middens-which are reported to have been the feeding places of criminals, who were sent from distant parts and made to work in the mines. From this point to St. Agnes, wherever the smallest indication of a mineral lode occurs, men have burrowed like rabbits into the cliffs, and left us rude indications of the rudest-the earliest-mining. May we not have in these traditions, and those relics, some indication of the earliest inhabitants of Cornwall? We have here at all events the kitchenmidden of the stone age-and stone implements and weapons are not wanting-whilst we have found in the oldest mine-workings, oak shovels bound with iron, and equally ancient bronze vessels. present time, the only spot answering to his description. Diodorus speaks not of a single isle, but of several spots "which lie between Britain and Europe; at full sea they appear to be islands, but at low water, for a long way, they look like so many peninsulas." St. Nicholas island, in Ply. mouth Sound, and Looe island, are examples of spots which were, at no very remote period, connected with the main land of Cornwall as described. At low water, at spring-tides, ridges of rock connect these islands with the shore, and nowhere is there more than two or three feet of water. Several other spots might be named, on both the Southern and Northern coasts of Cornwall, which require the slightest possible physical change to restore them to conditions answering to the above quoted description. It appears to me that traditionary evidence strongly supports the historical statements, and that Mr. Kenrick spoke from insufficient knowledge when he said the Phoenicians had left no Phoenicia was one of the "high places of Baal;" and it would not be difficult to show that fireworship, with its terrors, at one time ruled this British land of tin. The Sacrificing rock on Carn Brea, near Redruth; the Tolmen or Main rock in Constantine; the Garrack-Zans-stone altars which existed at one time, not long since, in the centre of numerous villages-may be referred to. The Mid-marks of their presence. Space will not allow of summer fires of Cornwall resembling the Bealtine fires of Ireland; the fire ordeal, which consisted in lighting a fire of wood on the Garrack-Zans, then placing a burning brand in the hands of the suspected persons, who were to prove their innocence by spitting on the stick and extinguishing the flame; and the burning of calves alive, to remove disease from cattle (which was practised but a very few years since), are surely remaining evidences of a very ancient Eastern idolatry. The Stone Pillars,--the Pipers in Buryan, and the like; the numerous stone-generally called Druidic -circles, and the Cromlechs, partake in every respect of the Phoenician character. These remains of a Celtic people are scattered over the whole of the ancient Damnonium, extending from the wilds of Dartmoor to the Land's End. In conclusion, I desire to direct attention to the British castles and earth-works which yet exist, or rather to their positions and probable uses. Castle Treryn, near the celebrated Logan rock, is a remarkable example of Cyclopean walls and exterior earth-works. Near St. Ives are the remains of massive but rude stone walls called Giant's hedges, which can be traced for more than a mile, inclosing probably at one time, that promontory, and "the island" at its extremity. The "Bolster," the work of another famous giant, in St. Agnes, is a well formed earthwork, extending nearly two miles from Porth-chapel to Trevannance, thus surrounding St. Agnes Becon, which is now, and ever has been, famous for its deposits of tin. Those and several other fortified places and cliff-castles are found near the richest tin works. Is there any rashness in supposing them to have been constructed by the timid inhabitants, who desired to keep all strangers from those districts in which lay their only source of wealth? St. Michael's Mount is usually referred to as the Ictis or Ictin of Diodorus; and certainly it is, at the my entering closely into the question of the time necessary to produce deposits of gravel and sand with which "tin-stone" is found. Pentuan Valley, near St. Austell, and Carnon, between Truro and Penryn, are exceedingly ancient "Tin Streams," that is, places where the miners found the tin deposited, and where they washed-streamed-it from the lighter débris with which it was mixed. At Carnon, fifty-three feet below the present river bed, human remains have been found mingled with those of deer and other animals, among wood, moss, leaves, and nuts. At Pentuan, human skulls were discovered under forty feet of detrital accumulation, mingled with the remains of deer, oxen, hogs, and whales, together with miners' tools. Vast periods of time must have passed since those miners, whose remains we have found, were buried upon the scene of their living labours. Considerable changes must have taken place in the relative levels of sea and land since man inhabited Cornwall, allowing estuary, or marine, deposits to be effected in creeks upon a surface that previously permitted the growth of terrestrial vegetation. When the Cornish miners were digging the tin with oak shovels ironbound, they were using stone hammers. Traditionary story and the evidence of physical changes equally throw this period far back in time. The Phoenician came, and traded for the products of the miner's toil, "Then Tarshish was thy dealer by the abundance of all riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they funrished thy markets," (Ezekiel,) and from the markets of Tyre and Sidon the ancient world was supplied. The adventurous