tion. The Canaanites were partly exterminated, and partly reduced to the lowest slavery by the Shemitic Israelites. The Phoenicians, Carthagenians, and Egyptians, were subjected by the Japhitic Macedonians and Romans, and the rest of the Hamitic tribes have been the slaves through immemorial ages of the other races, and often of each other, or "the servants of servants." The Negro then starts with sensuality and servitude, and their degrading and darkening influences.

(3) But, further, the Hamitic race, equally with the other races, starts from Babel with a confounded language. Mankind had shown a disposition to herd together, as before the flood, around the old "Adamah." They build Babel that they may not be scattered. God resolves to disperse them, so that the awful excess of wickedness of the dense ante-diluvian world may not be repeated. To do this, he changes the language and speech, or lip and word, or "saphah" and "davar," or the objective and subjective elements in expression. The narrative supposes, or rather certifies, both a mental and physical change. The differences produced, were not only external, in the speech, but also internal, in the mind. If language is the audible expression of emotion, conception, and volition, confusion of the human language must have obtained in an effect on the mind, by which that original unity of emotion, conception, and volition was broken up. This inward unity had, no doubt, been already somewhat disturbed by sin, but the disturbance had not produced as yet, as Keil suggests, a perfect breach. Marked tastes and tendencies were then imparted to the different races, which impelled them asunder. Mere difference in words had soon been sur

mounted.

And why is it impossible that these estranged inward peculiarities expressed themselves also in pecularities of countenance? The lip or mouth was changed. But what is the mouth? In Scripture language it means everything which speaks. The eye, the face, the arm, all speak, and are therefore each and all, mouth or lip. There may have been-there must have been-external pecularities corresponding to these internal and pecularities of color are not the

most incredible of these-by which the repulsion of different parts of the race should ensue, And these would presumptively respect the line of families, so as not to disturb bloodties, and the train of tendencies already manifested. Why, then, should not the dark sin of the Hamitic race have expressed itself from that day, in an emphatically darkening, if not darkened countenance?

(4) Again, the division of the earth, which takes place, chronologically, after the confusion of tongues, affords, at the outset, the only other element necessary to precipitate, perfect, and perpetuate the differences already ingrafted. That division must be regarded as very significant. It was not merely political; it was, we submit, physical as well. Why is it incredible that the earth received its present sculpture, or the physical pecularities it now possesses, at this wondrous epoch? The flood, all must agree, was connected with important physical changes. The striking narrative of it can mean nothing less. Even the advocates of a partial deluge, as Hugh Miller, suppose extensive subsidence of lands. There was occasioned by it, according to the express statement of the Scripture, a confusion of climates and continents. God promises that henceforth summer and winter, cold and heat, etc., shall not be disturbed. They had been confounded. The subsidence, Hugh Miller supposes slow; let us suppose the rising of the lands also slow, and very slow. What then? A more uniform altitude throughout the continents, bridging the straits which now separate lands, would for a period obtain, and in consequence a far more uniform climate than is now experienced. The increase of cold regularly progresses with the increased elevation of the land. For a time, then, opportunity is given for the dispersion, the remarkable dispersion through the earth, spoken of; after which, to shut up the way against return, the earth is divided. Higher elevations of mountains, connected with deeper depressions of valleys, separate, as now, the great continents of the globe. The consequence is, division in climates, in races, and in governments. This view, we are happy to find, is substantially sustained by Fabri, in his "Origin of Heathenism."

We have, then, the Hamitic race, chiefly located in the

fiery South, with the degrading and darkening tendencies adverted to. How long would it require the burning sun, the steaming vegetation, the carbonaceous food, and the complete isolation of alluvial equatorial Africa, to express fully the darkness, which is imprinted on the face, and the degradation on the form of the Congo Negro? We have time, and to spare, therefore, to account for all we behold in the sensual, cursed, separated, branded children of Ham.

4. If space permitted, we would undertake to show that there is nothing in the traditions of different lands, and especially oriental, to disprove the post-diluvian origin of the race. The monstrous fables, claiming as those of Egypt 36,000 years for their kings, refute themselves. Indeed, as Syncellus intimates, the rivalry between the Chaldean and Egyptian empires was the secret of their respective enormous chronologies, and each regards the account of the other as false. And, further, so far as they communicate anything worthy of mention, it is the fact of a mighty deluge, and the destruction of the race except a small remnant in the ark.

