PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.

EVOLUTION, as Herbert Spencer formulates it, is enjoying a temporary revival, but its power to modify theological belief is exceedingly problematical. The Brooklyn Ethical Association, which meets fortnightly, proposes to spend the winter in discussing the evolution of the earth, of morals and theology, and the effects of the doctrine on religious thought and the coming civilization. Midway in the course the proofs of evolution as the secret of the world's being will be announced. The proofs will be interesting, for the world has been patiently waiting for them. As Mr. Spencer is in communication with the Association he may furnish them, in which event we know what they will be in advance; but we suggest that evidences that convince the reason are needed in the effort to establish the pet dogma. That evolution is the spirit of history the devout mind believes; but it is theistic evolution--the opposite of that theory that permits an atheistic conclusion and solves superficially the problems of the universe-that wins the faith and respect of the theologian. The recent action of the South Carolina Synod condemning the action of the Charleston Presbytery in the case of the Rev. Dr. James Woodrow, who espoused the Christian form of evolution and taught it in the theological seminary, is worthy of commendation; for to prohibit the teaching of the doctrine, as was intended by the expulsion of the professor, is in conflict with freedom of thought, the right of the citizen to independent judgment, and the triumph of the truth associated with it. The conflict is Atheistic versus Theistic Evolution, with the chances in favor of the latter. The Association represents one phase, the Presbytery the other, of the great controversy.

Though warranted in theorizing on the contents of "mounds" it is premature to establish conclusions from them, and ask the world to accept them. Relics of great value have been found in Central America—as an inscribed stone in Guatemala and layers of rock covered with human footprints in Nicaragua-but it is too soon to infer from them a great prehistoric age for man. An antiquarian, poetic in spirit, has concluded that the mound-building instinct prevails in Mars, our planetary neighbor, and from what he has discovered in that world he reasons to what would have happened on the earth if a more generous civilization had not extinguished, or at least superseded it. We insist that not imagination but reason must appropriate the facts in this field, and that not science but theory has only been attained in the study of the monuments of the extinct people who once inhabited the western hemisphere. The American Antiquarian Society must resist the tendency to fanciful speculations on a subject that is purely historical, and depends for its development upon the scientific and historical spirit. The finding of six skeletons of Toltecs in Dakota does not prove the existence of a race of giants; nor is it conclusive that the squares and circles in the Scioto Valley, in Southern Ohio,

were built by the Cherokees because they resemble the later fortifications of that tribe; nor do the petrographs in Arizona justify all the conclusions of Mr. Cushing, the explorer, respecting the worship, customs, and habits of the people they represent. The science of the mounds is in the juvenile period, and is no more authentic than the early geologies of the century. Facts, not speculations, and all the facts before speculation, will dignify the conclusions reached and awaken faith in them.

Aryanism is the fundamental problem of ethnology. Robert Gordon Latham, the English philologist, proposed a European origin for the Aryan race; but Dr. Horatio Hall, of Canada, files physiological, philological, and geographical objections to the theory, assigning the primitive stock to the plains of Persia. That the Aryans early migrated westward into Europe, conquering the Semitic, Iberian, and Urahian peoples whom they found there, is almost a settled historic fact; and that by amalgamation a new, stronger, more aggressive, and more highly cultured race was the result Europe itself is the proof. The evidence of the unity of the Indo-European nations is chiefly linguistic, the Asiatics adopting the Germanic tongues of primeval Europe. In the long stretches of the ages the European has outrun the Asiatic; the latter elinging to superstition and still worshiping idols, the former shaping society into civilization, accepting the moral code of the Judaic lawgiver, examining and receiving the religion of the New Testament, and worshiping the Most High, who is over all continents and kingdoms. In the evolution of things it is likely to happen that the real unity of all nations will be, not language, but religion, or the spiritualization of the race, with its allotropic subdivisions, through the perfect image of humanity in Jesus Christ. This achieved, Aryanism will be valuable only as an ethnographic relic.

