The truth remains the truth, however ill-treated, perverted, or rejected, and the world, hate as it may, is still miserable, and requires to be saved from itself. Though changed largely, and wonderfully leavened with purer, nobler, and better men and better institutions, than in days gone by, what a strange self-torturing mass is the world even now! How jealous are the great of one another, and of the people over whom they rule. What mean those six millions of armed men, bustling with the dread appliances of war in Christendom, drafted in their manliest estate from the occupations which increase human comfort, to those which waste without producing in times of quiet, and which waste with wildest rapidity both life and property in times of vigour. The splendid pageantry and deep heart-ache of such a world has been the theme of ages. What an unsatisfactory turmoil is the world of trade and commerce! How much of fraud, chicanery, and wrong, taint all the ways of business life, from the turmoil of the stock exchange to the pettiest productions of industry. From the crown of the head to the sole of the foot we are still full of wounds and bruises and putrifying sores! Like the change of dissolving views, the old world is going, and a better world appearing, but oh! how much of wrong remains. But, what then? Shall we leave this scene of strife and imperfection? Shall we forsake the busy ways of life, and sever ourselves from the burdens and duties of social and family existence? Shall we by selfish impatience quit the post Providence has assigned to us, before the battle of life has well begun? Shall we seek salvation in solitude, hugging the little world of our own fantasies, and rejecting those checks, those crosses, those deferences to the ways, the requirements, and even the unreason of others, which are permitted to draw us from self? Why, the most dangerous part of the world is the world within us, and we take that with us wherever we go. It is easy to fly from a situation, but not easy to fly from self. Society shews us, if we are willing to learn the lesson, how empty, how vain, how unsatisfying is worldliness, and affords us a life of real use. In the self-denial, the reflection and the effort needed to discharge our duty in every one of the relations of society, we have a constant means of purification, a constant demand for tolerance and charity. "I pray not," the Lord says, "that Thou shouldest take them out of the world." The narrow promoters of monastic life have prayed for this, but not the Saviour. Selfishness makes us fret, and fume, and pine at the requirements of daily duty, and the sacrifices of family and business responsibilities. But let us look at them with cheerful love, and perform them with alacrity, because of their usefulness. Think less of yourself, and more of the Divine Will, which has made society a grand man, and you an individual member intended to carry out its part for the good of the whole, and you will then pray not to be taken out of the world, but to do your part well IN THE WORLD. Work nobly in your vocation, and pray to be preserved from the evil. Such was our Lord's prayer for us, such should be ours. True Christians are not of THE WORLD, though they are IN THE WORLD. They seek to be like their Divine Master. "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." The objects which form the allurements of the world are glory, fame, grandeur, greatness, power, self-laudation, and self-indulgence. The glitter, the glare, the pomp of worldly splendour, are often the inducements for which virtue, order, uprightness, and peace are sacrificed, and life itself made an utter waste, a bubble, and a dream. But genuine Christians see and avoid the hollow sham. They love the truth. They love the Word. They love their Lord. for victories within, they live for a better world. They seek The relations of society are all noble and blessed, if only we resist the evil. Keep them from the evil. To become father and mother of an immortal being, how grand and how godlike it is! How good it is to train the young soul for heaven, to receive its gushing, gladsome caresses, to watch and assist the dawn of its little genius. By wise counsel and kind example to forestall the errors of a child's inexperienced course, or to withdraw it from the smaller aberrations of early mistake, is the work of angels. And they who do it well become like angels. We are made brothers and sisters of earth, that we may become brothers and sisters for heaven. The genial intercourse of home, the mutual sympathy, and the mutual forbearance of home life, the reparations of home errors even, are the means of becoming like our Saviour, forgiving, gentle, restorative; not of the world as He was not of the world. Only, let us pray to be kept from the petty tyranny of a violent unreasonable temper, surly spite, or anything that mars family peace and well-being. The wider relations of citizenship, the promotion of the interest of our town and our nation, fills us with generous life, if we are animated by the love of duty and the public good, eschewing ambition, vanity, and greed. How sublime a thing is trade! It is man's sphere as a finite image of the Creator. God makes on a grand scale, man imitates on a small one, but to man's use of the powers and faculties with which the Almighty has endowed him, we owe all that makes life tolerable and beautifies it. To trades, we owe our houses and superb palaces and halls, our gardens, our fields and woods, our quays, our harbours, our ships, and all the myriad objects which constitute our outward life and social conveniences. Let any one look at a noble Atlantic steamer, and then at the petty crucifix or bead of monkish workmanship, and he will see the sublime character of social industry, as contrasted with the maundering pettiness of solitary retirement. Let noble work Let Let continue then, but keep us from the evil. Let there be business without fraud. Let there be neither overwork, nor dishonest work. Let work be blended with leisure, and with literary culture. Let there be as much work as is compatible with health, and no work allowed which is not consistent with physical well-being. there be time for reading, thought, and mental cultivation. there be enough of relaxation and enjoyment to make life to restore and recreate both mind and body, and let blessed with the holy worship of our heavenly Father, in faith and love. Thus the Will of God