development from primitive savagery to civilization. Among these facts may be mentioned the succession of implements and weapons from stone to bronze and iron; the polyandry and communal marriage systems of the lowest tribes; the relics of barbarous customs still prevailing among the most civilized.

For the theory of an originally savage condition of man, see Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, and Origin of Civilization: "The primitive condition of mankind was one of utter barbarism"; but especially L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, who divides human progress into three great periods, the savage, the barbarian and the civilized. Each of the two former has three states, as follows: I. Savage: 1. Lowest state, marked by attainment of speech and subsistence upon roots. 2. Middle state, marked by fish-food and fire. 3. Upper state, marked by use of the bow and hunting. II. Barbarian: 1. Lower state, marked by invention and use of pottery. 2. Middle state, marked by use of domestic animals, maize, and building stone. 3. Upper state, marked by invention and use of iron tools. III. Civilized man next appears, with the introduction of the phonetic alphabet and writing.

With regard to this view we remark :

(a) It is based upon an insufficient induction of facts.-History shows a law of degeneration supplementing and often counteracting the tendency to development. In the earliest times of which we have any record, we find nations in a high state of civilization; but in the case of every nation whose history runs back of the Christian era-as for example, the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians-the subsequent progress has been downward, and no nation is known to have recovered from barbarism except as the result of influence from without.

Lubbock seems to admit that cannibalism was not primeval; yet he shows a general tendency to take every brutal custom as a sample of man's first state. And this, in spite of the fact that many such customs have been the result of corruption. Bride-catching, for example, could not possibly have been primeval, in the strict sense of that term Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1 : 48, presents a far more moderate view. He favors a theory of development, but with degeneration "as a secondary action largely and deeply affecting the development of civilization." So the Duke of Argyll, Unity of Nature: "Civilization and savagery are both the results of evolutionary development; but the one is a development in the upward, the latter in the downward direction; and for this reason, neither civilization nor savagery can rationally be looked upon as the primitive condition of man.'

Modern nations fall far short of the old Greek perception and expression of beauty. Modern Egyptians, Bushmen, Australians, are unquestionably degenerate races. See Lankester, Degeneration. The same is true of Italians and Spaniards, as well as of Turks. Abyssinians are now polygamists, though their ancestors were Christians and monogamists. The physical degeneration of portions of the population of Ireland is well known. See Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 146-160, who applies to the savage-theory the tests of language, morals, and religion, and who quotes Herbert Spencer as saying: "Probably most of them [savages], if not all of them, had ancestors in higher states, and among their beliefs remain some which were evolved during those higher states ..... It is quite possible, and I believe highly probable, that retrogression has been as frequent as progression." Spencer, however, denies that savagery is always caused by lapse from civilization.

Bib. Sac., 6: 715; 29: 282-" Man as a moral being does not tend to rise but to fall, and that with a geometric progress, except he be elevated and sustained by some force from without and above himself. While man once civilized may advance, yet moral ideas are apparently never developed from within." Had savagery been man's primitive condition, he never could have emerged. See Whately, Origin of Civilization, who maintains that man needed not only a divine Creator, but a divine Instructor. Pres. J. H. Scelye, in A Century of Dishonor, page 3-"The first missionaries to the Indians in Canada took with them skilled laborers to teach the savages how to till their fields, to provide them with comfortable homes, clothing, and food. But the Indians preferred

their wigwams, skins, raw flesh, and filth. Only as Christian influences taught the Indian his inner need, and how this was to be supplied, was he led to wish and work for the improvement of his outward condition and habits. Civilization does not reproduce itself. It must first be kindled, and it can then be kept alive only by a power genuinely Christian." So Wallace, in Nature, Sept. 7, 1876, vol. 14: 408-412.

(b) Later investigations have rendered it probable that the stone age of some localities was contemporaneous with the bronze and iron ages of others, while certain tribes and nations, instead of making progress from one to the other, were never, so far back as we can trace them, without the knowledge and use of the metals. It is to be observed, moreover, that even without such knowledge and use man is not necessarily a barbarian, though he may be a child.

On the question whether the arts of civilization can be lost, see Arthur Mitchell, Past and Present, 201: Rude art is often the debasement of a higher, instead of being the earlier; the rudest art in a nation may coëxist with the highest; cave-life may accompany high civilization. Illustrations from modern Scotland, where burial of a cock for epilepsy, and sacrifice of a bull, were until very recently extant. Certain arts have unquestionably been lost, as glass-making and iron-working in Assyria (see Mivart, referred to above). The most ancient men do not appear to have been inferior to the latest, either physically or intellectually. Rawlinson: "The explorers who have dug deep into the Mesopotamian mounds, and have ransacked the tombs of Egypt, have come upon no certain traces of savage man in those regions which a wide-spread tradition makes the cradle of the human race." The Tyrolese peasants show that a rude people may be moral, and a very simple people may be highly intelligent. See Southall, Recent Origin of Man, 386-449; Schliemann, Troy and her Remains, 274.

