That such a religious out-pouring took place is vouched for by the oldest of the Avestan texts, which bear throughout the traces of the conflict. At the same time, we must confess that the scantiness of those very texts leaves us little hope that the circumstances of the reform will ever come to light. We can not even fully determine the nature of the beliefs against which incipient Mazdeism was pitted. Haug made much of certain traces of hostility against Vedic tenets and rites, to connect the rise of Zoroaster with the final separa. tion of the two nations; but, though specious, this view is not sustained in its entirety by the Gâthâs; the movement seems to have been social as much as religious, directed against tribes of the same blood and speech, but adherent to a nomadic and predatory manner of life. Nevertheless, Mazdeism may have entered the world as a protest against a flat and stagnant naturalism; for in the younger Avesta, when the original hatred is assuaged and the reform has lost its primitive meaning, we see old naturalistic gods and rites reappear whose absence in the Gâthâs was characteristic. Thus Mitra (Mithra), the fair-haired god of heaven, resumes his place by the side of Ahura, while the exhilarating Soma (haoma) flows again in honor of the masters above.

Of all the symptoms of this moral renovation, our author has seen none; the noisy god of the clouds smothers for him the voice of the apostle of Vôhu-Manô. The sweeping symbolism to which he defers is powerless to account for the inner contents of the myths, yet he proposes to extend it to thoughts which root far deeper than myths. It would be interesting to know the true descent and filiation of the gods and tenets of Mazdeism, even though it should run against our theories; but we cannot believe that the method which is to lead us to the truth will ask of us to overlook the moral import of the texts, to substitute for the diversity of national genius the sameness of one typical myth, and to belittle the spontaneity of religious phenomena.

ARTICLE V.-RELATION OF EVOLUTION TO CHRISTIANITY AND RATIONAL TRUTH.

MEN have no genius for making worlds, but they have, for making theories. And, doubtless, so far as the principles and method of the Great World-maker are brought down to our observation and to the range of our powers, we may regard this divine gift and opportunity to be our warrant and our invitation to use them; only we are to remember that no theory can stand for its ingenuity, and certainly not for its absurdity. To be good for anything, it must be based, not on fancies and notions, but upon the facts of creation, and those facts rightly interpreted.

Of the theories of world-making, which had their origin in ancient mythologies, we have now nothing to do. They were the playthings of poets. Nor shall we speak of the theory of creation by emanation, the product of Oriental minds; nor of an ideal evolution, essentially Hegelian in its stamp, and belonging to the world of thought, and not to the world of fact.

Nor have we to do, now, with that form of the doctrine which supplements the process of natural evolution by successive creations, and by supernatural interpositions in the way of miracle. To this theory as a comprehensive method of divine agency, supplemented by creative acts, by miracle and Providential overruling, as held by Professors Dana, Gray, and LeConte, with Martineau and many others, the writer sees no objection. It has not been definitely formulated, and those holding it, in substance, might differ in terms, and in the proportion of the several agencies recognized in it. But in this general form of statement, we might all hold it, and be consistently Christian in our faith, and with the Bible, possibly, as the first and best teacher of the doctrine.

The real antagonism to Christianity and to rational truth is in that theory of evolution which excludes from the entire process all creative acts with all supernatural agency; and claims to explain the existing system of things altogether by

the natural forces and material belonging to the system, and without a God. There are men in England, on the continent and in America, who assume that the whole upbuilding of the present cosmos may be accounted for by the inherent potences and agencies of the system itself, and therefore that a rational hypothesis must exclude God from the world. Such a theory has been expounded with great labor and ability by Herbert Spencer, especially, who brings to his task a wide range of illustration and unusual powers as a theorizer. Mr. Darwin, by the labors of a life in careful research has, more than any other man, furnished apparent facts as the basis of the theory; and so far as he verifies his facts and rightly interprets them, we can have no controversy with him. Facts really established and truly interpreted should be welcome to everybody. Mr. Darwin's patient investigations, his sagacity in following out his lines of inquiry, and his candid spirit, are worthy of all admiration. The haste and recklessness of such radical thinkers as Büchner, Hæckel and Vogt, will sufficiently rebuke and correct their vagaries. Spencer stands out to-day the most complete and able expounder of the doctrine, while he extends its application to every department of knowledge—to Biology, Sociology, and even to Ethics. With him, Huxley, Tyndal, and Mill in England, with Fisk and others in this country, are understood to agree.

