EDITOR'S TABLE. 



265 



to overthrow. That it is not a purely- 

 beneficent divinity many a sweltering 

 attendant and many a dyspeptic par- 

 taker at the altar are prepared to at- 

 test; but pure beneficence, as every one 

 knows, is not a quality that votaries 

 always exact of their deities. Thus, 

 just as long ago, at Ephesus, there were 

 shrine - makers who stoutly withstood 

 the new-fangled ideas broached by Paul, 

 so to-day there are shrine - makers 

 i. e., stove - makers who can not be 

 expected to take very kindly to the 

 ideas of our modern apostles of scien- 

 tific cookery. We can not blame them 

 if they are not in a hurry to break their 

 molds and send their castings to the 

 junk-shop ; but, all the same, a reform 

 so deeply founded in common sense 

 must come in time, and it would be well 

 to prepare for its coming by gradually 

 approximating to the type of cooking 

 apparatus required. 



It is not in the matter of cookery 

 alone that science is prepared to lend a 

 helping hand in every-day life. There 

 are a hundred reforms remaining to be 

 accomplished, each one of which would 

 do something to make our lives more 

 worthy of rational beings. The most 

 important and beneficent ones are those 

 that can only be wrought by the earnest 

 co-operation of each individual. "What 

 we have to do is to see that a duty lies 

 in making the most of our knowledge ; 

 and it can nowhere be caused to yield a 

 larger return than in its application to 

 those ordinary affairs of life with which 

 all are concerned. 



A COMPARISON IN RACIAL DEVELOP- 

 MENTS. 



Colonel Garriok Malleet's ad- 

 dress on " Israelite and Indian," which 

 is concluded in this number of the 

 "Monthly," presents an unusually lucid 

 and interesting study in comparative 

 civilization and religion. The author's 

 purpose in selecting these two particu- 

 lar peoples for comparison is, as he 

 declares in the beginning, not because 



there is any special resemblance be- 

 tween them more than between any 

 two other peoples at corresponding 

 stages of civilization, but because they 

 offer convenient types illustrative of a 

 general principle. We are familiar with 

 both with the Israelites, through the 

 universal habitual study of the Bible; 

 aud with the Indians, by virtue of our 

 historical intercourse with them ; and 

 the illustrative incidents do not have to 

 be explained, as they would be in the 

 case of any other two peoples that 

 might have been selected. The princi- 

 ple, which has been reached by anthro- 

 pologists and students of religion gen- 

 erally, and is admitted by many emi- 

 nent theologians that religion is a 

 thing of growth, and subject to con- 

 tinual development and refinement, and 

 keeping pace with the advance of each 

 nation in civilization and knowledge 

 is well set forth in the examples cited. 

 The article bears the marks throughout 

 that the author has studied the subject 

 carefully and to the bottom. On the 

 Israelite side he displays a critical 

 knowledge of the Bible and the envi- 

 ronment within which it was composed ; 

 besides which, he has brought to bear 

 upon his argument the results of the 

 investigations of that band of eminent 

 scholars whose conclusions, under the 

 name of the "higher criticism," have 

 deeply moved the theological world. On 

 the Indian side, he is at home in his 

 own special field of research. Taking 

 the two peoples at those periods in 

 their history when they had reached 

 nearly equivalent stages in civilization, 

 he holds up the parallelisms in their re- 

 ligious opinions, particularly their ideas 

 of God and a future state, their myths 

 and their social usages, which, he as- 

 sumes, were not peculiar to them, but 

 could be found also among other bodies 

 of people in the same stages of culture. 

 That similar parallelisms are to be found 

 among other nations of like civilization 

 is a fact familiar to students of Oriental 

 archaeology. 



