186 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the one respecting the survival of the fittest, as it immolates others 

 for personal benefit, is essentially selfish, which is a vice incessantly- 

 reprobated in the New Testament. "Look not every man on his 

 own things, but every man also on the things of others " (Philip- 

 pians ii. 4). The chief of all Christian virtues is charity ; it is the 

 very essence of the Gospel. " Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and 

 His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you " (St. 

 Matthew vi. 33). 



How very true is the economic doctrine that, with equitable laws, 

 each should enjoy the integral produce of his labour, and that, were 

 this the case, personal activity would attain its highest degree. Noth- 

 ing is more adverse to the prosperity of a nation than unjust laws ; 

 and this is precisely what the prophets and Christ teach us. 



If Darwinian laws were applied to human society, the utility of 

 history, considered as a moral lesson for both kings and people, would 

 be destroyed. The history of man might then be looked upon as a 

 mere zoological strife between nations, and a simple lengthening out 

 of natural history. What moral instruction can possibly be drawn from 

 the study of the animal world, where the strong devour or destroy the 

 weak ? No spectacle could be more odious or more demoralizing ! 



The incomparable sublimity of the Gospel, which is, alas ! only 

 too often misinterpreted, consists in an ardent longing for perfection, 

 in that aspiration for an ideal of justice which urged Jesus and His 

 earliest disciples to condemn the world as it then was. Thence sprang 

 the hatred of evil in its many various forms, the desire for better 

 things, for reforms and progress ! Why do Mahometans stand still 

 in the march of civilization, while Christian countries advance ever 

 more and more rapidly ? Because the first are resigned to evil, whereas 

 the second combat and endeavour to extirpate it. The stoicism the 

 elevated character of which can hardly be sufficiently admired the 

 austerity, and purity of such ancients as Marcus Aurelius, neverthe- 

 less, bowed before absolute facts, looking upon them as the inevitable 

 results of the actual and natural order of things. Like modern evolu- 

 tionists, they glorified the laws of nature, considering them perfect. 

 Their optimism led them so far as to adore the cosmos as a divinity. 

 " All that thou wilt, O Cosmos," says Marcus Aurelius, " is my will ; 

 nothing is too early or too late for me, if it be at the hour thou decid- 

 est upon. My fruit is such as thy seasons bring, O Nature ! From 

 thee comes all. Thou art all. All go towards thee. If the gods be 

 essentially good and just, they must have permitted nothing, in the 

 arrangement of the world, contrary to right and justice." What a 

 contrast between this serene satisfaction and the complaints of Job, of 

 the prophets, and of Christ Himself ! The true Christian, in direct 

 opposition to stoics and to Mr. Herbert Spencer, holds that the world 

 is completely infected with evil ; he avoids it carefully, and lives in 

 the hope of a general cataclysm, which will reduce our globe to ashes, 