Modernism is invading the Vatican. Complaining of his self-imposed prison-life, the Pope, nevertheless, looking out upon the seething world, is troubled over the slave-trade in distant Africa, and deputes Cardinal Lavigerie to London to implore the English nation to suppress the great crime. Perhaps it was while he was cogitating upon the horrors of the slave traffic that he concluded to broaden a little on the general subject of liberty, and really issued an encyclical apparently favoring a doctrine he and his predecessors had opposed for centuries. If he could see the necessity for modern light in Spain, Mexico, South America, France, Austria, and Italy perhaps he would depute England or the United States to establish schools in those countries and preach a little Protestantism to the iron-bound masses of Catholicism. Throw open the shutters, O man of the miter, and let in a little of the sunlight that makes glad the progressive nations of the world-Germany, England, and the United States; the greatest, the most Protestant, and beyond the leavening power of Jesuitical hypocrisy!

An irenicon from the Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in favor of the recognition of the validity of the ministry of non-episcopal dissenting bodies is an advance that augurs a some time organic unity of ceremonially dissimilar Church organizations. And it was proper that such proposition should emanate from the Church which, always too selfcentered, has been unable to discern the providential authorization of other communions. The unity of Protestantism depends, not upon dissentient Christian bodies, but upon the larger evolution of those smaller Protestant hide-bound religious aristocracies that hitherto reserved the prerogative of ordination, or the right to Churchhood, to themselves. Without an abandonment of history, but correcting their hoary error, the Anglican bishops assent to the ministerial function in bodies not dependent upon them for grace, ordination, wisdom, efficiency, religion, or heaven. This is well; let the development proceed.

The locomotive must be regarded as an old-world pioneer of modern civilization. Through Bulgarian enterprise a railway has been completed from Paris to Constantinople, shortening the distance between them forty-eight hours. While Prince Ferdinand rejoiced in this triumph the Sultan opposed a public jubilee over the achievement, and instructed the people to be silent when the first train proceeded through his territory on its journey. The Russians are also building a railroad from Teheran, with the consent of the Shah, to Resht, on the Caspian Sea, uniting the dominion of Darius with that of the Great Bear in the north. A still more significant project is the contemplated railway line from Scutari, the Asiatic quarters of Constantinople, to Bagdad on the Tigris, opening a country fourteen hundred miles in length to the influences of European civilization, and advancing Asia Minor, as Mr. Jewett says, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. An English syndicate is responsible for the financial outlay, and Englishmen are the contractors and will be the proprietors of the completed railroad. Not to be outdone in this particular, some Americans are planning for the construction of a railroad from Minnesota through the Dominion of Canada and over Behring Straits to China, a distance of about five thousand miles. This is the age of steam and the Gospel, of railroad tracks and itinerant preachers, of the locomotive and Arminianism, and, working together, the world should be civilized and Christianized by the knell of the present century.

The specialty of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union is moral reform. Waiting long for the subsidence of corroding evils, hoping for legislation, education, and that impulse to progress that belongs to practical optimism, but waiting and hoping somewhat in vain, the gentler sex have organized against the threatening tide of iniquity in the land. He who studies the leadership of this movement, as well as the movement itself, must acknowledge that as seers and reformers they are as impetuous as Deborah and Joan of Arc, with every prospect of a complete attain

ment of their object. That social impurity, with the twin vice of intemperance, is alarmingly common, no informed citizen will controvert; that extravagance in dress and love of fashion control the American home is patent to all observers; that scientific temperance instruction of youth is required for the protection of the future, parents, physicians, and teachers at once affirm. Unless vice is checked and the minor manners of the people are refined, Zechariah's flying roll, filled with curses, will visit every house of the republic and consume its very stones and timbers. In its recent convention in New York the reports of committees gave evidence, not only of appalling immoralities and frightful social conditions, but of heroic enterprise for the rescue of the degraded and the purification of the private and public life of the people. It was gratifying to learn that twenty-five Legislatures have enjoined instruction in the common schools in the scientific effects of alcohol and narcotics, and it is believed that New Jersey, Indiana, Illinois, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee will soon sanction such instruction in their schools. Wisconsin was represented as fostering systematic fornication in its lumber regions, a stain that should be promptly obliterated by efficient legislation. To this work, beneficent, gracious, and patriotic, these Christian women are devoting their energies, treasure, and prayers; and the patriotism, religion, and philanthropy of the country must sustain and co-operate with them, to the end that the land may be cleansed of its filthiness and God have a name among us.

