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great logical powers and great wealth of illustration, but I 
hope most of my countrymen, when they find themselves face 
to face with the conclusion, will again say with their old Euclid, 
“ The greater equal to the less, which is absurd.” 
The whole range of Christian experience may be viewed by 
such writers as too visionary for argument ; and the notion of a 
converted heathen may be to them ridiculous ; but to us it is at 
least a great moral phenomenon tobe accounted for. There is (if 
there were but one instance it would suffice) such a thing as a 
sensitively moral, pure, upright, truthful, conscientious convert 
from the direst fetichism. I want this accounted for on any 
principle of development and evolution. If that eminent man 
will pardon such a use of his name in consideration of the 
great cause at stake, I want the development of Bishop Crowther 
out of the little trembling slave-boy accounted for on these 
principles. I want the transformation of the cannibal Indians 
at Metlahkatla interpreted to me on evolutionary principles. 
I feel myself walking, as it were, on the thinnest ice, which 
crackles and yields under me at every step when I adventure 
on these wild theories. They are baseless and absurd. But 
I go back to the old truth of reason and revelation. God 
made man, and gave him a reasoning mind and a sensitive 
conscience, and imprinted on him a moral nature. I then 
stand upon solid ground. I speak — I do not say as a clergy- 
man — but as a Christian man ; and I know that in that plain 
old truth I have that which harmonizes and draws into itself 
all the facts of reason, and conscience, and moral responsibility 
with which I have to deal. This is the true test of a theory, 
moral or physical. Will it embrace and harmonize (within 
possible human limits) the observed facts belonging to the 
case ? That which does this best and most effectually is the 
truest yet attainable. And this is the real ground upon which 
Christianity (viewed as a moral and spiritual theory, or system) 
maintains its ground amongst men, and always will maintain 
it, whilst these mushroom theories spring up and fall off into 
nothingness from age to age. Alas 1 they always leave their 
spawn behind them ! But I want now simply to hold up the 
disastrous issue before us. In the excitement of the Spanish 
revolution, there was a newspaper published in Madrid under 
the name of the “ Descamisados, ” the shirtless. It was dis- 
puted whether it was the genuine organ of the ultra-revolu- 
tionists, or whether it was a satirical caricature of their aspira- 
tions. In either case it represented, either in fact or caricature, 
their mental goal of desire. This was their declaration : 
“ Everything for everybody, from Power even to Woman. . . . 
Our black flag is unfurled. War to the family ! War to 
property ! War against God !” 
