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the ore ? Consider this case and you will see how rapidly knowledge once 
acquired may he lost and never recovered by a people. Another remarkable 
thing is the universal acquaintance of all the races of the old world with the 
cereals and the mode of cultivating them. This is a most remarkable thing. 
Where will you find wild wheat or rice capable of being cultivated into the 
grain we now possess ? Where do you find the great staple food of the whole 
world growing indigenous ? Botanists admit you cannot find them any- 
where, or, if instances are given, they are extremely doubtful and nowhere 
abundant, and we feel almost certain that unless man cultivated these cereals 
with the care with which he does, our “ staff of life ” would soon go out of 
his hand. All these things point back to a remote period of civilization, 
when man was already acquainted with several things which we now conceive 
to be the products of human thought, human science, and human invention. 
(Cheers.) 
Rev. J. H. Titcomb. — From the discussion which has taken place, I 
find that there are three principal objections to my paper. The first consists 
mainly in the length of time which we must postulate in order to attain 
to that state of moral and religious degradation to which certain races have 
arrived. With regard to religious degradation, I think the objection cannot 
have much weight when we bear in mind the short space of time which has 
sufficed for the rise and spread of Mormonism, than which it is impossible 
for the human mind to conceive anything more outrageous, absurd, and de- 
graded. The rapidity with which men have been found to embrace Mormon- 
ism presents a fair type of what one may conceive might have happened in 
the earlier periods of the world’s history, when various races were more 
entirely cut off from each other than are even the Mormons at Salt Lake 
from all connection with their fellow-men. I might mention another in- 
stance to bear out my view, in the case of the origin of a certain sect in 
Germany at the break-up of the Papacy at the period of the Reformation, 
and again in France at the time of the Revolution, when the mind of man 
ran into the wildest extravagances, and when a certain sect arose known 
by the name of Adamites, the very fundamental theory of their association 
being that everybody should go about in a state of nature ! Such a notion 
indicates a total and utter degradation of religious feeling and sentiment, 
and shows, I think, that such degradation does not require any great lapse 
of time for its completion at all. But if the objection requires a still further 
answer, I would say, take the state of society in a part of England, in the 
county of Cornwall, in that period of the eighteenth century before Wesley 
arose, whose ministry was so purifying and elevating to the miners and 
wreckers of the coast of Cornwall. I would undertake to say that if we had 
the evidence of a committee of the House of Commons upon the moral 
degradation which existed amongst that race of men previous to their eleva- 
tion through the sanctifying influence of religion, we should have a record 
of facts which would make our hair stand on end, and of a nature impossi- 
ble to speak of in the presence of ladies. Conceiving that to be possibly 
true for the moment — and I believe it could be thoroughly substantiated 
