educated self: "Nature has its redeeming qualities." But where are they to be found should something upset the nicely balanced equilibrium? Touch her property or self-interest, and civilisation, with its educated self-restraint, is excited beyond control, and the "redeeming qualities" are shivered to pieces. God said by the mouth of his prophet Jeremiah: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye" (but not until then)" also do good that are accustomed to do evil." (Jer. xiii. 23.) Dirt contracted may be washed off, but we cannot alter the colour of a single hair, much less that of the skin. The "redeeming quali ties" of an educated man may render him not so gross and filthy as may be seen in low life; but a thoroughly unregenerate man is by nature the same alike in all,-"earthly, sensual, devilish." (Jas. iii. 15.) Selfishness cannot be rooted out by education, and selfishness is the very antipodes of Christianity. Redeeming qualities indeed! a dirty cloth cannot wash itself; then "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean ?" asks Job (xiv. 4), and his reply is, "Not one." So far from it, he declares, "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in a ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me;" and God says, "Though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me." Such is the natural state of man at the present hour; in fact, "sold under sin." "Certain philosophers of the school of Voltaire and Gibbon, have been extravagant in their eulogium of man in a state of nature, or in some other state devoid of Christianity," says Buchanan; "and it is to be lamented that some Christian writers have tried to draw the same picture. But Paganism, in its best estate, is well described by one line of the poet :-

"Monstrum, horrendum, infamee, ingens, cui Luman ademptum." En. iii. 658.*

We need not, however, go beyond the first chapter of Romans to ask what man is by nature. We have it from the pen of inspiration. Indeed the question between Voltaire and Rousseau, "Whether the savage or the civilised state were preferable ?" is one of the greatest arguments for the utter depravation of our species. The mere naked fact, that such a question had arisen amongst rational beings, whether they should continue in a state allied to the brute, or exert the very faculties which constituted them a species, is enough,-we need go no farther.

M. Tocqueville, the learned author of "Democracy in America," observes, that if we study history, it will appear that, in general, barbarous nations have raised themselves to a state of civilisation by slow degrees, and through their own unassisted exertions. Whenever they have derived any light from a strange nation, it has

*Christian Researches, p. 101. London: Cadell.

been when they stood, with regard to it, in the relation of a conquering, not a conquered race." He cites no instance,-and indeed he could not. But we may ask, "from what quarter could our first parents have obtained those germs of improvement, which have been transmitted by some portion of their descendants, through a succession of ages?" The only answer is,-By inspiration from above; for as we are conscious that man could not make himself, and which is a proof of a Divine Creator, so the impossibility of man civilising himself may be brought forward as a proof of a Divine

Instructor.

There is no solid civilisation except that founded on the Word of God. Apart from that knowledge which cometh down from above, the leaning of nature in nationalities is to return to its normal condition. Let me give a few instances in proof; and first of all the words of one whom we have learned to love in death as he was beloved in life (the Rev. Dr. Guthrie). "I knew a boy belonging to this race" (the Tartars), "whom his parents had been induced to leave with a kind, Christian family, under whose roof he had enjoyed many advantages-a comfortable home, good and regular meals, instruction in letters, and in habits of honest industry. Yet, notwithstanding these, and after being to appearance tamed, so strong were the charms of his old life, that he seized the first opportunity of returning to it, like the young chamois which a shepherd of the Alps caught, and, hanging a bell from its neck, reared with his goats. It seemed to be quite domesticated; going and returning with the herd, till a day when it happened to hear the cry of its own wild race amid the mountain rocks. The creature started and listened. For some moments it stood in an attitude of eager attention, trembling with intense excitement; and then, all of a sudden bounding from the meadow, it sprang into the cliff, and leaping from crag to crag, vanished among the heights, where it joined its kindred, and was never more seen; though for years thereafter its bell was often heard tinkling among the rocks, and the mists that shrouded them." It was natural; it was nature and its leaning. Man, unaided and left to his own resources, has never risen from a lower to a higher state. On the contrary, we find the vices which early ages discountenanced and forbade, becoming not only universally practised, but even shamefully deified, and the God of man's first pure faith multiplied into hundreds, in some cases into thousands, and in a few into millions of inferior and usually immoral deities. What a remarkable declension there was in the Old World. Almost ere the grey fathers of the flood were dead; ere perhaps the marks of its awful ravages had vanished from the face of the earth, mankind had forgotten its lesson, and began to worship the creature in place of the Creator. Abraham certainly was the son of an idolater, if not one himself, and if old Jewish and Mohammedan traditions are to be believed, Abraham's father was a maker as well as a worshipper of idols. "Your fathers," said

Joshua, "dwelt on the other side of the flood, even Terah the father of Abraham and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods." But God called Abraham away from his idolatrous family, and kept him as he walked with God.