Phoenician who reached those far western shores, was something more than a trading sailor, he was the manufacturer of bronze and steel. We know that Tyre was remarkable for its dyes-the "sacred tiut”the Tyrian purple-and that Sidon was no less celebrated for its glass, showing that an empirical chemistry existed amongst this people. How many ages must have passed away before the skilled and refined Phoenician acquired this amount of knowledge; advancing, as they certainly must have done, from a condition in no respect superior to that in which they found the British Miner? This is a question which we cannot attempt to answer here. Sufficient for the present purpose is, to have found a people, who had advanced themselves into the condition of manufacturers; and who prosecuted, with much daring and skill, maritime discovery. This people placed themselves in the position of merchants to all the ancient monarchies. They have left their mark upon every land with which they traded-and we find the Phoenician brand upon the Cornish tin. When the Britons of Cornwall were using stone hammers and chisels to work their tin, the Phonicians, who bought it, were combining it with copper to manufacture bronze. A Stone Age and a Bronze Age were contemporaneous. Beyond this, I venture to believe that the interesting remnants of Assyrian luxury which Rawlinson and Layard and Loftus have placed in our museums, and which bear evidences of an advanced knowledge of metallurgy, contain tin, which was obtained 'from our ancestors, long before Christianity shone upon mankind. ROBERT HUNT. THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. I. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. "I believe in God the Father." NEANDER, the great German theologian, has a striking comment on the words of our Lord to the Sadducees, "As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." "How," he says, "could God place himself in so near a relation to individual men, and ascribe to them so high a dignity, if they were mere perishable appearances, if they had not an essence akin to his own and destined for immortality?... The living God can only be conceived as the God of the living. And this argument, derived from the theocratic basis of the Old Testament, is founded upon a more general one, viz., the connexion between the consciousness of God and that of immortality. Man could not become conscious of God as his God, if he were not a personal spirit, divinely allied and destined for eternity, an eternal object (as an individual) of God, and thereby far above all natural and perishable beings, whose perpetuity is that of the species, not the individual." This direct relation of man to God as a person to a person, which formed the basis of the Old Testament connection between the Divine Ruler and his chosen people, is extended to all nations of the earth in the opening words of the prayer which Christ taught for the use of his disciples in all ages and countries, "Our Father, which art in heaven." Moses, to whom God had revealed Himself at the bush as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, was further commissioned to declare to Pharaoh, "Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, even my firstborn;" and in these words we may see a prophetic reference to those to whom, in a deeper and fuller sense, God would hereafter reveal Himself as their Father. The Fatherhood of God thus primarily implies two things-the personality of God and the per sonality of man. No man would dream of giving the name of Father to a mere immutable law, to a mere first link in a chain of necessary phenomena, nor to the aggregate of all such phenomena put together. Our existence is in many ways dependent upon natural laws; there are natural conditions under which we breathe and move, and without which we could not continue to live for an instant; there are natural conditions under which we first came into life, and to which, in a secondary sense, we may be said to owe our physical existence; but to call any of the laws which regulate our birth and growth and nutriment, or all such laws put together, by the name of Father, is language which at once refutes itself by its own absurdity. We can have a Divine and Eternal Father, only on the supposition that there exists a Divine and Eternal Person, on whom we are dependent, not as phenomena are dependent on a natural law, which is but a general expression for these very phenomena themselves; but as creatures are dependent on their Creator, who existed before them, and distinct from them, and who called them into being by his own free personal act. For this personality in God and man necessarily implies the free-will of God and the free-will of man. Free-will is the one attribute which distinguishes a person from a thing. Necessary truths, necessary phenomena, whether that necessity be mathematical or physical, have nothing to do with personality. It is not my truth or yours, or any person's, that two and two make four, or that the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. The alternations of day and night, and summer and winter, are phenomena of nature, but they are in no sense mine. Even the necessary conditions of my own physical existence are not personal. "Surely," says Coleridge, "it would be strange language to say that I construct my heart! or that I propel the fiuer influences through my nerves! or that I com press my brain and draw the curtains of sleep round my own eyes." Those acts only are mine for which I am responsible, as having power to do them or not to do them. Without this power I am a thing, not