will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven. happy ; all be But this state of things will not come of itself. Spiritual heroes of trade must labour for it, suffer for it, conquer for it. It is the battle which, more than any other, requires Now to be fought out. Millions are slaves to toil, to crushing toil, and make others slaves to overwork until they become stupid imbeciles, that they may achieve wealth they can never use, and commit to their children the means of passing through the world without doing one atom of useful service. No temptation is so subtle to the young mind as the combination of strong passions and abundant wealth. Let there be no idler and no mere slave to work in the world, but every one from love to the Lord, do his share and enjoy his share. Then the kingdoms of this world will have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign for ever and ever. May we then not be taken out of the world, but preserved and saved from the evil. May we be in the world but not of the world; as He the adorable Jesus, our Saviour and our Head, was not of the world. MAN AND THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. THE cap-stone of the pyramid of naturalism has at length been laid by the most learned and ingenious of investigators. Mr. Darwin, after almost incredible research, has succeeded in arriving at a final conclusion as to the origin of man. His previous works pointed in the direction of his most recent delivery, and paved the way for it. The "Origin of Species" laid down the principles, of which the "Descent of Man" was to be the ultimate enunciation. The force of the doctrines, "natural selection," and "sexual selection," can hardly be carried further than has already been reached by their indefatigable and intrepid advocate. Advancing along the lines of his humiliating induction, Mr. Darwin has arrived at this astounding corollary-that man has sprung from "a hairy quadruped with pointed ears and a tail." Happily for man, in "the struggle for existence" he is not in danger of competing with any of the "undeveloped" posterity of his ancestor, for "the anthropoid ape" from which he sprung is now said to be "extinct." It must be admitted that getting rid of the progenitor of man in this way is extremely convenient, as well as very fortunate for mankind. Yet, it will not do to boast too loudly, for, after all, we are assured that the various monkey tribes are species, with many removes, cousins-german to man. Dean Swift's "Yahoos" are more than imaginary creatures; if they do not now exist, they did once exist. The gorillas, baboons, ourang-outangs might all have been men, had it not been for "arrested development" in their progenitors. Of course, the "development" of man has occupied an innumerable series of years, or of ages; but we are told that he still bears about in his body relics of his earlier physical condition sufficiently conclusive to quite justify philosophers in the induction at which they have arrived. Man the civilized has sprang from man the barbarian; man the barbarian is only the development of man the savage, and the earliest savages were no more than specimens of " development," under very favourable, though accidental conditions, of what was originally a man-like ape. Indeed, so far is the theory carried, the apes which were to originate man, were the then last and noblest development of what was originally a "marine animal," subject to various sorts of influences consequent on the flux and reflux of the tides, in which conditions originated those physical circumstances in the human economy which still follow "the changes of the moon." In carrying out the induction, it follows that the "marine animal," whose descendants were fated, by means of natural and sexual selection to so startling a destiny, was itself only the then last and highest development of "a mass of protoplasm with a nucleus;" which, we must assume, was in its turn no more than " a development" of the essential chemical constituents of protoplasm coming together underthose very convenient hypothetical—"favouring conditions." Thus, by this truly surprising process of metamorphosis man is shown to be closely related to the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms; the latest product of "Nature," developed into being the monarch of other creatures similar in kind, though only less fortunate than he! What man is to "develop" into, our philosophers do not yet venture to predict; though, on their grounds, there is no reason to assume that the human form is the final or highest form of which "nature" is capable. Long after the period when the celebrated New Zealander may sit and contemplate and moralize over the ruins of St. Paul's, man may become as extinct as is the anthropoid ape which originally gave him birth, and the new species of creatures, then to come to the fore, may be as far superior to the man of the nineteenth century, as he is superior to the manlike ape, his original progenitor; or as the ape was to the "marine animal;" or as this form of existence was to the rudimentary nucleated mass of protoplasm! Mr. Darwin does not stand alone in the notable researches tending to these conclusions, or in holding the conclusions to which these researches tend. Working along an independent, though correlative, line of inquiry, Sir John Lubbock has endeavoured to shew that the civilized races have ever been developed from savage and barbarous races; that a hundred relics of original barbarism are to be found among races the most civilized; that there is not a tittle of evidence in favour of the supposition that savage races are the deteriorated descendants of once civilized forefathers; that, therefore, the belief in human declension from a higher social or moral condition is baseless. In language, art, marriage and other customs, and religious notions, he attempts to trace the slow process of development from the simple to the complex, from the crude to the cultivated, from efforts befitting grown up children to the masterpieces of human intelli gence. Prosecuting another and also independent, yet correlative, investigation, prior to the publication of Lubbock's "Origin of Civilization," Mr. McLennan, in treating of "Primitive Marriage," has laboured to focus into a definite and progressive system all the information previously gathered which bears upon this deeply interesting subject. His general conclusions harmonize with the "development theory." He |