(c) The barbarous customs to which this view looks for support may better be explained as marks of broken-down civilization than as relics of a primitive and universal savagery. Even if they indicated a former state of barbarism, that state might have been itself preceded by a condition of comparative culture.

Mark Hopkins, in Princeton Rev., Sept., 1882: 194-" There is no cruel treatment of females among animals. If man came from the lower animals, then he cannot have been originally savage; for you find the most of this cruel treatment among savages." Tylor instances "street Arabs." He compares street Arabs to a ruined house, but sayage tribes to a builder's yard. See Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, 129, 133; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 223; McLennan, Studies in Ancient History.

(d) The well-nigh universal tradition of a golden age of virtue and happiness may be most easily explained upon the Scripture view of an actual creation of the race in holiness and its subsequent apostasy.

For references in classic writers to a golden age, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogmatik, 115.

2nd. That the religious history of mankind warrants us in inferring a necessary and universal law of progress, in accordance with which man passes from fetichism to polytheism and monotheism,—this first theological stage, of which fetichism, polytheism, and monotheism are parts, being succeeded by the metaphysical stage, and that in turn by the positive.

This theory is propounded by Comte, in his Positive Philosophy, English transl., 25, 26; 515-636.

This assumed law of progress, however, is contradicted by the following facts:

(a) Not only did the monotheism of the Hebrews precede the great

polytheistic systems of antiquity, but even these heathen religions are purer from polytheistic elements, the further back we trace them; so that the facts point to an original monotheistic basis for them all.

On the evidences of an original monotheism, see Martineau, Essays, 1: 24, 61; Max Müller, Chips, 1:337; Rawlinson, in Present Day Tracts, no. 11; Legge, Religions of China, 8, 11; Diestel, in Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie, 1860, and vol. 5: 669; Philip Smith, Anc. Hist. of East, 65, 195; Warren, on the Earliest Creed of Mankind, in the Meth. Quar. Rev., Jan., 1884.

(b) "There is no proof that the Indo-Germanic or Semitic stocks ever practised fetich worship, or were ever enslaved by the lowest types of mythological religion, or ascended from them to somewhat higher" (Fisher). See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 545; Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 36-115.

(c) Some of the earliest remains of man yet found show, by the burial of food and weapons with the dead, that there already existed the idea of spiritual beings and of a future state, and therefore a religion of a higher sort than fetichism.

Idolatry proper regards the idol as the symbol and representative of a spiritual being who exists apart from the material object, though he manifests himself through it. Fetichism, however, identifies the divinity with the material thing, and worships the stock or stone; spirit is not conceived of as existing apart from body. Belief in spiritual beings and a future state is therefore proof of a religion higher in kind than fetichism. See Lyell, Antiquity of Man, quoted in Dawson, Story of Earth and Man, 384; see also 368, 372, 386—“ Man's capacities for degradation are commensurate with his capacities for improvement" (Dawson). Lyell, in his last edition, however, admits the evidence from the Aurignac cave to be doubtful. See art. by Dawkins, in Nature, 4:208.

(d) The theory in question, in making theological thought a merely transient stage of mental evolution, ignores the fact that religion has its root in the intuitions and yearnings of the human soul, and that therefore no philosophical or scientific progress can ever abolish it. While the terms theological, metaphysical, and positive may properly mark the order in which the ideas of the individual and the race are acquired, positivism errs in holding that these three phases of thought are mutually exclusive, and that upon the rise of the later the earlier must of necessity become extinct. John Stuart Mill suggests that "personifying" would be a much better term than "theological" to designate the earliest efforts to explain physical phenomena. On the fundamental principles of Positivism, see New Englander, 1873: 323-386; Diman, Theistic Argument, 338-"Three coëxistent states are here confounded with three successive stages of human thought; three aspects of things with three epochs of time. Theology. metaphysics, and science must always exist side by side, for all positive science rests on metaphysical principles, and theology lies behind both. All are as permanent as human reason itself." See also Gillett, God in Human Thought, 1:17-23; Rawlinson, in Journ. Christ. Philos., April, 1883: 353.

CHAPTER III.

SIN, OR MAN'S STATE OF APOSTASY.

SECTION I.-THE LAW OF GOD.

As preliminary to a treatment of man's state of apostasy, it becomes necessary to consider the nature of that law of God, the transgression of which is sin. We may best approach the subject by inquiring what is the true conception of

I. LAW IN GENERAL.

The essential idea of law is that of a general expression of will enforced by power. It implies: (a) A lawgiver, or authoritative will. (b) Subjects, or beings upon whom this will terminates. (c) A general command, or expression of this will. (d) A power, enforcing the command.

