3. You equally fail to meet my next argument. The question is not when the human race began to be, but whether it has been eternal. To prove that it has not been eternal, I point to the thinly-populated condition of the earth. This you attempt to meet by pointing out some of the checks to population. But I want to know, if, notwithstanding those checks, as far as we have reliable statistics, population has not steadily and greatly increased? Who does not know that the Anglo-Saxon, the Celtic, the Sclavonic, the Russian, and other races have made rapid increase notwithstanding all the ravages of war, of pestilence, and of famine, during the past two centuries; and that since more accurate censuses of popnlation have been made the increase has been so rapid, that some Malthusian political economists have feared that the time will soon come, when there will be more mouths than there is meat to fill? Men do not deny that the human race increases; but you question whether it increases at at a rapid rate, or what you call an 'extensive ratio.' But allowing the rate of increase to be ever so small, an eternity would have crowded the earth with inhabitants. If, on the other hand, you hold that the law of population has been that of decrease, then are you impaled on the other horn of the dilemma, that under the operation of such a law from all eternity, the race must have become extinct. And where are the records in the 'great stone-book,' of the existence of human beings for ever? But under the very vague and ambiguous expression, 'I do not confound the eternity of matter with the eternity of organisms', I suppose you to mean that while you believe in the eternity of matter, you do not believe in the eternity of its organised forms. You hold that matter is eternal, but that man began to be. Now if he began to be, whether six thousand, or six thousand million years ago, he must have had a Creator, and that Creator could not be matter, for matter has no will, nor have we the shadow of evidence that matter has ever created anything. You hold that mind is only an attribute of organised matter, consequently there cannot be knowledge without organisation. But you hold the non-eternity of organisation; therefore, there must have been a time when there was no knowledge, nothing known, no knower in the universe. That is, you would have existence without consciousness; but without consciousness you have no means of proving the existence of anything; thus you involve yourself in the absurdity of the supposition of an existence without a being either to perceive or to prove it. No one can hold your dogma without reversing the laws of human knowledge, and denying the fundamental facts of human thought. Your historical facts I do not stay to question, although if I demanded proof of the statement that Xerxes raised an army of five millions of men, you might find yourself in some perplexity; but I wish you to observe that in admitting that the race had a beginning, you give up the question. Remember that what you have to disprove at present is not the chronology of Moses, but the non-eternity of man.

4. You do not see' that the lack of any memorial of the world's eternity warrants the conclusion that it began to be; but it strikes me that our readers will see it readily enough. You say, 'We know nothing about credible universal history since the invention of printing.' It is difficult to perceive what you mean by such language. Do you not mean its opposite, that anything we know about universal history that is credible, is since the invention of printing? If so, why do you talk to me about Babylon, Persia, Carthage, Rome, and Scythia; about Xerxes and Cæsar; about Huns and Goths, and seek to cull from the pages of their history facts inimical to my position? You say writing was discovered 4000 years ago. But how do you know, if not from history? You cannot be allowed at one time to deny the evidence of history, and at another to appeal to it for proof. Even though the Alexandrian Library has been destroyed, we have some sources of information in reference to the past still left to us. But your statements prove the truth of my proposition. Had the

world existed from all eternity, it is inconceivable that writing and printing would not have been earlier in use among men. These are irrefragable proofs of the comparatively recent origin of our race. You explain that we have no record of the cities, men, thoughts, wars, revolutions, and conquests of the past for want of a historian's pen. But how did it happen that a historian's pen was wanting if the race had existed for ever? You are the first to inform me of monuments in Central America equalling those of ancient Greece, but if there were, these are not monuments of eternity. You tell me that an empire without a written language is lost for ever, but if the race had been eternal it is inconceivable that it could have been without a written language till about 4000 years ago.

You do not contend that the world in its present state has existed for ever, but that the matter composing the world is eternal, and subject to ceaseless change.' We know that it is subject to ceaseless change, and that in thousands of instances it is changed irresistibly from without; therefore, it cannot be eternal.

You assert the impossibility of knowing when progression commenced.' It is enough for my argument to know that it did commence. For if it did commence, it is not, of course, eternal; and the human family must have begun to be. If many of the arts and sciences have been gained, and lost, and regained,' this is another proof that little progress had been made in the art of preserving and handing them down to posterity. The facts you state are all against you, for if Phideas, Appelles, Herodotus, and Homer arrived at such perfection in their respective arts in one age, what would not have been accomplished if the race had existed for ever? When I said that history and tradition point to the recent origin of the race, I did not say that no nations claim an indefinite antiquity: the question is, have they a solitary fact by which to make good that claim. As to the Hindoo epoch, it is as little worth as your belief that the race has existed for 4000,000,000 of years. You hold that the Hindoo and Jewish Bibles are alike authentic and credible.' A 'little modesty' should teach you to give us fewer beliefs and more arguments. The credulity of secularists' has become proverbial; and it seems you are no exception. You can believe what Plato says about the 'Island of Atlantis' and what Berosus told Calisthenes, with scarcely a particle of proof; but you cannot receive the facts of the Gospel history, though supported by a world of evidence.

