it may have a clearer, more discriminating knowledge of the facts considered.
Interrogating this witness, each finds in himself a power to think and reason. That is, anintellectual faculty, by the exercise of which there is intelligence,memoryto retain or recall things once known, andimagination, that creates and represents things that are not, as though they were. These are distinct, though inseparable, faculties or powers.Thinkingis necessary to exact or well defined knowledge, and until our ready impressions and conceptions are penetrated with thought, and we discern their nature, grounds, and connections, we have no science. Information may be received, facts committed to the memory, but if the treasures are jumbled together, and little thought given to either their analysis or orderly arrangement, they can be of but little value to their possessor. In its perceptions and sensations the mind is actively receptive; and by thought this normal activity is intensified. One who desires a correct knowledge of his own mind must connect his conceptions and impressions in some orderly manner, and think much. If there is an aversion to this, or hindrances arise from the almost incessant demands of business or society, and a tendency to mental dissipation is noticed, we may antidote the evil by mostly avoiding the popular light literature, and choosing, as the companions of our few leisure hours, standard works, in which are treasured the best thoughts of the world’s great thinkers. The intelligent study of the outer world, of nature, having the divine impress on every feature, will also do much to cure the weakness that many are ready to confess, to themselves at least. Nature does not think—has not reason, as man has, but the phenomena presented are full of reasons, the embodiments of God’s thoughts, that are above ours, high as the heavens are above the earth.
Thewillis the controlling motive power, and decides the question of character. A voluntary agent is responsible for his acts. Where there is conscious freedom, not only toactas he wills, but towillobedience to the dictates of conscience, character is possible. The freedom spoken of, and without which there can be no obligation or responsibility, is, of course,humanfreedom. The will power is man’s, not that of the brute. The rational, voluntary agent, having conscience, moral ideas, sensibilities, and emotions, is, under law, blame- or praiseworthy, and personally responsible for what he is and does. His involuntary acts, if such are committed, are without moral character. There are some things that are not objects of his choice. When different ways of living are presented, he can freely choose which shall be his. But it is not given him to choose whether he himself shall have a moral character. That is inevitable; and his only option in the matter is as to whether it shall be good or bad.
When the mind is employed in discriminating, arranging, judging, and reasoning, these several acts are all of a class, and are called rational or logical processes. Their importance can hardly be overestimated, as thus the reasoner gets assured possession of judgments or beliefs that are more or less general, and derives from them those that are particular and applicable in any exigency; or by the inductive method, from the particular facts within his knowledge, arrives at general propositions, and securely rests in them as true. In many, perhaps in most cases, both processes, the deductive and inductive, are used or implied. We understand phenomena or effects by their causes, and infer causes from their effects, explain the present by what has been, and anticipate the future by interpreting the past. We reason from what is seen to the unseen, from the facts of nature to nature’s laws.
Systems of logic, if judiciously arranged, are of much value, and should be studied as guides and helps in our efforts to know the certainty of things. Method in reasoning is of much importance. But while comparatively few understand the rules, or adopt the exact technical terms used by scientific logicians, others, using methods and terms of their own, think vigorously, and reason well. The powers employed by the most thoroughly trained scholar and by the unlettered man may be equal, nor are their methods half so different as some suppose. Though the latter forms no expanded syllogisms,[1]says nothing of “subject,” “predicate,” or “copula,” he as really has his premises, reasons from what he knows, and in many cases reaches his conclusions with about the same feeling of certainty. The knowledge he gains does not differ from that of those who are guided in their reasonings by the best rules that observation and experience suggest. Some of those, who in this matter of logic are a law unto themselves, not only reason well, but often very rapidly. Judgment is given so speedily on the presentation of the case that it seems intuitive. There is but a step from the premises of an argument, securely laid in what is conceded in the statement, or what they already know, to the conclusion that is legitimate, and they take it at once. Now, if this is true, and common sense reasonings often seem so easy, while those conducted by men of much science are often difficult and tedious, it may be asked what advantage, then, is there in the logic of the schools? A sufficient answer is found in the fact that the thoroughly trained logician can solve problems the other never attempts. In his processes the properties and relations observed are less obvious or more complicated than anything presented to the other. To apprehend them clearly, closer attention must be given than most men, without such training, ever give or can give. And then, the conclusions of the ready, rapid, though untrained, reasoner who investigates only common subjects, are reallyless reliable, because more likely to be founded on too superficial observations. The man of more science, and yet slower progress, is expected to handle the more difficult problems, and subject all their elements to a sharper scrutiny.
Is intimately connected with thought, not only as its expression, but as an auxiliary. Thoughts always become clearer and more firmly fixed in the mind by being expressed. Though words are not thoughts, and, carelessly uttered, may be quite meaningless, thoughts not only seek to embody, or clothe themselves in language, but our best thinking is done in the use of words, uttered or unexpressed. Though there may be no sound for the ear nor symbol for the eye, the word inly spoken serves to fix the otherwise transient thought so that it can be afterward recalled, and perhaps uttered, to stimulate the thinking of others. Hence the importance of the study of language, of words and their syntax, as employed to express mental processes. Grammar is important as an intellectual science.