These elements are found even in what we call natural law. The phrase 'law of nature' involves a self-contradiction, when used to denote a mode of action or an order of sequence behind which there is conceived to be no intelligent and ordaining will. Physics derives the term 'law' from jurisprudence, instead of jurisprudence deriving it from physics. It is first used of the relations of voluntary agents. Causation in our own wills enables us to see something besides mere antecedence and consequence in the world about us. Physical science, in her very use of the word 'law,' implicitly confesses that a supreme Will has set general rules which control the processes of the universe.

Wayland, Moral Science, 1, unwisely defines law as "a mode of existence or order of sequence," thus leaving out of his definition all reference to an ordaining will. He subsequently says that law presupposes an establisher, but in his definition there is nothing to indicate this. We insist, on the other hand, that the term 'law' itself includes the idea of force and cause. The word 'law' is from 'lay' (German legen) something laid down; German Gesetz, from setzen = = something set or established; Greek νόμος, from νέμω = - something assigned or apportioned; Latin lex, from lego: something said or spoken.

All these derivations show that man's original conception of law is that of something proceeding from volition. Lewes, in his Problems of Life and Mind, says that the term 'law' is so suggestive of a giver and impresser of law, that it ought to be dropped, and the word method' substituted. The merit of Austin's treatment of the subject is that he "rigorously limits the term 'law' to the commands of a superior"; see John Austin, Province of Jurisprudence, 1: 88-93, 220-223. The defects of his treatment we shall note further on.

J. S. Mill: "It is the custom, wherever they [scientific men] can trace regularity of any kind, to call the general proposition which expresses the nature of that regularity, a law; as when in mathematics we speak of the law of the successive terms of a converging series. But the expression law of nature' is generally employed by scientific 273

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men with a sort of tacit reference to the original sense of the word 'law,' namely, the expression of the will of a superior-the superior in this case being the Ruler of the universe." Paley, Nat. Theology, chap. 1-"It is a perversion of language to assign any law as the efficient operative cause of anything. A law presupposes an agent; this is the only mode according to which an agent proceeds; it implies a power, for it is the order according to which that power acts. Without this agent, without this power, which are both distinct from itself, the law does nothing."

The characteristic of law is generality. It is addressed to substances or persons in classes. Special legislation is contrary to the true theory of law. -It is, moreover, essential to the existence of law, that there be power to enforce. Otherwise law becomes the expression of mere wish or advice. Since physical substances and forces have no intelligence and no power to resist, the four elements already mentioned exhaust the implications of the term 'law' as applied to nature. In the case of rational and free agents, however, law implies in addition: (e) Duty, or obligation to obey; and tions, or pains and penalties for disobedience.

(f) Sanc

The order of an absolute despot, that an enemy be beheaded, is not properly a law. Amos, Science of Law, 33, 34-" Law eminently deals in general rules." It knows not persons or personality. It must apply to more than one case. "The characteristic of law is generality, as that of morality is individual application." Special legislation is the bane of good government; it does not properly fall within the province of the lawmaking power; it savors of the caprice of despotism, which gives commands to each subject at will. Hence our more advanced political constitutions check lobby influence and bribery, by prohibiting special legislation in all cases where general laws already exist.

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Law that has no penalty is not law but advice, and the government in which infliction does not follow transgression is the reign of rogues or demons." On the question whether any of the punishments of civil law are legal sanctions, except the punishment of death, see N. W. Taylor, Moral Gov't, 2: 367-387.

Rewards are motives, but they are not sanctions. Since public opinion may be conceived of as inflicting penalties for violation of her will, we speak figuratively of the laws of society, of fashion, of etiquette, of honor. Only so far as the community of nations can and does by sanctions compel obedience, can we with propriety assert the existence of international law. But the will which thus binds its subjects by commands and penalties is an expression of the nature of the governing power, and reveals the normal relations of the subjects to that power. Finally, therefore, law (g) Is an expression of the nature of the lawgiver; and (h) Sets forth the condition or conduct in the subjects which is requisite for harmony with that nature. Any so-called law which fails to represent the nature of the governing power soon becomes obsolete. All law that is permanent is a transcript of the facts of being, a discovery of what is and must be, in order to harmony between the governing and the governed; in short, positive law is just and lasting only as it is an expression and republication of the law of nature.

Diman, Theistic Argument, 106, 107: John Austin, although he "rigorously limited the term law to the commands of a superior," yet "rejected Ulpian's explanation of the law of nature, and ridiculed as fustian the celebrated description in Hooker." This we conceive to be the radical defect of Austin's conception. The Will from which natural law proceeds is conceived of after a deistic fashion, instead of being immanent in the universe. Lightwood, in his Nature of Positive Law, 78-90, criticizes Austin's definition of law as command, and substitutes the idea of law as custom. Sir Henry Maine's Ancient Law has shown us that the early village communities had customs which only gradually took form as definite laws. But we reply that custom is not the ultimate source of anything. Repeated acts of will are necessary to constitute custom. The first