Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

pray before they entered the battle Naseby or Marston Moor-who were never defeated, and never wounded in the back. Admirable as was their physical bravery, their moral courage was even more significant. How unique that scene in the Puritan parliament! Carlyle shows us five hundred English gentlemen, members of Parliament, who, upon the opening day, after taking the oath of office, fell upon their knees and besought God for their country. Afterward they healed all enmities, and, striking hands as brothers, forgave and forgot all wrongs and ingratitudes. And then, testing each proposed law by the rule of right and conscience and God, they presented their bills for discussion and adoption. What if to-morrow, when Congress assembles, that Puritan scene should be repeated? What if every ruler who has done wrong should first go away to make restitution, and afterward return to do justice and plead the cause of the poor? Our age does not need more tools, luxuries, or comforts so much as it needs the fathers' sense of righteousness and justice. During the past year two hundred towns and cities of a sister State have been blackened with murder, where man has slain his brother man in the streets. And to-day, while we sit here, the ministers in that State have been asked to cry aloud against this wave of sin and crime. What means it that in many of these little Puritan towns the first hundred years of their history was never so much as stained with the record of a single murder? What means it that these little communities had no poorhouse, no jail, no tramp, no drunkard, and that in 1690 a sheriff in one Puritan community proposed the abolition of his office, because in his four years of service he had never had a single duty to perform? It matters little what we think of the Puritans. It matters much what Bradford and Brewster, what Vane and Hampden and Cromwell and Pym, think of us and our era of lawlessness and crime.

A NOBLE HERITAGE.

Standing close beside the anniversary of that far-off winter's day when our fathers first stepped foot upon these new shores, let us with reverence and holy hope swear anew fidelity to our fathers' faith and to the institutions they have bequeathed us. To-day our generation is rich indeed, through a thousand treasures that have come down out of the past. But our greatest treasure is not the tools of Watt and Arkwright, not the philosophy of Bacon or Newton, not the poems of Shakespeare or Milton; the greatest boon our generation possesses is the religious and political liberty that our Puritan fathers gave us. The battles they won will never have to be fought again. Never again will kings try to pass an act of uniformity in worship. Liberty of thought and speech and act are our eternal possessions. Never again will the colleges and universities be closed to all save the patrician classes. The great institutions that represent the rights of the common people are now surely fixed as the mountains. But if the blossoms of our tree of liberty are crimson they are red with our fathers' blood. If our institutions bear a royal

stamp, they are stamped with our fathers' signatures. Those who won for us our institutions have the right to expect that we shall transmit them unimpaired and greatly enriched to the next generation. The memory of our fathers should consecrate us, their approval should be our benediction. We fulfill a noble instinct when we remember the famous men of old of whom God hath begotten us. We, too, are Saxons, and therefore the sons of Milton and Hampden and Cromwell. We, too, are Puritans, and therefore the sons of Bradford and Robinson and Brewster. We, too, are Americans, and therefore the sons of Adams. and Webster and Lincoln. Unto this generation there sounds forth the word: "Ye are the sons of the prophets, and heroes are your fathers."

"God of our fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine;
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget-lest we forget!
"The tumult and the shouting dies,

The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands thine ancient sacrifice,

A humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget-lest we forget!

"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose Wild tongues that have not thee in awe; Such boasting as the gentiles use

Or lesser breeds without the law, Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget-lest we forget!"

ARTICLE VIII.

CRITICAL NOTES.

THE AGE OF MAN AS INDICATED BY THE NATURAL INCREASE OF POPULATION.

ALL methods of estimating the length of time during which the human race has been on the earth are more or less uncertain. Authentic history does not extend back to the beginning; and if the biblical narrative be taken as such a history, there are very serious doubts as to how far it furnishes us with a full and reliable chronology. Geologic investigations seem to present more positive results; but geologists differ among themselves as to the rapidity of geologic processes; and the alleged discoveries of human remains in early geologic formations need to be carefully tested. The estimates that are made vary largely, and are at the best only more or less probable conjectures.

There is a method of calculation not so often made use of as these others, but still well worthy of consideration, viz., an estimate based on the average rate of increase of the human race. That is, assuming the present population of the globe to be, say, 1,500,000,000, and assuming a certain rate of increase as having ruled on the average from the earliest time to the present, it is a simple question of arithmetic to determine when the human race started with one pair. But of course many elements of uncertainty come into the calculation. We have no statistics of population reaching back to prehistoric times; there are no trustworthy statistics even of the greater part of historic time. We have to assume that what holds true of the present time holds true also of previous centuries. But we must make allowance for many disturbing factors. In primitive periods there may have been unknown influences at work to increase or diminish what we might regard as the natural or normal rate of increase. Wars, pestilences, and famines have all along served to retard the increase of population. In the earlier times the ravages of wild beasts may have had a considerable effect in the same direction. The diminution of destructive wars in modern times, and the improvements made in regard to the preservation of health, together with increased facilities for the transportation of provisions in cases of famine-these and other things have undoubtedly tended to heighten the rate of increase.

But, on the other hand, there is reason for supposing that in the prehistoric times there were causes tending to promote a more rapid increase

of population than the present. The advance of culture and the increase of wealth tend to diminish the size of families. At present it is a general fact that the poorer and ruder classes and nations procreate children most largely. It may, therefore, be presumed that in the early and more uncultivated periods there would have been the same tendency. Moreover, when the race was limited to a few individuals there would seem to have been less occasion than afterwards for destructive quarrels growing out of a lust for possession. The world being before them, as they increased in numbers, they would have needed only to spread out and take possession of the unoccupied soil wherever they pleased. Furthermore, it may be supposed that many of the most destructive diseases that have ravaged the earth originated after the primeval times. So that, on the whole, we can hardly assume that in the early generations of the race the increase was proportionally much less rapid than at present. The method of calculation must of course be based upon the succession of generations, of which we may roughly assume three in a century. The actual increase in the long run is not according to the number of children born, but according to the number of those who grow up to be themselves parents. If the first pair had twenty children, but only one couple among them had children of their own, the net result would be no increase at all. If the same kind of a family should result in the second case, we should have indeed more than two human beings on the globe; there might possibly be forty-two all living at the same time; but if the same conditions should be perpetual, there would in the long run be no virtual increase.

What, then, is the average rate of increase at the present time? No exact answer can be given. The rate is very different in different places, and is variously affected by local and racial conditions. Inasmuch as emigration is constantly taking place, the statistics of single nations furnish no sure criterion; certainty could be attained only by a universal census taken at stated times, by which the absolute increase of the world's population within a given period might be ascertained. The best approximation to a correct estimate may perhaps be derived from the statistics of the various European nations, as that continent has been long peopled, there is comparatively little increase through immigration, and the statistics are fairly trustworthy. Taking then the statistics of increase between 1870 and 1890, we find that it is least in France, where in twenty years the growth was from about 36,000,000 to about 38,200,000. If we add another thirteen years, in order to complete a generation, we should have not far from 39,500,000. This would indicate a rate of increase very nearly-10:11 in one generation. In Germany within the same twenty years the increase was from about 41,000,000 to about 49,500,000. Adding another thirteen years of increase at the same rate, we should have about 56,200,ooo. That is, the rate of increase in one generation is nearly 5:7. This estimate leaves out of account the large emigration which has taken place

VOL. LV. No. 218. ΤΟ

« AnteriorContinuar »