The science of the beautiful is an important and delightful branch of study; the knowledge gained being mostly through immediate perceptions and sensible impressions. Beauty, wherever discovered, appeals to the sensibilities, and raises pleasant emotions. As a means of culture it elevates and refines. Communings with nature in her lovelier moods subdue asperities, and inspire gentle, kindly dispositions, while the beautiful creations of architecture, statuary, and painting, of poetry and music, fill the souls of discerning, susceptible persons with indescribable pleasure. But though such emotions are frequently excited, and seem familiar, they are of all our mental phenomena least understood, and most difficult to analyze. Some of our most common experiences are, on examination, found the most inexplicable. All, in a general way, know that beauty of form, proportion and color, wherever seen, excites pleasurable emotions. But our knowledge of sensations and emotions is generally, though direct and immediate, imperfect, and can become thorough only when the first impression is retained, and the higher faculties employed in studying its character and its cause. Dr. Porter’s[2]chapters on “Sense Perceptions” are, on the whole, satisfactory, and will help advance this branch of knowledge toward the dignity of a science. They give an analysis of beauty in objects that address the senses, and also of the emotions it awakens. Thoughtful students confess their need of more help. The science has its charms, but is still in its adolescence. Some things elementary are yet wanting, or known only by the names given them. Men talk of the “line of beauty” in architecture and sculpture, but do not yet know just what it is, or by what peculiarities it works on the sympathies of the beholder. We feel the exquisite pleasure but do not know just wherein the charms of the music that most delights us, consist, nor how it awakens the feeling it does. We can not tell just what it is in the poem we admire that gives its rhythm, figures of speech and imagery such enchanting power. The literature on the subject is extensive. We have, as all who read Ruskin’s[3]works know, a rich treasure of astute observations, with keen, incisive criticisms, but yet no thorough analysis of all the materials necessary to complete the science of Æsthetics.
The science of duty, often calledmoralas relating to customs or habits of thought and action, discusses human obligations, or inquires what responsible voluntary agents ought to do, and why. Man has a moral nature; is so constituted, and placed in such relations that he feels certain things to be right for him, and others wrong; he says: I ought to do this, and that I ought not. These words, or their equivalents, expressive of obligation, can be traced in all languages of which we have any knowledge, and they voice the common sentiment of the race. Men differ widely in their intelligence, and consequently in their ability to discriminate with respect to acts or states that are purely intellectual. Their metaphysics may be cloudy and confused, so that their judgments on such matters will have neither agreement nor authority. But the moral sense discovers moral qualities more clearly. Its decisions are prompt, and their authority is acknowledged. Speculative questions on the subject are not all answered with the same agreement. If it is askedwhya thing is right, different persons may answer differently. One says because it is useful; another because it is commanded by a higher authority; and another because it accords with the fitness of things. These are questions for the intellect and not for the moral sense. Its province is simply to decide whether the act or state is right or not, and there it stops. Whether the basis of the rectitude approved is in some quality of the act itself, in an antecedent, or a consequent, may be properly asked, and reasons assigned for the answers given. But such questions are speculative, and the answers do not have, even when the best are given, the force of a moral conviction. In saying a thing is right because it is right, we affirm our conviction of the fact, but tacitly confess we may not know all the reasons why. How the fact is known is sufficiently explained by a reference to consciousness. We are so constituted that when moral qualities, in ourselves or others, are fairly presented and understood, there arise feelings of approval or condemnation, corresponding to that which excites them. Of such convictions and emotions we are at once conscious, and can have no more certain knowledge of anything than of what is thus felt. Connecting them with their exciting cause, it, too, is known, not by any outward or sense perception, yet not less certainly by an inward moral sense, whose decisions are promptly given, and with authority. There are frequent occasions for men to distinguish between what is right and what is merely lawful. A villain, destitute of moral rectitude, who for his own pleasure, or gain, robs society of its brightest jewels, spreading ruin and desolation through the community, may violate no statute, and escape legal condemnation; but, though having no fear of the law or of the courts, he is not less certainly a guilty man.
Conscience, as a faculty of the soul, differs but little from consciousness. Both words are from the same root, and neither, in its primary, etymological meaning, implies anything as to moral character. Consciousness is self-knowledge, the mind’s recognition of its own state as it is; and that a man has a conscience, or capacity for passing moral judgment on himself, is a condition that makes character of any kind possible. Each word, however, has now an additional meaning, sanctioned by general usage. The former generally implies emotions of approval or disapproval, and the latter that there is in the mind a standard of action, and a clear discrimination between right and wrong, with an immediate feeling of responsibility, or obligatory emotions.