We are told by the philosophers of the age that man's primeval state was not one from which he fell, but from which he rose,-one, in fact, of lowest savagedom. But history, apart from Scripture, does not show a nation or a being rising from a lower to a higher condition, but the reverse. Examine the legends of the rudest tribes, and they will be found to contain memories, though misty, of a past but higher and nobler state of being; of arts, of accomplishments, of a refinement of manners, and of, in many instances, a purity of morals which only exist among them now in tales and songs. Not tradition only, but all history besides, proves that man, left to his own resources, has not risen but invariably sunk in the scale. Whoever examines the records of nations will find that the tendency of morals has always been to become more corrupt, and the tendency of religions to become more idolatrous and impure. They exhibit a constantly increasing departure from the truth. In proof of this we may appeal to the history, among extinct nations, of Greece and Rome; and amongst existing ones, of India and China. Trace their morals and religion upwards and as we advance nearer to their source, we find the one becoming less impure, and the other less untrue, until a period is reached when the resemblance between these and the moral and religious belief of the patriarchs is striking, and is indeed quite remarkable. It is like ascending a river whose waters are polluted by the towns and manufactories that have sprung up on its banks; the nearer we approach the green hills where it springs from its fountain, the purer runs the stream. Man, we repeat, unaided and left to his own resources, has never risen from a lower to a higher grade. Perhaps some sceptic may assert this to be visionary, or at all events, not applicable to our present enlightened era. Well, one fact is worth a thousand arguments, and I will quote a few in proof. The late well-known and beloved Rev. John Newton, we read of in the "Memoirs" by Cecil, says when he was located in Kittam, Africa : "There is a significant phrase frequently used in these parts, that such a white man is grown black. I have known several who, settling in Africa after the age of thirty or forty, have at that time of life been gradually assimilated to the tempers, customs, and ceremonies of the natives, so far as to prefer that country to England; they have even become dupes to all the pretended charms, necromancies, amulets, and divinations of the blinded negroes, and put more trust in such things than the wiser sort among the natives. A part of this spirit of infatuation was growing upon me; in time, perhaps, I might have yielded to the whole. I entered into closer engagements with the natives, and should have lived and died a wretch amongst them, if the Lord had not

watched over me for good." This was about the middle of the eighteenth century.

In the course of last century, England was charmed by the visit of Omai from Tahiti, brought by Captain Cook. He was young and graceful, engaging in his manners and polite in his address. The case and even the elegance of his manners was an object of surprise to all parties. He soon became the fashion of the day. On his arrival in London he was introduced as a prodigy to fashionable parties, conducted to the splendid entertainments of the highest circles, and presented to the British court amidst a brilliant assemblage of all that was illustrious in rank and dignified in station. For four years he was England's guest, and then was sent back with Captain Cook on his next voyage to the Friendly Islands. The visit of this young man enlisted the warm feelings of Cowper, who thus speaks of his visit and return to Tahiti :

The dream is past. And thou hast again

Thy cocoas and bananas, palms and yams,

And homestall thatched with leaves. But hast thou found
Their former charms? And having seen our state,

Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp

Of equipage; our gardens, and our sports,

And heard our music; are thy simple friends,

Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights,
As dear to thee as once?

Alas! nature and its leanings has its way; for we learn from his after history, this poor islander, transplanted for a time into the heart of civilisation, returned again to his home, and became almost a bane to his fellow-countrymen. He soon threw off his European dress, and re-adopted the uncivilised manners and mode of life of his people. The remainder of his life appears to have been passed in fruitless indolence or wanton crime. He became the instrument of the caprice or cruelty of the king of the island, who not only availed himself of the aid of his firearms in periods of war, but frequently ordered him to shoot at a man at a certain distance, in order to see how far the musket could do execution; or to despatch with his pistol, in the presence of the king, the ill-fated objects of his resentment. Well might Cowper conclude his poem with:

Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade.
We travel far, 'tis true, but not for nought;
And must be bribed to compass earth again

By other hopes and richer fruits than yours.

So much for nature and its leaning, civilised and savage. Civilised life and manners made the savage man to be dreaded more than before.

We need not go so far back as the last century to see nature and its leanings, for we read of various freaks of nature in the

daily papers of the present time. The following cuttings from our "Dailies" are but a few from many, and are worthy of note. In May, 1869, a Fiji Island correspondent of the Honolulu Gazette says there are at Labruka, in the Island of Ovalava, about forty foreigners, all sailors, most of whom have run away from ships and turned Fijians. The principal man among them, and the one who has most influence with the chiefs,-and in fact is a very respectable and steady (?) man, -is David Whiffey, who, thirty years ago, left a Nantucket whaler, and making friends with the chiefs of Labruka, settled there. He has a number of wives and a large family. Later on, i.e. in July, 1870, we are informed that Captain Rimington, or rather now Mr. Rimington, who left Oudh about three years ago, having embraced the Hindoo religion, has returned to Lucknow. He is still as much a Hindoo as ever. For how much it does not say. Later still we have another experience of one who is not ashamed to sign his name to his confession of faith: the scrap is dated August 20th, 1871, and is entitled, "Reverting to the Faith of his Fathers." Some excitement has been caused by the return of a baptized Parsee to the faith of his fathers. The pervert announces the fact in the Guzerati papers in these terms: "I, the undersigned, give notice, that I, with ceremonies, re-embraced the Zoroastrian religion, on the 19th of July, 1871, and relinquished Christianity, by my own free will and faith.-Dababhai Rustomjee, Muccadum."

We have several other specimens of "Nature and its leaning," but the above is quite sufficient for our purpose. May the prayer of our souls be, "Lord, leave us not to our own resources,-hold thou me up, and I shall be safe." How true are the words of the royal preacher, "Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions." (Eccles. vii. 29.) GEORGE LLOYD.

Cramlington.

PROXYISM.

"Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind."

O motley assembly, that is to say no average gathering of such as profess and call themselves Christians, would long tolerate in the pulpit a Paul, a Tyndale, or a Milton; but a motley assembly will willingly sustain a priest, and clothe him moreover in purple and fine linen; and the reason is obvious. The former teachers having premised the advent cf a Saviour as potential for the gift of life and the forgiveness of sins that were past, but as leaving unshaken the eternal doctrine that "pardon is not impunity," had nothing further to enforce but righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. But now turn to the priestly system. No