I.] The Bible and true Science agree. 13 man to-day than there was twenty years or ten years ago, and all reliable evidence is bringing him more and more within hailing distance of historic times. To conclude this subject I will just point out a few facts that seem to be established, not theories or scientific guesses, but facts which seem to have proofs behind them, and see how they compare with the Bible account of the first races of man. 1.-Fossil remains of quaternary man tell us, and all traces of prehistoric man confirm it, that from his beginning man was as perfect a man physically as the ordinary man of to-day, and if the brain is an indication of intellectual strength, equal to the ordinary intelligence of the present race of men. This cannot be shown to conflict with the Bible. 2.-Science tells us he probably first appeared in Central Asia, and thence gradually peopled the globe. So the Bible. 3. Every thing seems to show that the present human races all belong to one species, i.e. descended from one original pair. So the Bible teaches. 4.-Science tells us that man was naturally naked from the start, and had to clothe himself in leaves or bark or skins. So teaches the Bible. 5.-Science teaches that the first race of men were savage in the sense of being great in strength of passion, but children in reason and personal control. So teaches the Bible. -- 6. Science tells us that pre-historic man was ignorant of art, and music, and metals for a time. So tells us the Bible, giving the names of inventors and teachers. 7. Science tells us that he must have been without inherent legal fibre-that the law faculty had to be developed. The whole story of the first laws in the Bible would show the same fact of legal childhood. 14 Both point to one God. [LECT. 8. Science would indicate that the first races were unmoral, perhaps sadly immoral. The Bible tells as that they were inexpressibly vile. 9. Science tells us that they lived before a general subsidence of land, by which continents were covered with water and glacial ice and arctic cold, destroying almost all animal life, including nearly the whole of the human race. The Bible records some such disaster, and it may be found that these traditions preserved by men agree with the records of geology. That is yet to be settled. In conclusion let it be distinctly understood (1) that not a single fact regarding prehistoric man has yet been established contradictory of the Christian's Bible. (2) That it is a matter which does not touch the Bible or Christianity whether man be proved to have been a longer or a shorter time on the earth; (3) that Evolution has not established a single fact affecting the truth of the Bible; (4) that all established facts regarding prehistoric man agree with established biblical teaching where they cover the same ground-in fact nothing has yet appeared to shake my confidence in the Bible or my faith in a personal God. I.] National Crises beget Progress. 15 THE LECTURE. "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." Nothing is more interesting to the young Japan of to-day than the questions of civilization and progress. The customs of the past, old forms of government and law are changing, along with dress and food and language. Some things seem to be changing more rapidly than others, and some changes do not always appear to be for the best, or at least entail a momentary loss. Every crisis in a nation's history brings with it a certain amount of trouble, confusion and suffering; but if progress be true, every crisis brings to birth a better future. There are often well meaning individuals, short-sighted and fearful, who, seeing only the momentary disadvantage, decry all change, all progress, as a curse and a wrong. Many doubtless there are to-day in Japan, though their number is decreasing, who look back fondly on the good old times of settled routine and fixedness of custom, and who look towards the future of the restless present with feelings of dread or dismal forebodings of coming disaster for the state and for society. I. WHY AIM AT PROGRESS? Is civilization a blessing? a thing to be desired ? is a question often asked, as we are reminded of some sad remnant of evil or abnormal outcome of artificiality, as though that were the legitimate fruit and sign of civilization, giving the impression that it is not an unmixed good. Now in reply to this question I will give a Scotchman's answer by asking another question"Is manhood as compared with childhood a blessing?" How often we look back on the frolics of our childhood, its wild, 16 Growth is Normal, Necessary. [LECT. unfettered, careless freedom, and compare it with the life of toil and disappointment, and sorrow perhaps, that we have in maturer years, and in moments of weakness we almost wish ourselves back in our childhood again. But what man of sober mind, of widening thought, and aspiring soul would in reality wish himself back in the narrow though pleasant bounds of child-life? Away such a thought. Life's aim is not pleasure and earth-born joy, but a grasping after a something higher than our past;—a mastering, ruling of something without us, that shall minister to the enlargement of what is within us, though it bring its burden of sorrow. There is no rose without its thorn; shall we therefore cast away the rose? Nay, rather avoid the thorn. Nor shall we cast away the heritage of our manhood, but seek with its increase of strength to lessen its burden of pain. Civilization is the growth of nations into social maturity and political power, when many of the frolics and liberties of olden barbarisms fall away, and new duties, new cares, new burdens come along with enlargement of mind, the out-reachings of commerce, the developments of social duties and political entanglements, and that pride which is the natural meed of conscious power. Is there a civilized land on the face of the earth to-day that would willingly go back to the ages of savage freedom, of feudal pageantry, or the stagnation of lands that have forgotten to grow? Away with such a puerile thought; better by far the manliness of civilization with its cares, than the childish pleasures of any fancied primitive land untouched by modern progress. Advancement is the normal law of life, a natural necessity of a healthy living organism. The child that grows not is an abortion of being, a failure, physically. The mind that grows not, but is content with a life of routine and custom, is a mental abortion which no one can either admire or choose. A state that does not advance but contents itself with a perpetual look I.] Chinese Stagnation Abnormal. 17 ing back at the past, as the highest possible aim of life, will stagnate, decay and be left far behind in the race by those who look forward and struggle onward for a something better in the future than they have known in the past. Progress to a higher cizilization is or should be the normal fact in all nations; but there are nations which seem to have made advance for a time, to have reached a certain degree of development, and then to have stopped, stagnated, decayed, or to have maintained an existence only by accumulations of primitive elements rather than by a growth into manlier forms. This is the case with nearly all the civilizations of Asiatic nations; and China, your ponderous neighbour, gives us a tangible example. Thousands of years ago, while the world's civilization still was young, China invented written characterseven while her language was in its first syllabic stage; and all the growth of these many centuries since then has been to accumulate in rich but unwieldy exuberance, a mass of those primitive characters, representing a language still in infantile form. Ethics, laws, customs, patterns were fixed. All her laws and ethics revolve around the one simple thought of the earliest form of government, that of the father having control over his household, and of children obeying their parents; an idea which is made to do duty in every phase of official life, even to the Imperial Throne where sits the father of his people, and her indigenous religion centres in the worship of ancestors. Not a growth of social and political ideas, you see, but a vast accumulation of varied applications of the one idea of the relation between a father on the one hand, and an ignorant woman with babies on the other. For the idea of the relation of father and son in China is that of father and little child, and has not even advanced to the idea that when the son has grown to manhood, he is one man and his father is another; but the child is a child for ever. The manly strength of the full grown |