And when men, made in the image of the Almighty, devote their magnificent powers to proving that they are the offspring of apes and tadpoles, it may be questioned whether the subject has not ceased to be solemn, except as an illustration of the fatuity of men who plainly show their fallen state by the still lower alliances which they seek.
The world by wisdom knew not God. Great Egypt built pyramids and worshiped cats! Polished Greece erected magnificent temples where they might adore idols, and had thousands of prostitutes in their courts to facilitate their devotions. Mighty Rome, with thirty thousand gods in her Pantheon, built her Coliseum where ninety thousand of her citizens could sit and see hundreds of gladiators butcher and hack each other in pieces for their amusement. And the skeptical scientist of the nineteenth century, having turned his back upon that God who only hath immortality, and that Christ who has brought life and incorruption to light in the gospel, says to the monkey, Thou art my father; and to the tadpole and the moner, Thou art my sister and my mother! Athens wrote upon her altar, Agnosto Theo, but still worshiped "the Unknown God;" the modern skeptic, equally and more culpably ignorant, still writes himself an agnostic, but is proud of his ignorance, and refuses to adore the Great Unseen.
According to natural law, all variations of species tend to revert to their original types. Plants, developed by cultivation, if left to themselves speedily deteriorate. Human beings, deprived of opportunities for culture, quickly become degenerate. It does not require long ages to reduce a people to a lower level. In India, human infants, stolen and nurtured by wolves, develop only brutal instincts; and children, though of the highest birth, with such environment do not rise above a brutal condition.
Nor are the beneficial changes in the character of the human family accomplished through the slow and tedious processes of progression. Nations do not civilize themselves; some external force or impulse must change the course and current of their lives, to bring them to a higher plane. There are savages on earth to-day, after all the ages of progression, which are as brutal and barbarous in their instincts as were the inhabitants of proud, imperial Rome. But let the mis sionary, Bible in hand, reach their shores and preach to them the gospel of God, and a change comes, so sudden, radical, and permanent, that the fierce and blood-thirsty savages cast aside their idols and turn to the Lord, and the whole condition of society becomes so altered in a single life-time, that they gratefully inscribe upon the