The First Man and His Place in Creation

the present peasantry of Connaught, degraded as they are, indicate their direct connection with the IndoEuropean or Aryan races, by their language and by traditions of a genius above their own. We grant at once that it would be no disgrace to man if it could be proved that Omnipotence developed him from a reptilian spawn and endowed him with speech. That would be but a manifestation of Almighty power and wisdom. But it would derogate from the reverence due to the name of Deity to imagine that He made man a degraded being to learn language of brutes. It is no degradation to possess a body formed of ordinary chemical elements and controlled and organised by an indwelling life, and to be resolved into dust and gases when life departs. The degradation would be to abuse the body by a degraded will, which expresses itself not only in acts but in words as the direct vehicle of thoughts. Language, in fact, is the fullest action of mind: therefore, by our words we shall be judged.

The theory of man's origin and self-elevation, now advocated by certain lecturers on science, who exclude especial revelation, and endeavour to supplant or supplement the pulpit by their platform on Sunday evenings, will probably convince themselves and many of their audience that the Babel language of their science is that of true inspiration. But they will not prove that their science always speaks truth or can much improve the reason and conscience of man. Nature has a divine voice indeed, and a language too, which her ministers are ordained and entitled to interpret, if they can, at any

time when the Lord of nature is not employing other means to address us; but it is profane impertinence to obtrude their clashing 'ologies' upon us on the day appointed to hear what He who died and rose from the dead for us would say to us. A theory, however specious, that excludes the fall of man can never show us how man can be restored. As Schiller says, 'The fall was a giant stride in the history of the human race;' but science without that fact will make a giant stride backwards in attempting to improve man's morals. The spoken and written truths which alone present us with a consistent philosophy of man's contradictory nature, the very truths on which the highest civilisation is based, are utterly wanting in bare natural science. If our power to interpret nature be our only guide to religion, alas for our best hopes! If the heart's cry for the living God, as our God, be not proof that God has made the soul of man craving for converse with Himself, we are deceived to an unsurpassable degree. Are our highest aspirations to terminate in a knowledge of the forces of nature? Away with the thought! The laws of the material universe are fixed and inevitable as the order and stability of that universe demands, but there is still a free spirit in man that seeks its highest heritage, not in nature, but in God, who has spoken and still speaks to man, not in spirit only, but in words also words, too, that are life to man's spirit, words not from man but to man, without attention to which the spirit life of man lies dormant.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

MAN AS A FACT.

The existence of man to be accounted for-design and mean-
ing expressed in the formation of man-the first of human
kind-the testimony of self-consciousness-man's relation-
ship--a perfect man ideal-human love an especial power-
man may be as he ought to be-a scientific definition of man
-the Greek ideal man, Apollo-the doctrine of man's divine
origin taught by the ancients.

CHAPTER II.

PAGE

THE HUMAN BODY

General impression of man's appearance-the human face-

man's likeness to apes-his anatomical adaptations-hands—

feet-teeth-brain-balance of head-the human body not

merely for animal purposes-reason in relation to future

existence.