of the ten kingdoms to an imperial head, the reinvestiture of the Catholic hierarchy with the power to persecute, the slaying of the witnesses, the fall of Babylon, and her destruction, will reveal to all who seek the truth, the error of the notion now so passionately held by multitudes that man is to be the great agent in the overthrow of antichrist, and lead them to believe and welcome the speedy coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in his power and glory to vindicate his deity, to dash his enemies, to deliver his captive church, and to complete the redemption of the world.

Happy they who look most assuredly and earnestly for his appearing. Happy they whom he enables to anticipate most adequately the glory and blessedness of the reign on which he is then to enter.

ART. V.-DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION; or, the Preservation of favored Races in the Struggle of Life. By Charles Darwin, M.A., Fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnæan, etc., Societies, author of Journal of Researches during H.M.S. Beagle's voyage round the world. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1860.

MR. DARWIN's aim, in this treatise, is to set aside the doctrine taught in the sacred Scriptures, and held almost universally by naturalists, that all the great families of the vegetable and animal world, now have, and have had at every preceding stage of their existence, identically the same peculiar and distinctive natures that belonged to the originals from which they have descended, and that were imparted to them by the fiat of the Creator, when he spoke them into being; and to substitute in its place the theory, that their present natures are essentially unlike those of the first organisms of which they are the offspring, and owe the characters that now distinguish them to the slow operation of subsequent and merely secondary causes. The question he debates is therefore not one of mere curiosity, but of fun

damental interest; as, if he establishes his hypothesis, he not only convicts the Mosaic history of the creation of fatal error, and overthrows Christianity itself, which proceeds on the fact that man is in nature, and is to be in all ages identically the same being as the first pair from whom he descends; but subverts all human history also, and testimony in regard to the sameness of man in all ages, and the transmission by all the great families of the animal and vegetable world of their several peculiar natures to their descendants, and divests the science of created entities of all stability and certainty. On his scheme, the present is no ground of deduction in regard to the past, nor of inference in respect to the future. Neither man nor any other race of beings can at any former era have been what they now are; nor can they be at any future stage of their endless progression.

Instead of this, the Scriptures teach that God originally created different kinds of vegetables and animals, and made their several natures such that each propagated its own specific kind. "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass [vegetables], the herb yielding seed, the fruittree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth. And it was so. And the earth brought forth grass [vegetables], herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself, after his kind. And God saw that it was good."-Gen. i. 11, 12. The vegetables that were created are thus exhibited as of two great divisions: the first, comprising all herbs or plants whose structure is tender, and whose growth is completed in a single season or year; the other, all trees whose growth continues through a series of seasons and years, and whose substance is hard; and each is represented as consisting of many kinds—as numerous, it is implied, as those were that were in existence two thousand four hundred years after the creation itself; when the narrative was written; and each as yielding seed after its own kind; by which it perpetuated herbs or trees precisely like itself.

The living inhabitants of the waters, the air, and the earth were in like manner severally endowed with natures that differed from others, and that gave birth to offspring that were precisely like themselves. "And God said, Let the

waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind; and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them and said: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so, and God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind. And God saw that it was good.”—Gen. i. 20-25. This enumeration embraces every species of living creatures, whether large or small; whether inhabiting the water, the land, or the air; and each division is exhibited as consisting of many kinds; all the kinds that belonged to those classes originally, or at the time the history was penned; and they were formed to be fruitful and multiply each its own kind.

Man, in like manner, was formed with a nature peculiar to himself, and invested with a dominion over all other living things that implied both that his peculiar nature would be perpetuated in his offspring, and that their several distinctive natures would be transmitted and perpetuated in theirs. "And God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them. And God said unto them: Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Man, thus, not only received a nature peculiar to himself and greatly superior to all other living creatures, and a nature that he was to retain and to transmit to his offspring, but his investiture with dominion over all other living

things, implies that they also were to retain their peculiar natures, and transmit them to their progeny. As his dominion was founded on his possessing intelligence, if either he lost it, or the animal tribes gained it, by a gradual evolution of their natures, he would naturally lose his dominion over them. The continuance of his power would depend on the continuance of the same relations between his and their nature, which were the original ground of it. The perpetuation of man's nature was indispensable, moreover, in order to the institution of a settled government over him. As his duties to God and to his fellow creatures depended on his nature and relations to God and those creatures, it is manifest that that nature and those relations must remain essentially the same, in order to the institution over him of fixed and ever obligatory laws. If his nature were perpetually changing, whether by advancing or receding in the kind, number, or strength of its faculties, his duties would necessarily vary proportionally in kind and degree. If his nature and relations to fellow creatures were continually varying, his obligations would necessarily vary in a corresponding manner; and the administration under which he was placed, would need to receive a proportional change in its prohibitions and demands.

But the peculiar administration which God instituted over man, by which Adam was made the head and representative of his posterity, and his obedience or revolt made to determine the moral condition in which they were to come into life, rendered the transmission of his distinctive nature to them indispensable; as it is an essential condition of such an office that the representative and they whom he represents should be of identically the same nature. This is shown by the assumption by the Eternal Word of our nature, in order to his filling the office of the second Adam. In order that he might be and act as the head of the race, to recover it from the effects of the first Adam's fall, it was necessary that he should possess the same nature, assume the same relations as a subject toward God, be placed under the same law, subjected to tests of his allegiance of the same kinds, yield the same obedience that is demanded of men, and bear their penalty. But plainly, neither Adam

nor Christ could be such a head and representative, unless the nature of the race remain the same. If portions of them are radically changed; if some lose their intelligence and sink to the rank of mere brutes; if others ascend above the sphere of humanity and acquire the nature of angels-it is manifest that neither Adam's nor Christ's nature could be any adequate representative of theirs. They would not be human, but a different order of beings. All the laws, accordingly, God imposed on the race, contemplated their continuing to possess precisely the same nature as Adam's and Eve's at the birth of their first offspring; such as the institution of marriage, the appointment of a religious worship with rites, that proceeded on the fact that all were to be sinners, and all were to be under the sentence of death; and the imposition of commands like those of the decalogue, which contemplated them as always to sustain the same relations to God and to one another, to possess the same passions, be exposed to the same temptations, and suffer the same shapes of evil. The same great truth entered with equal distinctness into every measure of the work of redemption. In order that Christ could, in his human nature, represent every individual of the race, it was necessary that his nature should be the same as theirs; in order that His obedience could be an obedience in their place, it was necessary that it should be a perfect obedience in their nature, and such as they are bound to render; and, in order that his death could be a death in their stead, it was necessary that it should be endured in their nature and be the penalty of their sin.

On the other hand, the divine institutes that related to other living creatures, all proceeded on it as a settled truth that those creatures were to continue to possess the same natures as were peculiar to them at the time of their enactment; such as the prescription of sheep and goats, and cattle, and doves and pigeons for sacrifices, and the prohibition of all others; and the appropriation of certain animals for food, and preclusion of others from that use. As those injunctions and prohibitions were founded on the nature of those animals, their adaptedness to the end for which they were instituted, and the obligation of the law from age to age, and century to century, for thousands of years, depended