complete as his own; as complete as his own the new soul. Whence came that child-body? Have the parents had anything to do with devising its world of complex and exquisite mechanism? Assuredly not; no more than the bird has with devising its chicken, or the oak with devising its sprouting acorn. Are they mere machines, turning out unintelligently other machines like themselves? This seems impossible. A pin machine can turn out pins, but not pin machine makers. Men can turn out, in an instrumental way, blood or bile, but not men; and especially not men makers. Even God Himself cannot make His own equal. What remains but for each man to say with Job, "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me together round about." Further, or at about each body-birth, there is a soul-birth. The body receives an inhabitant. It is not matter but some thing that can think, feel, choose. It is not a product of bodily organization and the chemistries, but something that can survive the organism that serves it for a house, and even flourish on forever the master of the mansion, the charioteer of the chariot, the image of the spiritual God, whence came this soul? It remembers no past. It is as fresh and dewy with tokens of recentness as the first bud of spring. Can body produce soul? Can one human soul unconsciously produce another human soul? In all the range of causation, outside of the present field of inquiry, where has a cause been known to make the equal of itself? But the child is often superior to its parent.

Plainly, something besides nature must be concerned in the human production. Unless we allow this we must allow both the possibility and naturalness of atheistic evolution. For, if mere Nature, without any exercise of devising intelligence, can originate the simplest embryo of a new man, and then in virtue of its own resources can develop that embryo in the course of some months through various ascending forms as diverse from each other as species into the new born child, why cannot it generate some moneron, and then develop it in the course of some millions of years through various like ascending specific forms into a man. It can. And so there is no need of a God to account for anything. If we reject this conclusion we must claim that behind the veil of natural conditions and agencies the

supernatural is busy in every case of reproduction. It is to be claimed. Each new human body as much requires a Divine framer as did the first man. Each new human soul as much requires a divine author as did the soul of Adam.

Now, these wondrous births have been going on from the beginning with ever-increasing freeness: the one trunk putting forth branches, each of these branches itself ramifying, each of these ramifications spreading itself out abruptly into an immense fan of new being, and so on, until now some two hundred thousand new human bodies and souls present themselves on the earth each day.

But this is only one of many streams of descent. For a long time before the flux of human generations began, innumerable other births, scarcely less wonderful, had taken place among the brute and vegetable races; and these have continued without intermission, in floods that defy statement or imagination, down to the present time. At least a hundred thousand species of flora are continually reproducing themselves (as we say) and making the whole earth green with perpetual youth. At least a million species of brute fauna are continually reproducing themselves (as we say), some of them with amazing rapidity. Thus a single herring can deposit about forty thousand eggs in one season, a flounder a million, the common oyster still more; and an insect, called the cyclops, in four months can have fortyfive hundred millions of descendants. The microscopic animalculæ are still more prolific-a single individual of one species being capable of multiplying in four days to one hundred and seventy billions. When we consider the vast number of individuals in many of these species-as, for example, in that of the herrings or pigeons, each of which sometimes sends out a thousand billions or more in a single company-and how each one of these increases. like money at compound hourly interest, we feel quite lost in this perpetual deluge of new life. What is it but a perpetual deluge of divine action, of wondrous divine action?

The utter insufficiency of merely natural causation to account for a single one of these practically infinite reproductions ought to be easily admitted. The same reasons that demand the supernatural for each new man demand it for each new worm or weed.

A thing cannot make the equal of itself. It is against experience. It is unthinkable. Accordingly, the Scriptures declare that the heathen are without excuse for not knowing God, because His works immediately about them (not some remote first parents) clearly declare His eternal power and Godhead. That is, the present environment of every man, the wonders he now sees in the earth and sky, are plainly unexplainable by mere Nature. It is not necessary for him to grope his way back some thousands of years to a beginning of the organic races in adult individuals which only a true God could have made. Otherwise he would have a very good excuse for not knowing God-if the impossibility of doing it can be considered a good excuse.

It is commonly said that the age of miracles has long since passed, and that God never in these days gives water from a rock, nor bread from the sky. And unbelievers are apt to clamor for at least one good rousing miracle; and to protest that, if it could be had, they would at once flash into faith as gunpowder flashes at the touch of a live coal. Miracles? Let people open their eyes. Not a day passes that is not more shining with miracles of creation and construction than it is with the sun. We float in miracles as ships do in the ocean. Our homes, though men call them hovels, are floored and walled and ceiled with this gold. No miracles now-a-days? It is time such talk had ceased; time to cease quietly assuming-as even Christians are apt to do despite the whole tenor of Scripture-that astounding postulate that mere Nature is amply sufficient to account for the successive generations of the world. What a mistake! Parents are hardly more than a divine laboratory, or the chariots by which the young ride into being. The Amazon, sweeping on to the sea in ever-widening flood, is modified in many respects by the country through which it passes; but every new drop contributed to it at every point comes from ABOVE-from yonder high and snowy peak on yonder high sky.

CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY.-1883.

The Third Summer School was held at Atlantic Highlands, N. J., a delightful sea-side resort, an hour by steamer from New York. Five lectures were delivered by the following gentlemen on the subjects announced, viz.:

Lyman Abbott, D.D., Editor of The Christian Union: "The Theology of St. Paul." J. B. Thomas, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y. : "Darwin, Emerson and the Gospel." Charles F. Deems, D.D., LL.D.: Anniversary Address before the Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy. E. F. Burr, D.D., Lyme, Ct.: "Certain Insignia of Organic Species." Rev. A. H. Bradford, Montclair, N J.: "Hereditary Environment and Religion." The lectures commenced Thursday, August 2nd, and closed Tuesday, August 7th. In addition to the lecturers, the following gentlemen took part: Rev. Henry P. Collin, Mr. S. H. Wilder, Rev. Dr. Howard Henderson, Rev. J. E. Lake, Rev. Alfred Taylor, Rev. Dr. Rylance and others.

At the Annual Meeting the officers of last year were re-elected. The Fourth Summer School of Christian Philosophy was held at Richfield Springs, N. Y., commencing August 21 and closing August 31. The following is a list of the subjects and lectures in the order of delivery: Tuesday, August 21st, J. H. Rylance, D.D., Rector of St. Mark's Church, N. Y., "Counter Currents;" 22nd, Henry Darling, D D., LL.D., President of Hamilton College, "Natural Christianity;" 23rd, Benjamin N. Martin, D.D., Professor, University of New York, "Design in the Elementary Structure of the World;" 24th, S. G. Brown, D.D., "Some Characteristics of Early English Literature ;" 25th, Charles F. Deems, D.D., LL.D., President of the Institute, "A Defence of the Superstitions of Science;" 27th, Henry A. Buttz, D.D., President of Drew Theological Seminary, " Plato and St. John;" 28th, Ransom B. Welch, D.D., LL.D., Professor Auburn Theological Seminary, "The Philosophy of Belief versus Drifting;" 29th, Isaac Erret, D.D., Editor of The Christian Standard, Cincinnati, O., "Discussion of the Leading Theories of Inspiration;" 30th, Francis L. Patton, D.D., LL. D., Professor, Theological Seminary, Princeton, N. J., "Some Recent Criticisms of Theistic Proof." 31st, A. P. Peabody, D.D., LL.D., Cambridge, Mass. "Beauty."

The first meeting for Conversation was held in the lecture-room of the Presbyterian Church, but that soon became too small, and so most of the Conversations and all the Lectures were had in the body of the church. A larger attendance was secured than at any previous School held in Summer by the Institute; a number of very able and useful members were obtained; all the interests of the Institute were largely promoted and measures taken which promise its establish ment on a sound basis. In addition to those named above, the following gentlemen are remembered to have taken part in religious or literary exercises: Rev. Dr. Cattell, Rev. Dr. Lothrop, Rev. Ed. W. Breckinridge, Rev. William Ainley, Rev. Dr. Kempshall, Rev. Robert Granger, Rev. C. E. Babcock, Rev. D. M. Rankin, L. D. Gould, M.D., Rev. Dr. Gibson, Rev. L. D. Gray.

CHARLES M. DAVIS, Secretary.

THE LANDS OF THE BIBLE, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

BY MR. HORMUZD RASSAM, OF LONDON.

[A Paper read before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy,
October 25, 1883.]

BAB

ABYLON, which is considered by all ancient writers and believers in revelation to be the cradle of the human race, the spot in which the foundation of all the languages of the world was laid, and where, in fact, the first disbelief in the Lord Jehovah was originated, is now a heap of rubbish, where the wild beasts of the desert still lie and the owl makes his abode ! Nineveh, the largest city known to the ancients, said to have been sixty miles in circumference, wherein, as it is recorded in the Book of Jonah the Prophet, dwelt six score thousand souls that could not discern between their right hand and their left hand, and which played a conspicuous part in the history of the primitive world, has been, ever since the fulfilment of its foretold doom by the Prophet Nahum, "an utter waste" and "a gazing stock." Egypt, whose transgression in the enslavement of the people of God was finished with repeated chastisements, for the sake of having rendered, once upon a time, succour to Israel, and having given shelter to the infant Saviour, has been suffered to exist as a semi-independent State. But the powers of Damascus, Tyre, Sidon and other minor Canaanite Principalities have been banished from off the face of the earth, "as when God overthrew