MAN AND HIS MOTIVES.

CHAPTER I.

MAN-PRIMITIVE AND DERIVATIVE.

MAN is not a natural production, and the elements of earth are not sufficient for his completion. He is an embodied spirit, and from the source of his existence he must derive those supplies which may fit him to fulfill the purposes of his creation, and satisfy his capacity for knowledge and happiness.

It is worthy of especial notice that there is scarcely a people to be named which has not among them the tradition or the prophecy of a perfect human nature; and probably every mind imagines some model man, some ideal type or standard of humanity, which all ought to admire and imitate. But earth, as it is, has never been deemed his home. Some suppose him

to have existed in a golden era long since departed; others expect him yet to come. Some think that we are his degenerated offspring; others believe that we are progressively improving upon our ancestors, and that, in due time, the progeny of our successors shall be perfect beings, according to an orderly development, "from inherent qualities," by which at length living monads become spiritual paragons, under astronomical influences and in virtue of gravitation, and "the modes of action depending solely on organiza

tion." We can not exactly calculate how long a period may be necessary for the purpose of converting an infusorial animalcule into a man, such a transformation never having yet been observed in progress; but we are pretty well assured, by the reluctant testimony of infidels, as well as by the careful research of believers, that man can not have been an inhabitant of earth above seven thousand years. Geology,

ethnology, and the natural history of our race, bear ample testimony, in this respect at least, to the truth of the book of Genesis, which testimony is itself a fact strongly in evidence of the inspired origin of that book; since to guess at such coincidences in chronology and science is beyond the reach of fancy. This length of time seems not to be quite enough to answer the purposes of the development theory, but we can get no more. We are not ignorant that skulls and other bones of man have been discovered in caves and in stalagmite formations, mixed with those of extinct mammals, both ruminants and carnivora; and that these bones in no respect differ from modern specimens. It is also true that geologists are nearly unanimous in assigning these remains to periods far within the date above named, and all their conclusions on the subject tend to confirm rather than invalidate the statement in the book of Genesis. If, however, man had existed at an earlier period there can be no very evident reason why his fossil remains should not be found imbedded with those of other 'creatures in the anterior formations.

As it appears from recent theorists that even now man is at best but a paulo-post chimpanzee, he could scarcely have become bimanal and biped at that date, or, at least, monkeys and men ought then to have been mingled in the same family circle.

History, either sacred or profane, has no respect for the theory of development, and does not quite agree

with it. Instead of finding mankind brutal and destitute of the arts of social comfort in the early periods of our race, we have reason to believe that they were highly civilized and cultivated; not, it may be, after the complicated manner of the moderns, but still with sufficient decision, in two forms at least, very much as they now present themselves. There were those among the people of most ancient date who took pleasure in exercising power, in tyranny and rapine; while others, impressed by the manifestations of divine wisdom in the wondrous works of creation, or by the tradition of God's covenant with man, took delight in meditating upon his providence, and preserved a life of quiet thoughtfulness and worship. According to moral motives and the state of will, with regard to the revelations of existence, the minds of men appear always to have been actuated to the attainment of ends in keeping with their faith and knowledge. Religion always made the grand difference among mankind. There were always sons of God as well as of Belial. Those who, being instructed concerning righteousness, and believing and loving truth, were looking forward to a future life, occupied their faculties in subserviency to that end, while those who regarded the present life as their only hope, gave themselves to the indulgence of their tastes for sensual pleasures, and to the contrivance of such means as best promised the fulfillment of their unholy desires. This, substantially, is all we learn of the history of mankind up to the deluge.

The anxiety of infidels to dispose of the deluge, and to satisfy themselves that they need not believe the Bible, is most wonderful and deplorable. How eagerly some of the French savans seized upon the zodiacs sculptured on the temples of Dendera and Esneh, with the hope that they had therein discovered a demonstration that the Mosaic statement was a misB

take. Their ingenuity would have been amusing had it not been impiously absurd. M. Jomard proved to his own satisfaction that these zodiacs were three thousand, and M. Dupuis that they were, at the very least, four thousand years older than the Christian era, while M. Gori would not abate a week of seventeen thousand years. That their mathematical wits* were racked to little purpose is seen in their discrepancy. But observe how the truth at last prevails. M. Champollion comes forward in the promising manhood of his intellect, and gives his life to the study of Egyptian antiquities, and instead of guessing at the meaning and dates of these zodiacs, learns really to read them, and finds that the zodiac, the date of which M. Dupuis had so clearly demonstrated to have been at least four thousand years before Christ, was actually erected in the reign of Augustus Cæsar, and that which M. Gori had carried back in his imagination seventeen thousand years, had been raised in the time of Antoninus, A.D. 140.

If we may credit the oldest history we possess, the correctness of which none can invalidate, the most difficult arts were not unknown amidst the family of the first man. And there is little doubt that before the flood the imaginations of men were refined enough for the invention of whatever might contribute to heighten the enjoyment of mere outside beauty, and to render evil so indomitable in the heart of man that to allow him to live on would be but to permit the propagation of iniquity in such fascinating forms as to banish the beauties of holiness from the earth. It could not have been mere ignorance that was hardened

*Mathematics is based upon nothing, and therefore arises out of nothing."-(Oken's Physio-philosophy, p. 5.) These words are not quoted because they are true-we can have no idea of plus or minus, point, limit, form, dimension, or proportion, but from real things; a man born blind knows nothing of a triangle unless he has felt its parts.

against the preaching of Noah: ingenuity and unbelief, satisfied with their own substitutes for divine order in the appliances of a proud and perverted reason that delights in its own works, were always the resisters of righteousness. Savages would have been converted. The antediluvians in general, at the time of Noah, must have been skeptical geniuses, rationalists, and despots, who could not believe in especial judgments, abrupt transitions, and miraculous interferences for the punishment of vice. They lived under the reign of violence and terror, and being ingenious in disobedience, invented their own religion, and worshiped a mock reason while they blasphemed God, and polluted his sacred image in the form of man. Their spirits were fit to be imprisoned.

The flood came-need it be proved? All nations acknowledge it. A reserved few replenished the new world. Whence have we the tradition of a deluge if it never happened? It was not a partial event-the world owns it. The Chaldeans, Assyrians, Egyptians, Grecians, Romans, Phoenicians, Syrians, Armenians, Persians, Chinese, Hindoos, Arabians, Turks, Africans, the North and South Americans, the Aborigines of the South Seas, and every stray tribe of man, all hold a tradition of the deluge; and science finds the record written on the earth-the grand catastrophe assuredly occurred, and faith reads its significance. The Almighty altered the face of the world which he had made, because the spirits of men required a judgment co-extensive with their abode, and they were removed to a place adapted to their wickedness. The living earth perished in the great deep; but Noah and his sons were not barbarians-they could enter into covenant with their Maker, for they had obeyed his voice. But the original evil was in their blood, and soon we find their offspring madly desirous of reigning without righteousness. That they were not, however, with