That men of such real ability should ever have imagined such a theory to be a rational explanation of the Universe, is a wonder to many. It is no wonder that there should follow them various sorts of unfledged scientists, and a crowd of men, young and old, who have, at least, wide-open mouths and a good will for large digestion.

Mr. Spencer defines Evolution to be-" A change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity, to a definite coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations."

It will be seen that he does not affirm a cause back of phenomena, and does not attempt to account for the origin of any thing. He finds in being, and existing from eternity, matter and force, and nothing else that is knowable. This is the omnium principium, having in it the entire potences of the

Universe. How he can, consistently with his philosophy, find force, an invisible, noumenal principle, and not phenomenal, is not seen; but he uses it, if he does not find it. He assumes, too, that matter, atomic or molecular, was originally diffused through space, not equally and infinitely so as to be in equilib rium, and incapable of movement, but unequally, so as to give the possibility of movement toward different centers by mutual attraction; and spiral movement by reason of such shape of the atoms as, in a resisting medium, would give them a spiral direction. What the resisting medium is, and how it came there, and why the atoms took just the irregular shape that would initiate a spiral movement, is not of course explained; but, being important to the theory, the medium and the atoms. accommodate themselves to the exigency. This nebulous matter thus moving spirally toward different centers, becomes in its progress more and more condensed, and gradually curdles itself into incipient suns; for when sufficiently condensed to evolve great heat, it gives out light; and when, with the narrowing diameters, the revolution is rapid enough to generate a strong centrifugal tendency, the suns throw off planets, and the planets, satellites, and the vast cosmical system thus takes shape and movement and equilibrium.

This is the first stage of evolution; and up to this point the force revealed is gravitation, or mutual attraction, with repulsion and inertia.

The second stage comprehends those changes which, in each particular world thus differentiated, lead on to the fulfillment of those functions which belong to its own economy in connection with the universal system. On our planet, these changes are first physical and geological. With condensation and the escape of heat, a solid crust has been formed, which, after further contractions and fallings, except certain elevations, lies a thick mass of rock, once fused, the lowest we have access to, and without any traces of fossilized life. Then follow the long geologic ages in their succession. The noxious gases and hot vapors have condensed into rock and water, giving oceans and an atmosphere more or less pure, and furnishing the conditions. for the beginning of organized life. By the action of fire, water and air, alternately and often in combination, successive

layers of rock have been formed; the organic life of each period has sunk with the gradual deposit to the bottom of the sea, and after this gradual burial, has become part of the rock in which it lies entombed. But these strata, by the internal forces of the earth, and by the subsidence of the waters, have at different periods been thrown up with the mountains, are so arranged, and tilted, and broken, that their natural succession is evident, and the extinct fossilized life of the different ages is exposed to view for the classification of the Naturalist. These changes have prepared the earth more and more for higher and higher orders of life, until at last man has appeared the highest outcome as yet of the evolving system. But his lineage is traced by the skilful evolutionist through innumerable specializations and differentiations back through the ape and quadruped and fish, to a kind of shell-less rhizopod, the amoeba, a creature without head or tail, but all mouth and stomach.

But the evolution goes on still everywhere,—in the minds of individual men, in families, nations and races, differentiating forms of government, industries, philosophy, literature, religion. Human society has its evolutionary progress as well as the organic and cosmic worlds. And the whole process is continuous in a regular and necessary progression by natural forces and laws. Each successive period inherits from all the past and transmits itself with evolutionary modifications to the future. The whole, at any point, is the resultant of the interaction of all the forces and agencies that have preceded it, operating by inherent and necessary law. It is one vast organ ism culminating in man, and coming to self-consciousness in his brain. Or rather, it is a vast, self-constructed, self-operating mechanism, man being the most highly specialized part of the whole system. Still, considered as a species, he may, through favored individuals, throw out a higher species yet, unless the cosmic forces in producing him shall have attained their maximum, and go into decline and dissolution. But that dissolution, by the general crash of all the planets into the sun, may throw the ashes off into the immensities again, so that the phoenix of a new system may differentiate by a similar progression and dissolution, again and again.

This is about as far as the evolution hypothesis has been