Though thus richly endowed with intellect, sensibilities, and will, by nature capable of the highest mental activities, the structure of the soul would be strangely incomplete if the religious element were wanting. But it is not wanting. Man is a religious animal, and ever prone to worship. He has capacities that are not filled, longings unsatisfied, and must go out of himself for help and rest. Of all the sciences that concern him most, no other is half so important as the science of God, an infinite, all-wise, ever-present, personal God; our Creator, Redeemer, Benefactor. This science is transcendent, and confirmed by indubitable evidence. It satisfies and saves. “This is eternal life, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he hath sent.”
Investigates, in an orderly, scientific manner, the principles of association, and whatever relates to the interests and improvement of men in communities. It has its basis in psychology, as that science of the soul reveals most clearly the elements of asocialnature. By instinctive longings for sympathy and fellowship, men are drawn together, and readily consent to therestraints of society, whose earlier tacit agreements and maxims are at length formulated into rules and laws for their better government.
Civil governments, incomplete at first, and encountering many hindrances, often progress but slowly, and sometimes even recede from vantage ground that has been gained. Some known in history have made but little advancement during the nineteenth century, and still fail to adjust their political machinery to the wants and demands of the people. They will hardly survive much longer without some promise of better progress in the future. All really good governments are not equally good, and that is regarded best which secures the greatest liberty to the individual citizen, consistent with the rights of others and the public security. That end, when honestly proposed, may be, to some extent, secured under very different charters or constitutions, and very much depends on the wisdom of the administration. When the governing power is in the hands of one man, and he irresponsible for his manner of exercising it, it is called anautocracy, ordespotism. When vested in one person, whose executive functions are exercised by ministers responsible to a legislative assembly or parliament, it is aconstitutional monarchy. If the nobility, or a few principal men govern by a right, in some way claimed, and conceded to them, it is anoligarchy, or anaristocracy. If the power is in the hands of the people themselves, or their immediate representatives, as in the United States, it is ademocracy, orrepublic.
Social science embraces a wide range of subjects of more than ordinary importance. It discusses both principles and facts, the principles that underlie all social institutions, and the practical, economic regulations that are wisely adopted in well ordered, prosperous communities. If the institutions are established, its province is to examine theories, collect, arrange, and generalize facts, that may have some bearing on any proposed corrective and reformatory measures. It scrutinizes public crimes, penal codes, judicial decisions, and prison discipline, with whatever else pertains to social life. It shows the relation of men to men, of the ruler to the governed, of the employer to his employes, of the rich to the poor, the fortunate to the unfortunate, and by its expositions instructs men how to act in their various relations. If the science were much better understood, the dangerous classes would be less dangerous; and the troublesome problems of pauperism, the liquor traffic, Mormonism, and the social evil, would be less appalling to average legislators and judges.
The experience of ages shows that the ameliorating, helpful agencies and influences that lift communities up to higher levels, often operate silently as the leaven, till the whole lump is leavened. In many tribes the advance from savagery and the usurpation by irresponsible leaders, of absolute power toward complete civil liberty and personal rights, has been slow. The change has come by means almost imperceptible, or by struggles that seemed at the time fruitless. The improved condition of society does not bring entire security, or freedom from assault. The yoke once taken from the neck, and the heavy burdens from the shoulders, new ideas of property, justice, and personal rights are developed. The spirit of enterprise is awakened, because each finds himself in the position of affluence and influence, to which his talents, industry and self-denial entitle him. Men become competitors, and inequalities of condition are inevitable. Incompetence, idleness, and extravagance bring want and misery. Wealth and poverty exist side by side, the rich growing richer, and the poor poorer. Class distinctions become odious. Capital and labor, that should be allies, are often in conflict, to the great injury of both. There may be occasion for complaint against those “who oppress the hireling in his wages,” and “grind the faces of the poor.” But many are envious without cause, and suffer only the penalty of their idleness and extravagance, become enemies of the community, and are deaf to remonstrance if they see, or think they see, any way of relieving themselves at the expense of those who have acted more wisely, and possess large estates. Here come in the functions of government, that is of society, with its better notions of right and justice, and power to enforce them. True “social science,” founded on the experience of ages, recognizes the necessity of government, the obligations of the citizen, and the right of all to the property they have lawfully and honestly acquired. It demonstrates that real progress is in the way of a safe conservatism, while it admits the possibility of change and improvement, fully justifying the work of the reformer where reformation is needed. If existing institutions are inadequate because of some radical defect, have outlasted their usefulness, or become oppressive, revolution may be demanded. But any government, though unjust and despotic, is better than anarchy, and should be repudiated only when it is, under all the circumstances, possible to establish a better. When legitimate authority is resisted in the spirit of lawlessness or efforts at revolution prompted by an evil ambition, the actors are guilty. There have been many attempts, mostly abortive, to solve the problem of government, and reconstruct the social fabric. Some of them by good men, whose schemes were simply theoretical and impractical; others by malcontents and destructionists who mistake license for liberty. Plato, a man of probity and justice, but lacking the wisdom of the statesman, prepared a constitution for a model republic, which had too many defects for adoption; a republic with advantages for a select class, but slavery for the masses doomed to manual labor, which was made despicable. More wrote his “Utopia,”[4]regarded by some as a kind of program for a needed social reform. It had little influence with his countrymen, most of whom ranked it with works of the imagination, where it belonged, whether so intended or not. Campanella,[5]a radical communist of Stilo, in Calabria, wrote his Utopia, called “The City of the Sun,” a sensual paradise, in which there was to be a community of goods and of wives. For more than a century socialistic and communistic publications were numerous; many of them denouncing property as a sin, and advocating the greatest license in the intercourse of the sexes. Rousseau, in his discourse on the “Origin and Grounds of Inequality Amongst Men,” speaks with approval of “a state of nature,” something like that among our American Indians before they had any knowledge of civilization. He seems to have supposed there was no inequality, no vice, no misery, among untutored savages, and advised those who could, to return to a state of nature.