a person; the acts in which I take a part are mere natural phenomena, for which I am no more responsible than fire is responsible for burning me, or water for wetting me. If the personality of man, as a limited and dependent personality, implies, within those limits, free action and power to do or not to do certain acts, the personality of God, as an unlimited and independent personality, implies free action and power without limit. Though for His own wise reasons He permits the phenomena of the universe to proceed in a regular and uninterrupted course, save in so far as, without affecting the stability of the system, they are in a limited degree under the control of man, yet the very conception of God as a Divine Person implies that this regularity and order is dependent on His will and not the result of any inherent necessity in the nature of things. We may say, with the Psalmist, "He hath made them fast for ever and ever; he hath given them a law which shall not be broken;" but it is only by recognising the law as His gift that we can acknowledge a personal God distinct from and superior to the world. But this relation of God to the world as its Creator and Governor is not all that is implied in the Fatherhood of God. He is indeed the Personal Creator of the world and all that it contains; yet it is only by a strong figure of speech that we could speak of God as the Father of the heavenly bodies, or of the vegetable or brute creation. Personality is the necessary condition of Fatherhood: if there be no personal God we can have no Father in Heaven; but it is not the only condition. The whole world is dependent upon God for its existence; but He is a Father only to those who can be conscious of the dependence. It is only in so far as we ourselves are persons that we can be conscious of our relation to a personal God: it is only through the consciousness of our own personality that we can obtain to any faint representation of the higher personality of God; that we can own Him as our Father and look upon ourselves as His children. The consciousness on our part of this relation involves two principal points: a sense of natural dependence upon God, and a sense of moral duty towards Him. Just as the parent is first known to the child as the person on whom his natural welfare is immediately dependent, by whom his natural wants are supplied, who is able to grant his requests and to give him such things as are needful, so man learns to look on God as the Being on whom he is ultimately dependent for his existence and welfare, who as a Person is capable of showing favour to those dependent upon Him, and as a Person can be regarded with feelings of love, and reverence, and gratitude, and trust, and fear. This is the first characteristic of our consciousness of the Fatherhood of God: its natural expression is the language of prayer: the natural impulse to this expression is the conviction that God can hear and answer prayer. But further the parent is made known to the child, not merely as a benefactor, but as a moral governor. The dormant sense of right and wrong is first awakened into consciousness by the parent's commands and prohibitions. Imperfectly awakened, no doubt: right implies something more than what is commanded, and wrong something more than what is forbidden: but these are the first conditions of the moral consciousness; and until the mind of the child is sufficiently developed to be conscious of a higher standard, his first notion of duty is that of obedience to his parent: his first notion of transgression is that of disobedience. And when that higher standard comes at last, in what form does it come? Immediately and directly, no doubt, in that of a conscience, of a sense of moral obligation distinct from and superior to mere command. We learn by degrees that there are some things which we ought not to do, even if a parent should command us to do them, because they are forbidden by a voice of higher authority within ourselves. But then arises the further question: Whence does this voice derive its authority? Are my own convictions a law to me simply because they are my convictions, because they are certain parts in my mental constitution, and for no other reason? The sense of inclination, the desire of pleasure and of profit, are facts in my constitution likewise: what gives one of these facts an authority over the rest? What makes the duty to do what is right superior in authority to the desire to do what is pleasant or profitable? The sense of authority, like the sense of dependence, implies a Person in whom it is vested; a law implies a lawgiver. The existence of a principle in my mental constitution entitled to exercise authority over the other parts of the same constitution, can only be explained on the supposition that it is implanted there by a Being to whom I am accountable for my actions, whom nature and relation to me gives Him authority over me, and whose authority is reflected in that the principle which He has given to enforce it. To this source of the moral authority of conscience, St. Paul expressly direct us, in the words, "For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." This, then, is another characteristic of our consciousness of the Fatherhood of God, that we acknowledge his authority over us, that in the sense of wrongdoing we are conscious of disobedience to that authorityin other words, that we have a conviction of sin, recognising in our evil acts, not merely the breach of a law within ourselves, but disobedience to the authority of a personal Divine Lawgiver. Thus much at least is implied in that Fatherhood |