had highest teachers. Indeed, highest culture enables us now to see that the primitive refinement was very good.

The argument seems conclusive, but we will view it somewhat differently.

There is definite progress not only in the genesis of the earth, but in the genesis of life. The advance is from darkness and chaos to light and beauty; from low forms of vegetation to the higher; from the life that swarms in water to the fish, the reptile, the bird; from the living creatures on land to those of increased definite complexity in structure and function; until, in man, we have intellectual and emotional changes. It would be in the highest degree unscriptural and unscientific to deny that the progress from the less special to the more specialised may have been wrought by means of natural orderly causes during a long course of time, and by well-nigh insensible gradation. So far, therefore, evolution may be that long creative process of organic advance, by minute increments, which tends to perfection.

Concerning this organic advance, experience shows that out of the general web of existence special threads are drawn and woven into new and peculiar patterns. The elements of new organisms, however differently arranged, are the same as those contained in the original mass; nevertheless, by new grouping surprisingly novel phenomena emerge. We do not think, when the physical motions of molecules are rearranged in chemical actions, that any addition is made to the primitive energies; nor do biologists generally suppose, when physical and chemical actions are specially grouped and vital phenomena emerge, that any essential addition is made beyond that of the new grouping of old material and of old energy; so in the emergence or creation of man, and afterwards in the development of social life, there is no casting away of the old threads, they are rewoven into more beautiful patterns. As the flower which comes into existence and grows by energy imparted by the sun, is but a reproduction in new form of that which was imparted; so sentient organisms reproduce all that produced them; and-this is the mystery-something more in every advance: for without this something more there could be no evolution from low to higher degree, from vegetable to

The Mystery of Advance.

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mammal, from mammal to man. How long the process, how slow and gradual the development, science can only guess. Scripture defines all these advances, wrought by means of Nature, as essentially a Divine process-a work of High Art. When, despite the evident differences presented by light, heat, sound-as quantitative phenomena; they were, by a triumph of analysis, identified under one common form-undulation; it was a beautiful greeting of the spirit: so when Moses laid aside idolatry, gave up Nature-worship, identified all things as possessing Divinity in their origin and progress, there was that triumph of genius, that greeting of the spirit, which devout men and scientific men are alike bound to revere.

Undulations, however manipulated, will only yield undulations nevertheless, out of things with limited and peculiar range are brought those varied aspects and real existences which are impossible to uniformity and irreducible to one another. For example-our notion of light can never be resolved into that of heat, nor into that of sound, though all three are reducible to undulations. Noises are the irregular mingling of vibrations, and tones are that regular recurrence of vibrations out of which music is constructed: so, between radiant heat and light there is only quantitative difference; nevertheless æther, of luminous rapidity, beats in vain on the skin-nerves-no light is felt or seen; nor do transverse vibrations, of whatever rapidity, produce heat through the retina. Hence, essential differences grow out of original unity, and as this is impossible, for things equal in themselves are equal to one another, something must come in from without. Behind this complexity of visible and invisible facts is the whole universe; nor is any explanation possible without that greeting of the spirit, seen in the genius and piety of Moses, by which we are conscious that there is the Weaver's side of the tapestry. All flesh is not the same flesh, nor all life the same life, beasts are not low men, nor are their sensations capable of being prolonged into human intelligence and emotion.

These facts are ground for a new argument-Man, being man by God's creative energy acting according to law upon matter, fashioning it into life and inspiring it with spirit, is that Adam, the tree of humanity of whom we are branches,

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and is that living soul by whose soul our souls are kindled as light at a light. Was this man the first man? We may argue, indeed it is seriously maintained by some, that D Adam, is the word for Adamites; and , "man," is the word for men, mankind, not Adamites. This will not hold as establishing two races: for Adam uses the feminine of the latter for Eve (Gen. iii. 12); and Eve uses," man ”—“ I have gotten a man" (Gen. iv. 1)-in speaking of Cain, her firstborn. The two words are often used in contrast (Ps. xlix. 1, 2, lxii. 9; Isai. ii. 9, v. 15), but never as of separate races. The daughters of men" (Gen. vi. 2) were certainly daughters of Adam, not of a savage pre-Adamite race. On the other hand, "the sons of God" cannot be children of brutal ancestry; for such to marry Adam's daughters would be an elevation, but God's anger was moved at the inter-marriage as a degradation. We are shut up to one of these conclusions: either the pious sons of Adam married the daughters of Cain, the murderer; or, in some mysterious way, there was unholy communion by angels-this latter interpretation, which some considered to be favoured by Jude 6, is almost universally given up.

