ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION. 169 



appears in the prayer of David : " Let the beauty of the Lord our 

 God be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon 

 us : the work of our hands, Lord, establish thou it." But, be- 

 ware of the catastrophe, for "He will sit as a refiner"; "The 

 wheat shall be gathered into barns, but the chaff shall be burned 

 with unquenchable fire." If this be true, let us look for — 



3. The Extinction of Evil. — How is necessitarianism to be 

 reconciled with free will ? It appears to me, thus : "When a being 

 whose safety depends on the perfection of a system of laws aban- 

 dons the system by which he lives, he becomes subject to that 

 lower grade of laws which govern lower intelligences. Man, falling 

 from the laws of right, comes under the dominion of the laws of 

 brute force ; as said our Saviour, " Salt is good, but if the salt 

 have lost his savor, it is thenceforth good for nothing but to be 

 cast forth and trodden under foot of men." 



In estimating the practical results to man of the actions 

 prompted by the lower portion of our nature, it is only necessary 

 to carry out to its full development each of those animal qualities 

 which may in certain states of society be restrained by the social 

 system. In human history those qualities have repeatedly had 

 this development, and the battle of progress is fought to decide 

 whether they shall overthrow the system that restrains them, or 

 be overthrown by it. 



Entire obedience to the lower instincts of our nature insures 

 destruction to the weaker, and generally to the stronger also. A 

 most marked case of this kind is seen where the developed vices of 

 civilization are introduced among a savage peoj)le — as, for exam- 

 ple, the North American Indians. These seem in consequence to 

 be hastening to extinction. 



But a system or a circuit of existence has been allotted to the 

 civil associations of the animal species man, independently of his 

 moral development. It may be briefly stated thus : Eaces begin 

 as poor offshoots or emigrants from a parent stock. The law of 

 labor develops their powers, and increases their wealth and num- 

 bers. These will be diminished by their various vices ; but, on 

 the whole, in proportion as the intellectual and economical ele- 

 ments prevail, wealth will increase — that is, they accumulate 

 power. When this has been accomplished, and before activity 

 has slackened its speed, the nation has reached the culminating 

 point, and then it enters upon the period of decline. The re- 

 straints imposed by economy and active occupation being removed, 



