SIXTII DAY'S SITTING. i:>l 



more excellent way. He tells us indeed that " we could 

 not check our sympathy " towards the poor, and weak, and 

 Buffering, " without deterioration in the noblest part of our 

 nature ;" but what avails such a hint when he puts into the 

 mouths of such as might be disinclined to take it, such a 

 reply as the following to the promptings of any kindly 

 impulses of their nature ? the exercis? of them would 

 be " highly injurious to the race of man." 



If such sentiments were generally adopted which, 

 happily, we have little reason to fear in the course of a 

 fe v generations they would assuredly open the flood-gates 

 of irreligion and immorality in our land, and cause such an 

 outburst of selfi hness and impiety as would overturn our 

 so.ial institutions from fieir lowest foundations, and intro- 

 duce a moral disorder and anarchy w Jch might be lon^ in 

 passing away. Such a change has been brought about in 

 Franc? by the working of a false and irrational religion on 

 the one hand, aid by the rash speculations of (so-called) 

 philosophers and men of science on the other ; an 1 what 

 has occurred in France is possible in England. We cannot 

 reasonably expect a people to be bett r than the God they 

 believe in. To be like the object of their faith and worship 

 is about as high an ambition as can influence them. Lst 

 our countrymen, t'.en, learn to believe in the deity which 

 Mr. Darwin introduces to them let them discard the God 

 and Redeemer of Christianity for the powers which he tells 

 them have founded and built up the rational world Natural 

 Selection and Sexual Selection and \vhat could we expect 

 as the result but the upturning of the foundations of both 

 religion and morality ; the destruction of all that is pure, 

 and gentle, and loving, and sympathetic in the re ations of 

 life as they at present subsist among us ; and the substitu- 

 tion of force, and passion, and cunning, for benevolencj and 