The following has been asserted with some confidenceCain, having done a dark deed, was not slain, but branded for preservation and execration. He went forth, married, built a city. A city required men to build it, and his going forth to be a fugitive and vagabond among men who might kill him, seems to show that there were other people, and that from them he took a wife. If it were so,

"The shrewd

Contriver, who first sweated at the forge,
And forced the blunt and yet unblooded steel
To a keen edge, and made it bright for war,"

had not a pleasant pedigree in murderous father, and mother little removed from the brute: but to reply soberly-Cain married a sister, as Seth did. The building a city would be of lowly beginning-of one hut, cottage, or house; great gaps in the Scripture record are acknowledged, and the children of Cain called the slowly built city by his name.

If any race, moreover, could be proved of brute ancestry,

say the Negro, there would be an argument for slavery founded on natural and essential inferiority; for the fact of God making men of "one blood" does not prove all mankind descended from one pair of ancestors; but may be taken to mean that there is one flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, another of birds (1 Cor. xv. 39). The argument, however, falls to the ground when we consider the whole force of the statement-We are all the offspring of God (Acts xvii. 26-28). The unity of men is further evidenced by death and redemption—" In Adam all die, in Christ all are made alive" (Rom. v. 12-14; 1 Cor. xv. 22, 49). If there are other men than the Adamite, not having his image, they have not his redemption, nor any heavenly image. To say that the Mongol and Negro partake of redemption, just as four-footed beasts, and wild beasts, and creeping things were presented to St. Peter (Acts x. 11-15), is to misconceive the whole thing. The Mongol and Negro, if pre-Adamite, did not sin in Adam, are not of his race, nor possessors of the blessing of redemption.

We conclude, from all the arguments accessible at present to our reason, that the Adam of Scripture was the first man ; and admitting, on Scriptural and scientific grounds, that the human frame is that structure which crowned the long process of organic life on the earth, firmly maintain that the first man, Adam, not only manifested a great and marked difference and improvement in structure, excelling all other creatures; but, in the essence of his nature, in personal consciousness, intellect, emotion, excelled them in an immeasurable and practically infinite degree. That which so differenced him from the animal, which the science of physics cannot hope to detect, barely hope to conjecture, was a spirit uniting the fleshy organism and the rational animal life into an immortal personality.

If, notwithstanding, as some assert, we must be prepared to admit that the psychical man may have proceeded from some lower form of life; then we can regard the pneumatic man as a grand step, surprise, leap-such as Nature presents examples of. Even the Fuegian has an instrument of thought nearly as perfect as that possessed by the highest forms of the highest human family. The earliest human remains are those of

perfect men.. If, very long ago, some lower nature received a marvellous impulse by which higher life, higher thought, higher emotion, became so shrined in flesh as to become an image of that we rightly account Divine, our faith in Holy Scripture is not weakened, but rather strengthened, by the fact that Adam was of such high personality.

In connection with this personality, and the gift of responsibility, appeared an evil of most appalling character-Sin. Sin is a wilful violation of law, is an act or a course of conduct voluntarily pursued to the damage of physical or moral completeness of life. Law is disclosed in every throb of the mighty rhythmic life of the universe, law is implicated in every action of our life, obedience to it is our only guarantee of purity and happiness. Man, in pure personality, had conscious possession of God's love; and his own love to God, occupying will, thought, feeling, determined the sanctity of his whole being. By entrance of sin that personality became impure, and unity with God was dissolved: for evil will make Divine will appear loveless. We cannot fully understand this, there is some great secret reserved to be made known hereafter to holy men; but we know that the effect of lawlessness was to raise strife in the soul, so that spirit and flesh became contrary (Gal. v. 7)—strife issuing in separation from God.

We must not forget that death reigned in the world before Adam either lived or sinned. From the very earliest times our earth has been an arena of conflict; hence we are led to think that evil originated in a preceding existence and amongst other beings. "The opening chapters of Genesis unquestionably set us down, not at the earliest but in a subsequent the middle-stage of the mighty action, which it is the purpose of Scripture to unroll. Far away in the unfathomed depths of the earliest times, and pre-hexameral period, lies the beginning of the story; far onward in the future lies its consummation; indeed, in some sense, if we regard the design and the result, the narrative stretches from one eternity to another." This complexity and continuance -affecting body and soul, and contaminating both with guilt 1 "Science and Scripture:" Rev. Philip Freeman.

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