that Heart which is the fountain of all the love and light overflowing all heaven and earth, and which shall ultimately and for ever obliterate the work of sin, that God may be all in all.

How can we do otherwise than assume as true the only imaginable mode of human initiation into the knowledge of origin and end; the only mode that has commended itself to the universal reason and judgment of mankind in all ages; the only mode that satisfies the requirements of the occasion, namely, the direct personal instruction of the first man by God in human manifestation? Thus alone could man be assured of his relationship to the Eternal and Divine. Without this assurance, humanity, even as it is, would be an anomaly and a contradiction; for if man is not intended, and divinely taught, to feel his relationship in spirit to God, then is man greater in thought, hope, faith, however imparted, than in the idea, purpose, and plan of his Creator. If humanity be not the image and reflection of Divinity, then man, at his best, is nothing but a spiritual monstrosity, a lusus naturæ, in which not nature only, but all we know of God and man is an aimless chaos and confusion. Were heaven and earth, with all their powers, but manifestations of Omnipotence at work without an end or aim in relation to the only being that can look onwards into the eternal future for his own eternal standing? Where, then, the fulfilment of the prophecies inspired in his own heart, the meaning of the present and the past, the reason why man has ever been permitted to exist and to think of immortality,

the

of holiness and God? The answer to all such questions is this: the human soul is the predicate and proof of God's relationship to man, and as surely as the human mind is inspired to believe in limitless power, love, and wisdom, so surely in proportion to man's confidence in God does man expect to inherit the everlasting outflow of Divine beneficence. But of course reverse is also true; with the forceful spite of a perpetual ill-temper, to believe in God as an omnipotent tyrant, for ever disappointing us with His thwarting purposes, is to dread and hate Him, with desire ever to hide from His presence, while to believe in mere power as working without will, good or bad, in all nature, is to feel at the disposal of the natural forces, with no remainder but to submit with what indifference and stoicism one may to the inevitable, with no God to thank for the past or to trust for the future. The first man's first vision could have been no other than the smile of God, seen as on a human face to speak of love to be relied on.

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CHAPTER XVI.

MAN'S FIRST PLACE.

Ir is, perhaps, a curious rather than an important question as to where man was first located. Taking man as we find him, it is evident that, as regards locality and habitat, man, unlike any other creature, is to be found in every habitable region of the earth. Wherever there is life he lives. While other living beings are, by the necessities of their constitution, limited in their range, man ranges everywhere. Of the 200 species of monkeys, for instance, and we quote them as nearest to man in bodily structure, scarcely any live naturally beyond the tropics. Moreover, the different species of monkey never mingle, but man multiplies in all climes, and there is no variety of the human race so far constitutionally at variance as to be debarred, as far as we know, from fruitfully commingling with any other to produce a new variety. Even extremes of race are known to mingle; but the natural admixture is not between extremes but approximates. Thus, Africans blend with Africans from the Cape to the Mediterranean coast. But doubtless an Esquimaux with a Negro would be a mixture that would have a hard

struggle for existence. While these facts afford strong evidence of the unity of mankind, they also show us that, as far as man's power of living in any climate is concerned, he might have been created in any part of the earth. But certain localities are more congenial to man's full enjoyment of life than others; and, as we suppose man in his perfection was not left to struggle for life as soon as he was made, we reasonably infer that he must have had an appropriate and most accommodating place prepared for him. Where, then, was it? The streams of races, of languages, of tradition, point to a centre in the East as the earliest seat of man as at present existing on the earth. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that, whatever changes may have taken place on the surface of the earth, the first parents of mankind dwelt somewhere in that direction. We have seen that Oken, as a mere philosophical speculator, assumed that the neighbourhood of the Himalayas was probably the region of the veritable aborigines whom he makes in imagination out of sea-mucus, with very savage propensities—probably derived from a long line of beastly antecedents. Probably he would not object to a more western locality, and might even adopt the Caucasian mountains-as others, on scientific principles, have done as equally adapted to fulfil the demands of the theory which seeks an appropriate climate for the spontaneous production of man from mucus.. We, however, do not require conditions suitable for the production of man out of a stray spawn, so we shall not look for them. We think the production of man sufficiently provided

for in the Will of his Maker. We only want to find a locality best suited to meet the necessities of man, constituted as he is. It is rather remarkable that the very philosophers who suppose man by degrees developed into, or at best created, a savage, also suppose man first produced somewhere in the neighbourhood of NorthWestern India, because we still find there the highest type of man-men and women of the finest mould.. How the two ideas-the lowest savages and the highest style of man-comport, it is for the said philosophers to determine.

As to man, it is easier to imagine self-degradation than self-elevation. What is high, when left to its own forces, soon falls lower; but that which is low never becomes higher of its own accord. Humanity is never exalted but by an extraneous power. It is always either drawn up or driven. We readily acknowledge that comfort and abundance foster the development of man. If his passions are not too strongly at war with him, the finest specimen of man will be found in the land that most favours his growth; but we cannot determine where that is, nor how far his bad habits of mind and body might counteract the fostering influences of nature.

The locality indicated, however, will very well answer the purpose now in view-to find a place adapted to the convenience of new-made man. The study of climatology conducts us to this region, as uniting in itself all the conditions most favourable to the proper supply of man's wants, to the exercise of his faculties, to the cultivation of the ground, and the production of whatever