The skeptical Owen,[6]and the philosophical Fourier,[7]more practical than others, attempted to establish communities as models or examples of what could be accomplished on their theory, but failure attended their enterprises, or the communities were saved from utter disintegration by the tacit admission of principles that were once disavowed.
Modern socialism, akin to communism, and in all its tendencies subversive of good government, declaims over the poverty and misery of the unhappy masses, laments their insufficient shelter, food, and clothing, is sentimental on the subject of labor and wages, and seeks to rouse the abject sufferers to a sense of their sad condition. Its pictures of suffering are in many cases not overdrawn, and the greatest efforts can hardly exaggerate the facts. But socialism is not “social science.” It is utterly and perversely unscientific; it discusses effects, carefully leaving causes out of view; and would reform communities by corrupting and debasing individuals. With a vague notion that every man has a natural right to whatever he needs, it allows that the problem of equalization may be solved by violence, and thus all brought to a common level. The crimes against society, which have lately appalled us, are doubtless the result of the pernicious principles and teaching of “socialistic reformers.” But a reaction is sure to come, and the better instincts of the race will yet destroy the corrupt tree whose fruit is evil.
SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.
Ecclesiastics 7:29: “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.”
Ecclesiastics 7:29: “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.”
If we should stand amid the uncovered treasures which mark the site of ancient Nineveh or Babylon we would doubtless find in the objects, as they are this moment, very much to engage our most interested attention. We would regard with wonder and pleasure the specimens of beautiful architecture, the evidences of human skill and industry which modern exploration has disclosed to view. And yet, full of interest as such an occupation would be, we could not prevent our minds from engaging in another. Without any conscious exercise of will, our thought would revert to the day when these fallen structures stood in all their magnificence; when these halls, now filled with the sand of the desert, echoed to the strains of music and to the voices of the noblest and greatest of the land; when through these arches, now crumbling, armies marched gaily to battle, or returned in triumph, bearing the spoils of conquest. We would not be insensible to the value of the columns and capitals, the statuary and tablets before our eyes, and yet the very grandeur of these ruins would evoke the genius who would lead our thought by an irresistible constraint to look upon the prior vision of those cities in the day of their pristine perfection.
My friends, we do stand amid ruins. We walk day after day amid shattered greatness, in comparison with which the prized relics of Nineveh and Babylon, of Thebes, and Luxor,[1]and Troy, sink into insignificance. Far be it from me to underestimate the work of man, as we see him and know him to-day, or as we read of him in the records of the past. I am aware of what he is, and of what he has done. I am not insensible to his work, and yet I declare that man, great as he is—and he is great—is in certain respects not as great as he was. I mean that he is not what the progenitor of the race was. And viewed in comparison with that primitive condition—that condition at creation—man to-day, considered physically, intellectually, morally and spiritually, is a conspicuous instance of fallen grandeur—not worthless and valueless—far from that; but his perfection has departed; he is vastly inferior to what his great original was. Realizing this, we can not fail to revert in thought to that early day, and seek to see what the greatness was from which we have fallen.
Before, however, we attempt to look upon that picture, it will be necessary to establish and defend the theory of man’s condition and history upon this earth, with which it is inseparably connected.
A view of human history, which has been strongly advocated of late, is that our race began physically, intellectually, and morally at the lowest possible point. Some even maintain that the first men and women were but the latest and highest developments of certain species of brutes. But whether this phase of the theory of evolution be included in it or not, the essential idea of the view to which we refer is that the progenitors of our race were the lowest kind of savages, in their powers and capacities, their tastes and pursuits scarcely distinguishable from the brutes around them, and that from this low beginning men have gradually come to the height of attainment and improvement which they occupy to-day. If this theory be true, the statement which we have made, and which we proposed to consider, is false. If such were the origin of our race, if the first men and women were in all the parts of their nature but a shade removed above the brutes of the forest and the field, of course we of to-day are in no respect their inferiors—of course ours is not, as has been declared, a fallen race. We maintain, however, that the theory which makes our race begin in a condition of barbarism and imbecility is untrue. I know that it is supported by eminent names; I know, too, that it has been pressed upon public attention with much noisy and confident assertion; I know all this, and yet I declare that the theory is unproven; more, I declare that it is untrue.