Mormonism in its polygamous aspect is doomed, but the doom awaits complete fulfillment. The cumulative Protestant argument against it; the Edmunds law enforced, especially against its chief men; and the decision of the Supreme Court of Utah dissolving the Mormon Church and escheating the personal property of the corporation to the government, have undermined the foundations of the offensive structure which, hearing a final blast from the Supreme Court of the United States, will, like the walls of Jericho, fall irrecoverably to the ground. It is noteworthy that the assault on Mormonism is because of its inherent and constitutional immorality. Protestantism denounces it because of its unrighteousness; the civil law excoriates it because of its baseness and disharmony with civil life; the courts are against it because it is a menace to national integrity and is guilty of high treason to humanity. Purified of its adulterous instincts, it may survive for a time as a system of religion and be permitted to exist, as Mohammedanism, Theosophism, Chinese paganism, and infidelity are permitted to express themselves, but its iniquities are so inseparable from its life that a few years more of purgatorial legislation will accomplish its extinction.

SPIRIT OF THE REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES.

REGARDING the higher periodicals of the day as exponents of the prevailing currents of thought in intellectual and religious circles, the Christian thinker is more than pleased to note that in treating of the varied phases of modern skepticism their tone is not now that of timid apologetics, but of bold aggression and abiding confidence in Christian truth. Not that the enemies of truth have abandoned the conflict, for Professors Kuenen and Siegfried are still trying to sweep away what the latter is pleased to designate "the thin cobwebs of a Mosaic original" for the Pentateuch. M. Renau is fresh in the field with his brilliant but absurdly fanciful and miscalled History of the People of Israel. Lawrence Oliphant, in his Scientific Religion, and other advocates of modern Occultism, are diffusing their fallacious and deistical, if not atheistical, ideas on "Spiritualism," "Theosophy," and "Esoteric Buddhism." C. E. Plumptre is assaulting teleology; and even the more or less orthodox Dr. Driver appears in his Isaiah giving his support to the destructive methods of the "new criticism." But in these and all kindred productions of the day no really new hypotheses are broached. Some of them may contain variations in phases of the issues in controversy, but the hypotheses themselves have been proved to be without real grounds. In fact, many leading scientific and philosophical skeptics have been unconsciously led to conclusions which, when applied to the study of religion, have strengthened the Christian argument. It is therefore apparent that the wave of modern skepticism has lost most of its destructive force, and that Christian truth was never more strongly intrenched in the intellectual convictions of the Church than now. Never was the Church more confident of ultimate triumph; never was she more steadfast in her purpose to continue her conflict with error until her great Teacher shall be crowned Lord of all. And this confident and determined spirit, as intimated above, is strongly reflected in all our leading religious reviews and magazines.

The Quarterly Review of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for October has: 1. "The First Methodist Conference West of the Alleghany Mountains;" 2. "The Problem of Methodism;" 3. "Baptism and its Design;" 4. "Volapük;" 5. "Are Faith-Cures Miraculous?" 6. "The Septuagint;" 7. "The Great Unthinkable Dogma:" 8. "Protestantism the Spirit of Christianity;" 9. "The Disciples and the Book;" 10. "Life and Genius of Sydney Lanier; " 11. "Dr. Steele's Fraternal Address;" 12. "Reminiscences of the Olden Times."

These are all ably written papers; but the second, on "The Problem of Methodism," by Dr. John E. Edwards, will command special atten tion, and probably provoke controversy among its readers. It is a caustic and defensive review of a volume by Dr. Borland, which book is itself a review of the differing opinions on the doctrine of Christian perfection