I am here warned that I must close for want of space, and I must leave further reply to my next. I am thus threatened with being silenced, not by argument, but by verbosity, redundance, and irrelevance.

Defender.

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

HOME.

Lord Robert Grosvenor's Sunday Trading Bill for London, has produced great excitement there. For three Sabbaths there have been great demonstrations against it in Hyde Park. Some portions of the press seemed not unwilling to excite the people, and they have succeeded. On the 1st of July, the police were in great force in Hyde Park. The people as on the previous Sabbath, assailed those who were driving in their carriages with the cries, 'Go to Church.' The excitement increasing, the police interfered, and, it appears in some instances, treated the people with unnecessary violence and considerable ferocity. On the following Monday, in the House of Commons, Lord Robert announced his intention of abandoning

his bill. On the Thursday, Mr. Roebuck inquired whether the government intended making enquiry into the conduct of the police. Sir George Grey would not promise. Several members spoke with some warmth if not violence upon the subject. At last he promised a satisfactory inquiry, and it was hoped there would be no further demonstration. But the people again met in great crowds, in Hyde Park, on Sunday last. It was wisely arranged that only a few policemen should be placed to warn persons in carriages not to venture into the Ride. There was speechmaking and some excitement, but as there was nobody on whom any mischief-loving fellows among the mob could vent their rage, about six o'clock they marched into some of the adjoining streets and squares, breaking a great many windows and producing a good deal of disturbance. We deprecate mob-law, and, while we plead for the proper observance of the sabbath, cannot too severely condemn any measure brought before parliameut, which would make one law for the rich and another for the poor. The club has no more right to be open on the Sabbath than the grocery, and the opening of the grog-shop is a greater nuisance than either. Wages should so be paid that the poor can make their purchases on Saturday night; and they should reflect, that they cannot make them on a Sunday, without involving thousands of their fellow-men in unnecessary toil. A proper distribution of labour should give the labouring population a half, if not an entire, holiday, and all classes of the community should feel it their duty to allow to all the greatest scope on that day, for the freest and fullest cultivation of the higher powers of their nature.

The decease of Lord Raglan does not seem to have produced a very deep sensation upon the mass of the people; although none can fail to admire the sense of duty by which he was animated, and the cordiality with which he co-operated with our allies. The failure of the attack on the Malakoff

and Redan, on the 18th June, doubtless hastened his end.

Lord Panmure has modified his plan for increasing the soldier's pay. He proposes giving them 6d. per day, as an extraordinary field allowance, with an arrangement, by which, instead of receiving it himself, the soldier can allot the whole or part of it to his family, during his absence.

The visit of King Leopold to this country, we hope, will be made the opportunity of resigning the pension which he derives from us.

Mr. Roebuck brings forward his vote of censure on the late government for its conduct of the war, and its policy which allowed us to drift into it. 'Tis well we have men in the House, who will form opinions of their own, and give frank and earnest utterance to them.

The period for Registration is at hand, and men who feel that the elective franchise is a solemn trust, to be used for the welfare of their country and the world, will not fail if they have the necessary qualification to put themselves in a position in which they can 'act the citizen' as becometh truth, duty, and honour.

FOREIGN.

The fate of Sebastopol must soon be decided. The engineers of the allied troops have been carrying on their sap and mine for fifteen days. Forty guns have been placed in battery to command the vessels in the harbour,

the skilful manoeuvring of which, produced so terrible an effect on the 18th, on the advancing columns. To forestall the impending attack on a stupendous scale which will be made within a few days, if indeed it has not commenced while we write, on the night of the 7th, the Russians made a great sortie on the Mamelon vert and were repulsed, after a desperate encounter with immense loss. Even were the Malakoff and Redan Towers in the hands of the allies, Sebastopol may not immediately fall, inasmuch as there is a second line of defence to which the Russians may retire; and if the report be true, that ere this month closes, 300,000 of their troops will be concentrated around Sebastopol, it is probable that a desperate effort will be made to raise the seige.