Let us look at a few considerations which may shed the light of truth upon this matter of the primitive condition of mankind, and by this I mean the condition of those who succeeded Adam himself on the stage of the world’s history:
1. We all know how long, in families which have lost position or power, the memory of former greatness is cherished. You will find in your charitable institutions, in the depths of poverty, and, perhaps, of wickedness, those who will tell you by the hour of the fortunes of their house in remote days, of the distinction which some ancestor, far removed, conferred upon the name. Such memories are preserved with care, and transmitted from generation to generation, and they become more and more precious as the descendants themselves have less and less honor of their own. The same principle operates with nations and with the great tribes of men, particularly when they have themselves sunk so low that they are conscious of no ground of glorying in themselves. Now it is an instructive fact that the traditions of all nations have more or less reference to a golden age, from which men have fallen. This is true in India, in China, in Egypt, among our own Indians, among the inhabitants of Central and South America—wherever traditional knowledge is preserved. It is a vague memory—nevertheless a memory cherished by the race, handed down through the ages, not of an era when humanized monkeys rejoiced in their promotion, but of a golden age, when men as gods dwelt upon the earth. The only explanation of such a wide-spread tradition is that there must have been a fact corresponding to it; there must have been a substance to cast this shadow over so many generations. Those who hold that mankind began at the lowest point, can not satisfactorily account for this tradition of the race.
2. Not only tradition, but history sustains our position. If the true explanation of man’s condition to-day, in the civilized countries, is that he has gradually raised himself from a state of absolute barbarism, we certainly ought to have in the records of authentic history the account of at least one nation, which, as matter of fact, before the eyes of the world, has done the same thing. But no such instance can be found, not one of a people, entirely barbarous, lifting themselves unaided, to the higher plane of even a comparative civilization. Archbishop Whately[2]says: “We have no reason to believe that any community ever did or ever can, emerge, unassisted by external helps, from a state of barbarism unto anything that can be called civilization.” And we may follow the course of civilization from our own land back to western Europe, from western Europe to Italy, from Italy to Greece, from Greece to Egypt and the farther East, and still, as far as history takes us we see the barren portions of the earth continuing to be barren—continuing to bear only the wild fruits of barbarism, until the stream of knowledge, and culture, and civilization, is led to it from some other place. And that stream may be followed all the way back to the beginning of authentic secular history, and in no one instance does the dry ground yieldfruit and flower of itself. We maintain that the vivifying stream began to flow because there was in the beginning, in the East, a fountain filled by God himself. Or, leaving the language of allegory, we assert that if our race was utterly barbarous at the beginning, it never would have risen from its barbarism, and authentic history can not adduce a single instance of a nation rising unaided from barbarism to overthrow this position. Mankind, therefore, did not begin at the lowest point, or, judged by all the analogy of history, it would be there still.
3. Again, the records, outside of the Bible, which have come down to us from early times, are few and imperfect, but the oldest of those which do remain indicate the existence of nations in a high state of civilization in the earliest periods of human history. In Egypt, China, Chaldea, these earliest records, whether monumental or written, bear evidence, not of universal barbarism in the previous ages, but of powerful and enlightened nationalities. Such a state of things is inconsistent with the theory which makes the history of our race a gradual development from a brutal and degraded beginning.
4. Still further, the science of paleontology comes forward to prove the same thing. There have been found in Belgium and in France, some human skulls and skeletons, unquestionably of very great antiquity. Concerning them one of the most competent of human judges, Principal Dawson, of McGill University, Canada, says: “These skulls are probably the oldest known in the world.” But what sort of men do they indicate as living at that remote day? “They all represent,” he says, “a race of grand, physical development, and of cranial capacity equal to that of the average modern European.” Further he says: “They indicate also that man’s earlier state was the best, that he had been a high and noble creature before he became a savage. It is not conceivable that their great development of brain and mind could have spontaneously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and savage life. These gifts must be remnants of a noble organization, degraded by moral evil. They thus justify the tradition of a golden and Edenic age, and mutely protest against the philosophy of progressive development, as applied to man.” Again, he concludes from a careful study of these remains: “The condition, habits and structure of Palæocosmic[3]men correspond with the idea that they may be rude and barbarous offshoots of more cultivated tribes, and therefore realize, as much as such remains can, the Bible history of the fall and dispersion of antediluvian men. We need not suppose that Adam of the Bible was precisely like the old man of Cromagnon.[4]Rather may this man represent that fallen yet magnificent race which filled the antediluvian earth with violence, and probably the more scattered and wandering tribes of that race, rather than its greater and more cultivated nations.”—Nature and the Bible, pp. 174-179.
