and the missionary movement has swept so boldly into prominence in the last fifty years that it seems practically like a new thing in the earth. In view of all this and a dozen other things which there is no space to mention it is perfectly plain that our God is marching on. In view of it all are we not fully warranted in declaring that the pitiful wail to which we are sometimes treated, that the world is growing worse and the times are fearfully degenerate, is absolutely ridiculous, unworthy of serious thought? The world is growing better, no matter what they say, The venerable "good old times," dear as they are in memory to many minds, were not even at their best as good as are these. It is true there are great evils in the world, and a very dark picture could be drawn by dealing exclusively with the misery and poverty and crime that are so plentifully to be found. But the point to be oberved is that things were much worse in the past, and that not a very remote past, either. We have not yet reached the millennium, but there has certainly been great improvement. Anyone who says there has not must be set down as ignorant of history and of the world at large. He shows that he is not acquainted with anything but what he sees right around him or reads in the daily papers. He takes too short views, too limited and onesided views. He is not competent to form any judgment in the matter. We need not and must not follow these pessimistic thinkers, who have traduced and disfigured every age. We have a perfect right to the stimulus of life. Victory is in the air, not defeat. In spite of all obstacles and hindrances the world moves forward. It is sweeping out further and further into the dawn. The light is breaking, the morning cometh, the day is at hand. The golden age is not in the past, but in the future. The promised land is just ahead. Though some hearts brood upon the past, our eyes With smiling futures glisten; Lo, now the dawn bursts up the skies, Lean out your souls and listen. The world rolls freedom's radiant way, And ripens with our sorrow; The bars of hell are strong to-day The Christ shall rise to-morrow. 8-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. X. THE ARENA. EVOLUTION ON TRIAL. Is it not time to call a halt? We have been making concessions, yielding point after point to the evolutionists, till we have found ourselves almost pushed from the outposts to the citadel of our faith, helping to fulfill the prophecy of Herbert Spencer, in his Biology, that the time would come when the supernatural would be " pushed out" altogether. Truly, that would be a dismal retreat, and for what? Atheistic evolution has been on trial for at least thirty years. What is the outcome? Virchow, from the advance posts of science, sends back the word, "The missing link not found." Perhaps he never heard of Professor Huxley's "horse" (?), a creature about the size of a wolf, with never a hoof yet evolved. We have been waiting for facts and have been met with fallacics-theories for truths, pretensions for proofs. What is the secret of such persistence? The purpose to push the Deity out of his universe. It is Hume's "No evidence can prove a miracle." It is Kant's dogged assertion that "no cause within nature can also give origin to nature.” Professor Tyndall sees the nightmare of anthropomorphism even in the creation of Darwin's "primordial forms." Here are some of the difficulties of Darwinian evolution: 1. A chancemade universe teeming with teleology and design—a contradiction, an absurdity. 2. "Life without previous life "—an unproved and improbable hypothesis. 3. Species developing into new species without any known connecting links. 4. Two negative principles, selection and adaptation, with all the potency of positive powers, producing a sentient world, the one by destroying, the other by changing what is already in existence. 5. Strata of fossiliferous rocks with definite boundary lines, separating species from species, but no forms in transitu. Where are all these half-developed creatures--the generations of bees and butterflies with only incipient wings, eagles with pinions powerless for flight, bulls without horns, elephants without tusks, apes without tails. 6. That inexorable law-"the survival of the fittest "--allowing monstrous creatures to live until they could be evolved into beings of permanent symmetry and beauty. 7. The enormous number of chances required to evolve a new organ in a series of generations, first its production, next its recurrence, then its growthten billions of chances for failure against one for success in only ten generations as though printer's type, spilled out at random, should after billions of trials spell out an "Iliad" or a "Paradise Lost." 8. The clashing laws of heredity and variation, the first tending to permanence, the second to instability and a kind of fickle experimentation. 9. The vast extent of time required for the evolution of living creatures compared with the limited age of the living world-say fifty million years, Darwin's utmost estimate. Now, it has been shown that the coral insect has been building in exactly the same style for about two hundred thou sand years, with no evidence of any variation in form or habits of work in all that time. Only two hundred and fifty of such æons are required to exhaust the limits of successive life. How and when and where did evolution do its work. 19. Variations of type merging into stability and fixedness with no directing hand-unlike Darwin's variations among pigeons, which were forced and unnatural, even reverting to the original type, if left alone. 11. The formation of organs fitted only for a future use and for an untried element-as the eye, with all its humors and lenses, formed in the dark, yet fitted for the light-the human eye, mobile, wideranging, farseeing; the eye of the dragon-fly, with its twelve and a half thousand facets, suited for observation in rapid flight; the eye of the bird, large, keen, adaptable. Aimless evolution somehow stumbled upon these magnificent results! As Martineau suggests, "A microscope invented in a city of the blind could hardly surprise us more." 12. The adaptation of plants to animals, as that of the orchid, stored with honey to attract the moth, then scattering its pollen upon its visitor for the fertilization of other orchids. 13. The marvelous instincts of animals. 14. The mind of man, conscious of a free will and a sense of accountability, yet evolved from a monod or from the slime of the sea-freedom coupled with mechanism, consciousness of power springing from insensate matter, confusion worse confounded! 