Fearful and bloody work has yet to be done, if we may judge from the repulse of the 18th. On that day two grand mistakes seem to have been made. The flight of a bombshell in the uncertain light of early dawn was mistaken by the French General of Brigade for the rocket that was to be the signal for his attack, and the onset on the extreme right was precipitated before the rest of the columns were prepared to support it. The Russians could then take the allies in detail and mowed them down with their cannon. The second error, which we trust will never again be made, was the assumption by the allied generals that their fire had silenced the chief batteries, where the guns had only been withdrawn to be brought up again at the moment of assault. Though the French were repulsed before the Malakoff, and the English before the Redan, there was one point where success might have been turned into victory. General Eyre, with 2000 men, covered the church yard and barrack battery, and actually penetrated into the Karabelnaia suburb of the town, whence they might if duly supported, have taken the batteries, that had mowed down their companions in arms, in the rear. To us, it appears that a divided command is greatly against success, and that one bold and comprehensive stroke of a mastermind would decide the matter. Meanwhile the country mourns the immense loss it sustains, but does not despair of a success, which, we trust, will be turned to account to secure the greater freedom and the higher development of the nations of Eastern Europe.

JULY PERIODICALS.

THE LONDON QUARTERLY seems likely to earn a reputation for intelligence and vigour. The eighth number contains some valuable papers. The first, on the literature of the reformation in our own land, is able and well-informed. The influence of the spiritual quickening of the sixteenth century upon its poetry, its learning, and its general literature is clearly and sometimes powerfully put. The second, on the life of the Rev. Dr. Robert Newton, of Wesleyan fame, if it is too strongly spiced with panegyric, is useful in indicating that if we would have a widely successful evangelical ministry for our day, we must have a ministry in earnest. We are much pleased with the third article, on Animal Organization. It is written in the true spirit of philosophy. The wisdom and the power of the great Creator are seen in the wonderful Archetypes and Homoloques of the vertebrate skeleton; and it is held as the primary obect of all scientific inquiry to know God as manifested in his works. The

fourth paper puts the subject of Religious Tolerance in a very clear light. It reviews the discussion of the subject between MERLE D'AUBIGNE, the historian of the Reformation, and M. DE BETHMANN HOLLWEG, Privy Councillor of the King, and President of the Kirchentag. It describes religious intolerance as a virtual denial of the faith, an insult upon Him who said, If I be lifted up from the earth I will draw all men unto me,'-a substitution of the agency of the Holy Spirit for that of the police constable. It meets the argument from Mosaic legislation by asserting that that was a condition of religious minority, not the normal state of human society, and defines its character as a 'systematic condescension towards certain conditions of man's fallen state, but with such limitations and appliances as to prepare for his emancipation from those conditions.' It closes with the hope, in which we join, that it is the part of the Anglo-Saxon race to teach Germany, and the world, the recognition of God's sole authority over the human conscience, and the conscience's sole responsibility to God.' There is deep thought, and there are some beautifully written passages in article five, on the Science and Poetry of Art. In opposition to those who hold that Art is a luxury which religion cannot sanction, the writer contends that as long as there are faculties in man which can find their aliment and satisfaction in nothing else than ideal semblances of the good, the true, the beautiful, so long will Art remain a profound necessity of human nature: nor can that nature ever be adorned with the final grace and loveliness of virtue,never can it be verily invested with the perfect "beauty of holiness,"-till it has learned to appreciate and reverence the holiness of beauty.' Article seventh, on the Protestants of France, reads a lesson to Kings on the subject of toleration. The fortunes of Louis XIV. declined from the period when his persecution of the Hugeunots commenced. The sun of his glory, which till then had been unclouded, went down in disaster, defeat, and shame.' The age of bigotry was followed by an age of atheism; the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was the principal cause of the First Revolution.-The West India Question is carefully gone into, in article eight; the calamities that have come upon that fair and fertile spot of creation are traced greatly to the conduct of the planters after the passing of the Emancipation Act, and to the importation of about 100,000 immigrants from various countries to supply the place of that labour which they had wantonly thrown away. It is proved that it is in the power of the planters themselves, if they will only take the proper course, to save themselves and the islands from imminent ruin. The last article is a brief notice of Liberia; which is rightly regarded as a home for the oppressed negro. We are glad to see the Wesleyan body possessed of a Quarterly so genial in tone, and so ably conducted. We wish it the success which it deserves.

THE BRITISH QUARTERLY for this quarter discusses some of the questions for the times with ability, discrimination, and earnestness. The first article is a sledge-hammer attack upon certain go-a-head Yankee sceptical philosophers, who would have mankind believe that recent ethnological researches disprove the correctness of the biblical chronology. Many of their supposed facts are disproved, their self-contradictions exposed, their perversions of truth unmasked, and their spirit shown to be self-sufficient, arrogant, and unphilosophical to an extreme. The chronology of the Bible is vigorously defended, and theirs is shown to be guess-work. The second article is on the prospects of America in reference to slavery, and gives an account of the origin, objects, policy, and progress of the Know-nothing party. It is indicated that the great want of the United States is an active, practical, and vigorous sense of justice. Proof is advanced that the very existence of the union is threatened with imminent danger-that a low, gross, sensual infidelity, the spawn of revolution and Jesuitism, is gaining ground among the people; that the wildest theories of