5. In addition to these arguments from tradition and history, and monumental and written records, and an actual study of human remains, which experts pronounce to be older, probably, than the flood, we have evidence within ourselves. We are not unfamiliar with stories of children of noble, perhaps of royal, descent, who have been abducted and brought up among people of low tastes and habits. But ever and anon, in gesture or inclination or bent of life, the blood shows itself, and to an attentive eye tells of the gentler and loftier sphere from which it came. So with us. Our consciousness reveals within us remnants of a former greatness; aspirations which this world has never taught us, longings for peace and purity which we feel we ought to have, but which we know this world never imparts. These things are the impress of the joys of that golden age which all these centuries have been powerless to erase from the souls of Adam’s sons. Morally, we know we are not what we ought to be; we are conscious of our degradation. As regards intellect, we retain powers which have, indeed, accomplished marvelous results; and yet, let some abnormal stimulus affect the brain—whether it be that produced by sudden excitement or passion, or that caused by powerful artificial agencies, and we see flashes of power yet in reserve which intimate what this wondrous human mind may once have been. And physically, our frail bodies, quickly tired and quickly crumbling to dust, tell us daily that here, at least, the theory of development from imperfection to perfection has signally failed.
From these considerations we deem it evident that the theory of man’s development from a primitive condition of barbarism is untrue. The various glimpses which we have been able to obtain of the early ages reveal man as in an advanced condition. To all this the representations of the Bible correspond. It is not the design of the inspired volume to give a minute description of the customs, habits, knowledge, employments of the nations of the world. All that it says upon these subjects is incidental, yet no one in reading its accounts of those early times, and of the people then living, could possibly imagine that the men and women of whom it speaks were such as the rude Hottentot or the savage Caffre of to-day. The picture of man in the primitive times drawn from the Bible, is the same as that which is drawn from all these other sources; a being of physical and intellectual power; not a savage, not a barbarian, but an enlightened, capable, efficient man. How much he knew, how much he could accomplish, what acquaintance he had with the forces of nature, which we are now beginning to understand, must be matters of conjecture. Sin had commenced its blighting work, but we must remember that man in those early days had inherited from the first man splendid powers, and probably varied and extensive knowledge. His physical strength and his length of days were still great, and doubtless in all respects, save morally and spiritually, he was even yet a magnificent creature, and a power upon the earth.
Still, this was not the point which, in this discussion, we wished to reach. All this was the greatness of man after he had begun to deteriorate, after the poison of sin had begun to do its certain and terrible work. This vision of primitive man in his physical and intellectual strength is the splendor which abides a little while in the sky after the sun has set. Nevertheless, the sun had set, and there is a world-wide difference between this picture and that unto which we would lead you—the picture of that sun in its glory—the picture of unfallen man—the first man—the perfect man. Now let us look upon it. The long ages of preparation have rolled away and the earth is a garden of loveliness. Upon the splendors of its landscapes, the beauty of its lakes, the grandeur of its mountains and oceans, the sun looked down from his pavilion in the sky by day, and the moon and the stars by night. The magnificent domain waited in harmony and beauty for its inhabitants, “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” “So God created man in his own image: in the image of God created he him.” “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.”
In the place of honor and dominion in that waiting world of beauty, enthrone a being who shall be the counterpart of those words of infallible description—aman, made in the image of God, and receiving the unqualified commendation of his divine Creator. We may, without danger of mistake, consider him to have been physically a being of magnificent stature, and of matchless perfection of feature and form, with a body ignorant of weakness or disease, free from the seeds of sickness and of death. That a change would afterward have been necessary to fit his body of flesh and blood for its immortality is possible, but such change would not have been what we understand by death. Age would not have brought infirmity to him. Nature would have had no debt to pay to the grave.
Enshrined in this perfect body as in a glorious temple was a mind corresponding, doubtless, in excellence to its habitationand to the terms which describe its creation. Intellectually as well as morally, he was created in the image of God. He was possessed of reason and of actual knowledge. When the various classes of animals were passed in review before him, he had such an apprehension of their distinctive characteristics as to be able to give to them all appropriate names. And as he knew thus much of nature, how shall we limit his familiarity with her mysteries? And what shall we say of the powers of discernment, of intuition, of memory, of judgment, of the facility in working, of the unwearied and the unending delights and achievements of a mind made in the image of God, and not yet marred or weakened by sin!
But the crowning glory of that first man, that which marks his distance from us more than any physical or intellectual superiority, is that in his moral and spiritual nature he bore a likeness to his divine Creator. This being, whose body knew no imperfection, whose mind was rich in its possessions, and mighty in its power to acquire and enjoy every kind of truth, was holy. No thought arose in that heart which could not be published in heaven—none which could mantle his cheek with the blush of shame, or cause his manly eye to drop in consciousness of wrong, or make a ripple of disquiet in the sea of perfect peace which filled his soul. His thoughts were God’s thoughts. His loves, his wishes, his purposes, in harmony with God’s, ascended and descended like the angels Jacob saw, in perfect and blessed communion between heaven and earth, and earth was heaven begun. Of this world, with its abounding life, he was the acknowledged king. Within him was the consciousness of peace, and joy, and immortality. All about him was beauty, and amid the glories of his Eden home, God himself condescended to walk with him and be his friend.