5. History also shows that the race in its present development falls within post-diluvian chronology. It does so by what it says, and by what it does not say. "A speaking silence," as Tayler Lewis expresses it, "like that which seems to come from the blank chamber of the great pyramid, proclaims that man is but little older than the pyramids. They are his first works. These monuments are the memorials of vast ambition suddenly flashing out-before which silence reigned over the earth."

Besides, as the same great thinker says, and with this we conclude: "How could Egypt have possessed untold ages of civilization, while the outside world remained in comparative night? In Egypt 10,000 years of government, and social order, and mechanic arts, and all this time Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor in total darkness! Egypt, historically, what it is geographically, Mitzraim,' the narrows,' a line immense in length, but the scantiest in breadth! Egypt, historically, like her obelisk, standing in the desert, and spindling up to a vast height over surrounding desolations! Such an antiquity, should we reason from it 'a priori,' and connect with it the

modern claims of progress, would throw out of proportion all the other chapters of history. It would bring the Roman Empire before the days of Abraham, and make our Nineteenth Century antedate the Trojan war. Had the Bible given such a long, narrow, solitary antiquity of 20,000 or 10,000 years to the people whose history it mainly sets forth, it would, doubtless, have evoked the scoffs of those whose skeptical credulity so easily receives the fabulous chronology of other nations."

ART. III.-LAY PREACHING.

By E. D. MORRIS, D. D., Professor in Lane Seminary, Ohio. THERE are seasons in the life of every Christian pastor, when he is led spontaneously to repeat the earnest ejaculation of Moses at Taberah: "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets!" So extensive appears the work to be done for a lost world, and so inadequate are the existing agencies for the accomplishment of that work; and so painful, at such seasons, is the sense of personal incompetency to meet the wide, urgent, solemn demand, that such a pastor longs to see even the entire church transformed into vocal messengers of salvation, and sent forth to prophesy to dying men in the name and power of Christ. At such a time, he will not be envious or jealous concerning his own position; he will hardly be concerned with the question, whether the people of God prophesy together or separately; whether they publish the glad tidings of redemption at the tabernacle, or within the camp. If they are only endowed with some measure of the Spirit who has vitalized and commissioned him; if they prophesy in such ways and forms as to bring conviction to the hearts of those who hear them, and the presence of God is really made manifest in and through them-he will be content. Better, in his estimation, were such visible, authenticated illustration of the gracious working of the Holy Ghost, even amid multiplied irregularities and imperfections-better ten thousand-fold-than any punctilious regard for prescribed

methods, or any strict maintenance of official investiture, secured at the sacrifice of such spiritual results.

This devout ejaculation, though uttered even before the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan, was in harmony with the spirit and tendency of the Apostolic, rather than the Mosaic Church. For, while the seventy elders were thus divinely endowed to assist Moses in the work of teaching and governing the people, and while the gift first possessed by him alone, or in connection with Aaron, was thus imparted to them also, the power of prophesying went no farther; beyond this limited circle, the prayer was unanswered. A strict regard for official investiture and privilege still remained; the people were content to listen to the inspired utterances in which they did not hope to join, and to submit to the rule of those whom God had thus visibly set above them in ecclesiastical position. And so, throughout the Old Testament, the line of distinction between the priesthood and the prophets, on the one hand, and the common people, on the other, was clear, strict, decisive. Across that boundary no one, unless vested with Levitical prerogatives, or specially and signally visited by the inspiring grace of God, ever ventured to pass. Even down to the age of Christ, when all spirituality seemed to have vanished from the breast alike of priesthood and people, and when little else than the remembrances of a dead Judaism could be seen either at the tabernacle of worship, or in the camp of ordinary life, this ancient deference for official titles and endowments still survived-a sad relic of what, for many centuries, had been a living, and, some respects, a grand and fruitful reality.

But at the advent of Christ, and especially at the formation of the Apostolic Church, a decisive change occurred. While our Lord chose the twelve for a special function, and gave them special training for that function, and while he also set apart the seventy to preach and teach in his name, he was equally careful to make every disciple conscious of a kindred responsibility, and to show his church that they were, as a body, to be the salt of the earth, the light of the world. "Ye shall be witnesses unto me," was the injunction given to the whole company of those who beheld his ascension; and at