15. The contrast of nature, with its apparent aims and ends and multitudinous adaptations of means to results, with the works of man, the latter leading back to a conscious will, the former leading back to an unknowable something-or nothing. Such is evolution in its widest and wildest sense; and we may venture to prophesy that future generations will be astonished at the credulity of their ancestors, who could gulp down such preposterous propositions while straining at the simple teachings of evangelical theism. We must fight this godless evolution and its abstract and undefinable ally, agnosticism, unto the death. They are the deadly foes of all living faith and spiritual life. Evolutionists knock madly at the doors of life and say, "Grant us only a beginning!" Ah! but that discloses the God of creation; and as no one believes in a dead Deity it is easy to believe in a living and loving God, holding not only his universe in his grasp of power, but each of his redeemed and adopted children, as a mother whose circling arms hold her babe to her bosom. T. M. GRIFFITH. Philadelphia, Pa. "LIKE PEOPLE, LIKE PRIEST." THE proverb, "Like people, like priest," is usually reversed when quoted, and made to read, "Like priest, like people." The prophet (Hos. iv, 6-11) was describing the sinfulness of the people, and the proverb was given to show the effect of their lives upon the priesthood. The inevitable result of widespread demoralization among a people is to tone down their religious teachers. Quite unintentionally and unconsciously we lower our standard of morals by constant contact with those who are in degraded moral conditions. What is at first shocking is soon endured, then condoned, and after a time practiced. It is still true that— Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace. The principle involved in the proverb and lines quoted find frequent illustration in heathen lands. There are many Europeans and Americans in China who, by contact with the heathen, have gradually taken on heathen vices. At first heathen practices were shocking and even horrifying, but time and contact gradually blunted their sensibilities, and little by little they have yielded until they have become even more degraded and shameless than the heathen. They are vividly described by St. Paul in Rom. i, 28-32. The same principle finds illustration in these Eastern lands in a less offensive manner among the people who have come here as religious teachers. Their contact with heathen philosophy and worship has, in some instances, led them to what they now regard as an appreciation of the truth these systems contain and a readiness to incorporate that truth into the Christian system. There are a few ministers who came here many years ago and who, unfortunately, became connected with government affairs, who are now ready to incorporate some of the most important teachings of Confucius with Christian theology, and thus to practically unite the two systems. One of the most prominent features of Confucianism is ancestral worship. In their temples they worship before the tablets of Confucius and other sages. They go to the graves of their ancestors at stated periods and offer their sacrifices and worship the spirits of the dead. It is now proposed to take ancestral worship into the Christian system. It is claimed that the acceptance of Christ need not necessarily interfere with this custom. It is believed that this concession on the part of Christian teachers will make Christianity more popular and render its success far more certain and rapid. Recently I heard a doctor of divinity who has been in China many years quote from the Sermon on the Mount, "I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill," and then go on to say, substantially, that Jesus did not come to destroy any truth, but to add to and complete any system containing truth, no matter where it might be found. His theory appears to be that Confucianism as an ethical system is in the main good, but needs the teachings of Christ to complete it-to bring it to perfection. Thus the teachings of Confucius and of Christ can be united and a complete system constructed. It was a clear case, unintentional, of course, of perverting the words of the great Teacher by quoting only a part of a most important utterance. The whole passage reads, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." If the Lord had said, "Think not that I am come to destroy existing systems of religion as such, but to complete them by supplying what they lack," the theory of the reverend doctor would have seemed more reasonable. Jesus did not come to complete and fulfill Confucianism, but to fulfill the law and the prophets. The learned doctor's idea seemed to be that Confucius taught the truth concerning human relations, and Jesus taught the truth concerning divine relations, and so by putting the two together the Chinese would have a perfect system of truth. One of the dangers now threatening Christianity in the East is compromise with heathenism. The advocates of this policy are, no doubt, finding much to encourage them in the proceedings of the World's Congress of Religions at Chicago, in which it seems to have been conceded that all religions are more or less divine, and that they must hereafter mutually respect each other. When one turns to his Bible and notes the denunciations of all idolatrous systems and worship, and then looks toward Chicago and sees Buddhism, Confucianism, Brahmanism, Mohammedanism, and Christianity in mutual embrace, he can hardly avoid asking, What does it mean? As a spectacular performance the appearance in the Chicago Congress of Buddhist, Confucianist, Mohammedan, Brahman, and Christian priests and ministers upon the same platform calling each other brethren was, no doubt, a great success; but did it help or hurt Christianity? Suppose the priests of these religions here in China should say to the Christian missionaries, "It has been decided by the World's Congress of Religions at Chicago that all systems of religions are divine, and that each system is peculiarly adapted to the peoples to whom it has been given. Why trouble us with your strange doctrines? Return to your own countries, and allow us to practice the religions that have come down to us from our ancestors in peace." What answer could they give? Fraternization by Christian ministers upon terms of equality with the robed and mitered priests of heathenism may have a fine scenic effect upon a*World's Fair audience at Chicago, but a view of their deluded, degraded, naked dupes and slaves in their native lands is quite another thing. Has the World's Congress of Religions brought heathen religions up or has it let the Christian religion down? If they have fallen into each other's arms it would seem that one or the other, or perhaps both, must have happened. "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" Shanghai, China. A. B. LEONARD. WERE ALL ANSWERS TO PRAYER PROVIDED AND ALLOTTED FROM ETERNITY? If we understand Dr. Mudge, in his article on Prayer in a former Review, he takes the affirmative. He quotes from Bushnell with distinct approval, as follows: "God can never once make a new purpose in time, because he can never meet a new case which had not already come into knowledge and had its merits discovered and its allotments deter |