286 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Jan. 



evidences that no part of the religious world is unmoved by it. 

 In every sect and section an impulse is felt to substitute for 

 abstract faith, the " faith without works " — rather a characteristic 

 of the religion of our fathers, and not unknown at present — that 

 other faith which is evidenced by works. In other words ; in our 

 day more and more value is being attached to this life, as a sphere 

 for religious effort and experience. With what propriety, I leave 

 to the individual judgment of my auditors ; the faith of every 

 sect and man is coming to be respected and valued precisely in the 

 ratio of the purity, unselfishness, and active sympathy in the life 

 produced by it. 



While, therefore, we have less now than formerly of the self- 

 centred and fruitless piety of the old deacon whom I chanced to 

 know, who excused his avarice by proclaiming that ' business was 

 one thing and religion another, and he never allowed them to 

 interfere;' in place of that we have many an Abou Ben Adhem, 

 and all the splendid exhibitions of modern philanthropy. 



Though the golden mean displayed in the life and words of 

 Christ is far better than either extreme, I cannot but think the 

 present religious condition of the world is better than any which 

 has preceded it. 



In Ethnology — the pre-historic history of the human race — the 

 researches of the large number of investigators who are devoted 

 to its study have made interesting and important additions to our 

 knowledge ; but it cannot be denied that the result of such inves- 

 tigation has been to create general distrust of our previously 

 accepted chronology, and give an antiquity to man such as the 

 scholars of a previous generation would have looked upon as not 

 only unwarranted but impious. It should be said, however, that 

 our preconceived opinions of the antiquity of the human race — 

 like those of the age of the earth itself — were based upon no solid 

 foundation in nature, history, or revelation ; and that our system 

 of chronology was a matter of convention, about which there has 

 been a wide latitude of opinion among the scholars of all ages. 



In regard to the origin of man — whether by special creation or 

 development — we may confidently assert, that modern investigation 

 has given us no new light. Among those who have accepted the 

 theory of a special creation, and have differed only in regard to 

 the number of species and their places of origin or centres of 

 creation, there has been such a diversity of opinion that all con- 

 fidence in the reality and value of the bases of their reasoning has 