Such is a faint outline of the picture on which I would have you look—the picture of man as he was in the beginning. Does not the sight justify the assertion that we are a fallen race? Does it not confirm the teaching of our text, that “God hath made man upright, but they have sought out many inventions?”
I need not delay to prove that this picture is not a representation of our present condition. Think of these frail physical existences, begun with a cry, continued in pain and weakness, and extended with difficulty to their three score years and ten. Think of the ages through which the intellect of the most favored portion of the world has been struggling to its present attainments. Think particularly of the moral and spiritual condition of the race, in comparison with that heavenly vision of Godlikeness which stands at the beginning of our history. I need not delay then to prove that mankind has fallen. I will, however, ask you to remember when you reflect upon the sad disorders of the present state, upon the sorrows and weaknesses and wickednesses of men to-day, that God did not thus create the progenitors of the race. If we see ruins about us and within us, let us remember that the temple as it was fashioned by the supreme architect was perfect. Let us remember also the real and only cause of this terrible catastrophe. It was sin—sin that always has ruined and always will destroy the beautiful, the pure, the true. Men did indeed go from that height of exaltation into the depths of barbarism; it is true enough that the pages of remote history show us men living in caves, and almost reduced to the level of the brutes—and sin led them there! Men did lose the moral beauty of our first parent; they did lose much of the intellectual and physical strength which lingered for a season in his immediate descendants—and sin was the despoiler that remorselessly stripped from them those glorious robes! You and I might have been as Adam—ignorant of sorrow and of suffering, and the world still an Eden about us, but sin has cast us down.
But let us remember also, with infinite gratitude and hope, as we look upon that picture of primeval perfection which we have sought to restore, that that condition may be regained. The crumbled arches, the fallen walls, the shattered foundations of Nineveh’s or Babylon’s palaces can never by any human skill be made to reproduce the glory that has departed, and yet the temple of man’s Eden estate, though cast down with a more fearful destruction, can be restored! Yea, made more glorious than it was before, and established upon a foundation, so that through the eternal ages it can never again be moved! Thanks be unto God, this is possible to us. Jesus Christ has come from heaven and has undertaken the accomplishment of the stupendous task. Jesus Christ has promised to effect it for every one who will yield to his influences. And he can do it, for he is the Savior, he is the Redeemer, the buyer-back of that which was lost, and of nations and of regions as well as of individual souls. … His spirit is the inspiration of the life which here is lived. That is enough to lift up any place or any people. And just as certainly will it lift up any human soul. Just as certainly will it redeem it from the consequences of the race’s fall. Not in this life, indeed, may we expect to have again the perfection of power and the freedom from sorrow which our first parent had; but the work of bringing men back to all the blessedness which Adam enjoyed, with new elements of blessing added, will be done—yea, it is even now going on, through the power of an indwelling Christ in souls that are here to-day. Let us all take the loving and mighty hand which is extended for our uplifting; let us seek our birthright, and though, through the first Adam our Paradise was lost, let us yield ourselves to the second Adam, by whom a better Paradise shall be regained.—The Rev. Dr. E. D. Ledyard.
Monarchs reign, but their dominion is merely external. They do not and can not enter into the realm of the soul; but “there is another king, one Jesus,” whose right it is to sit enthroned in every heart, to direct every conscience, and to have dominion over every thought and action. Have you given him the sovereignty of yourself?
Sin reigns, and that king, alas! holds sway in many—I ought to say in the vast majority of human souls. But he is an usurper; for “there is another king, one Jesus,” who is the rightful lord of the heart. Under which king are you? He who repudiates the royalty of Jesus over him is guilty of treason against the majesty of heaven, and is but courting his destruction.
Death reigns, and day by day he is sweeping in new multitudes into his silent realm. The mightiest and the meanest alike must yield to him who is the terror of kings, no less than he is the king of terrors. At one time he rides on the hurricane, and dashes the laboring vessel and the freighted souls within her on the roaring reef; at another he drives through the city streets riding on his pestilential car, and spreads desolation round him. Now he careers upon the boiling flood, and sweeps whole villages before him into swift destruction; and again he leaps in the lightning-flash upon some devoted building, and kindles a conflagration that burns many in its flames. He laughs at men’s efforts to elude his grasp; and as we look upon the settled countenance of the loved one whom we are preparing to lay in the grave, we are almost compelled to own him conqueror. But no! “there is another king, one Jesus,” who is “the Resurrection and the Life,” and “who hath abolished death and brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel.” Let us, then, be undismayed by this last enemy. He is a vanquished foe. Our Lord Jesus has gone into his domain, and having conquered him there, has brought him back with him to his palace, to be there the page who opens the door for his friends into the chamber of his presence. Yes! as we stand by the remains of our Christian dead, and under the influence of sight are moved to speak of Death as king, we recall in another sense than they were meant, but in a sense which faith recognizes as true, the words “There is another king, one Jesus.”
Paradoxical as it may seem, these two things always go together. Where Christ is owned as the sole sovereign, there his service is perfect freedom; but where his supremacy is either ignored or given to another, there comes the slavery of superstition, or the tyranny of priestcraft, or the cold domination of philosophy, and it is hard to say which of these is the most degrading.—W. M. Taylor.
He who would preach the Gospel with power must be himself a believer in the Lord. The secret of true, heart-stirring eloquence in the pulpit is, next after the power of the Holy Ghost, that which the French Abbé has very happily called “the accent of conviction” in the speaker. Behind every appeal that Paul made to sinners, there was the memory of that wonderful experience through which he passed on the way to Damascus; and therefore we are not surprised that hesopreached as either to secure men’s faith or to rouse their antagonism. But his conversion alone, without his Arabian revelations, would not have made him the apostle he became. In the desert he met his Lord, and received from him many important spiritual communications. There, too, he meditated on the truths revealed to him, and poured out his heart in prayer for a thorough understanding of their meaning and a full realization of their power. Thus he came back to Damascus, if not with a face glowing like that of Moses when he descended from Sinai, at least with a heart filled and fired with love to Him who had there unfolded to him the mysteries of the Gospel. Now, what Paul thus received from the Lord has been given to us by evangelists and apostles in the New Testament Scriptures. Our Arabia, therefore, will be the study and the closet in which we pore over these precious pages, and seek to comprehend their many sided significance, as well as to imbibe the spirit by which they are pervaded. He who would preach to others must be much alone with his Bible and his Lord; else when he appears before his people, he will send them to sleep with his pointless platitudes, or starve them with his empty conceits. Get you to Arabia, then, ye who would become the instructors of your fellowmen! Get you to the closet and the study! Give your days and nights to the investigation of this book; and let everything you produce from it be made to glow with white heat in the forge of your own heart, and be hammered on the anvil of your own experience!—W. M. Taylor.
Biology is the science of life, the true doctrine concerning all living things. Animal biology is that branch of the science which relates to animals, as distinguished from plants. It tells of these animals what we know about them, where and how they live, what food they eat, how it is received, and how they grow and multiply. Of all the sciences, this seems most extensive, having for its field a world of numberless forms, alike in that they all live, and have some characteristics in common, yet showing great diversity in their structure, appearance, and mode of life. In this summary of facts we shall simply classify, or methodically arrange in groups, according to their distinguishing peculiarities, the members of this vast family.
The animal kingdom is divided into the following sub-kingdoms, each of which is subdivided into classes. The following table shows these divisions in their proper order, beginning with the lowest:
Protozoa(first animals). These earliest formed animals are distinguished for the simplicity of their structure. In some cases their animal nature was long ago in doubt, and they were, for a time, put down as probably belonging to the vegetable kingdom. The border line between the two has never been very definitely located. Biologists may fail to tell just what special quality distinguishes the minute animal from the microscopic plant. This is not wonderful, when it is remembered that myriads of animals, known to be such, are so small that it requires a lens of strong magnifying power to discover them. Three thousand of them, placed side by side, would make a line but little over an inch long.
Class I.—Monera(single). These are the simplest forms of microscopic aquatic animals. They are entirely homogeneous, and without any developed organs; mere particles, of a jelly-like, but living, or life-supporting substance, called protoplasm, or more properly, bioplasm. This, all admit, is the physical basis of life, and the medium of its manifestation, just as the conductor is a medium of manifestation of electricity. But is it not a stupid blunder to confound the mere medium of its manifestation with the life itself? In neither case is the recognized physical basis of the manifestation necessary to the existence of that manifested by its means. Electricity exists without the conductor, and life may exist without the bioplasm.
Class II.—Gregarinida(living in herds). Minute animals which are found in the intestines of the lobster, clam, and cockroach. They are worm-like in form, and of a very simple, cell-like structure, the only organ being a nucleus.
Class III.—Rhizopoda(root footed). The representative forms of this class are theAmœba[1]andForaminifera. The amœba is an indefinite little bit of bioplasm, as structureless as the monera, only that it is made up of two layers of the substance, has an apparent nucleus, and a contractile cavity within. These first animals vindicate their right to be recognized as such, by moving, receiving food, growing, and reproducing their kind. They move by a contractile force, throwing out at will processes of their soft bodies, to serve them as feet and arms. True, these are blunt, and without digits, but they answer the purpose. They eat either by simple absorption, or by wrapping their soft bodies around the food, and holding it in the extemporized stomach till it is, in some way, assimilated.
The work of reproduction is carried on principally by self-division, and budding. The animal rends itself into two or more parts, each having all the elements of the whole, or it throws out buds that mature and drop from the parent mass, having the vital element, and a portion of the bioplasm, or medium necessary to its development.