The Christian Examiner (March, 1863,) devotes over thirty pages to "The Immortality of the Brute World." The paper is rich in the literature of the topic, gathering opinions and curious surmises concerning this very obscure matter from recondite sources and others more within common reach, ancient and modern. No conclusion is arrived at save a preponderating probability that these lower orders of existence cease to be, at death. It seems, however, that not a few learned men have been inclined to the contrary belief. Passing Plato and the transmigrationists, Leigh Hunt and Theodore Parker saw no reason why "Tomkins's" hounds should not go to heaven as well as the "bumpkin Squire" himself, or why an Abyssinian hyena or a Kentucky rattlesnake should not be as immortal as a Spanish inquisitor or an American kidnapper that is, if the test is to be found in a mental or moral fitness for that distinction. "Without the supposition of another life, Theodore Parker could not 'vindicate the ways of God to the horse or the ox.' To him the immortality of all animals appeared in harmony with the analogy of nature, rational, benevolent, and beautiful.” The Rev. Dr. Hildrop takes the subject up more earnestly, and avers that some animals show a decidedly religious character, that they "would sooner be hanged than pilfer or steal, under the greatest temptation ;" and that the Scriptures favor this idea, in saying that dumb beasts are there "said to praise the Lord." The argument is taken from the immateriality of their mental natures to their immortality. Lord Brougham makes the fact of an immaterial spirit the chief ground of its immortal duration; and Hallam can hardly see why the elephant should not be destined to a future state, on this consideration. But that argument is not conclusive. Immateriality is the pledge of immortality only as God, the author of it, so wills. Man is immortal not because his soul is immaterial, but because God has made it deathless by his express fiat. He could have made the brute soul equally so, but has he? For if brutes live after death, why, asks Southey's "Doctor," has no one ever seen an animal's ghost? "No cock or hen ghost was ever alarmed by the spirit of its pet lamb; no dog or cat ever came like a shadow to visit the hearth on which it rested while living." Bayle and Hume concluded, from a comparison of the minds of the inferior animals with our own, coupled with the common conviction that the brute perishes at death, that we, also, being no more immaterial in our thinking structure than they, will likewise cease to exist, all alike bearing the stamp of a spiritual as well as physical mortality. This question has its branches. It does not seem necessary, in order to avoid the analogies thus drawn against human immortality to go with Des Cartes, Pereira, and Brodie into the theory that all brutal being is merely automatical, without any immaterial soul-life whatever. Nor does Prof. Agassiz satisfy the inquiry by taking sides with the Rev. Dr. Hildrop, and affirming a quasi sense of responsibility and consciousness inherent in the higher animals, and that our own heaven will be diminished of its completed joyfulness, if "we may not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds, and all their inhabitants, in the presence of their Creator, as the highest conception of Paradise." But here we turn to another of our exchanges The Princeton Review, (January and April, 1863,) which contains an able and instructive paper on "The True Place of Man in Zoölogy," setting forth the "Excellences" and the "Errors or Defects" of Agassiz's Contributions to the Natural History of our country. We notice but one point. The writer (is he another eminent physicist from abroad?) takes issue with Agassiz on the latter's classification of man with the mammalia, on the basis of certain structural resemblances; out of which identity of family our Cambridge naturalist argues the intellectuality and rationality of the higher animals,' and their probable immortality. This, the Princeton reviewer opposes by a denial of any such family relationship, asserting that man, by virtue of his moral nature mainly his conscience and accountability — and also his gift of articulate speech, is a distinct class of himself, made on a pattern essentially unlike all other living creatures in this world; hence the futility of all this kind of reasoning from him to them, and reversely. The "dog" question, in its religious bearings, is set upon a very orthodox footing. Our distinguished naturalist must make a closer induction of Christian evidences among his canine friends, to save them from being unchurched. No subject is more arresting just now than "The Scepticism of Science," and, in the January number of the Princeton Quarterly, this has found a free and strong handling. The writer looks around for no escape from the authentic results of scientific research; states fairly the nature of its inquiries, and of the authority they carry; is candidly severe upon the tendency to one-sided culture among the scientists; shows no nervous apprehensions concerning the issue of the ordeal through which our Scriptures are passing; but makes one concession to which we must take exception. Physical philosophy pursues the inductive method, rising from particulars to generals. It observes, examines, classifies, and states its discoveries. Religion, on the other hand, has generally pursued the deductive process, fixing the divine authority of its inspired books, and then drawing out of them its doctrines of God, salvation, righteousness. This has been urged to its be so. But, this, which is here hinted at, detriment, as a false method, by the physicists. We think our essayist yields the point too freely to them. "Theology, as a science, is deductive." "The argumentation of the theological world is predominantly deductive." It may is capable of a very strong statement - that, on the purely inductive method, beginning with just what we see every day around us, in man fallen, and nature as it is, we can educe and synthetize the Christian system in its chief elements and components. The philosophers are not entitled, therefore, to rule out the theologians from the field of science as cultivated by the Baconians. This first and noblest of the circle of the sciences has both these methods of prosecuting its investigations equally within reach, and can verify its labors, in either process, by the other. That it does this habitually is very well known to those familiar with its best authorities. The Westminster Review (January) uses "Bishop Colenso" as a war-horse on which to trot out its utter infidelity, with even more than its usual effrontery. It argues, at length, the impossibility of the increase of the Hebrews in Egypt to the numbers stated to have left the land of Pharoah, but does not prove it; further, that they could not have crossed the Red Sea, nor have lived in the wilderness, as related: (how utterly the efforts of Colenso and Davidson to break down the credibility of the Pentateuch have failed, the latest numbers of the British Quarterly and the North British Review give ample proof.) It, of course, repudiates all the supernaturalism of the history. Eliminating this, the writer is welcome to his case. But, taking the narrative as it stands, with its miraculous character distinctly marked, his case is worthless. Biblical criticism, which assumes that the supernatural element in the text is falsely there, is a waste of words. It is begging the whole question; for a merely naturalistic Bible is not worth contending about. The reviewer is jubilant at the prospect of the subjection of the rest of the Canon to the same Colensian crucible, in which he foresees an end of its peculiar system of faith; and concludes that we should not be very badly off without any Word of the Lord, to which speedy deprivation we are encouraged to make up our minds, since as good culture has often come out of the Pagan classics as from Hebrew writings; and the savage African is vastly a better Christian than "the Bible-professing traders who come to his shore." We congratulate the bishop upon his eulogists and fellow-helpers. He must feel flattered by his indorsers, and by the ultimatum to which they thus point his labors. Able as is the "Westminster" on many topics, its vaporing about religion and theology continually makes one think of the man of whom Montaigne jeeringly writes, "that he quitted the glory of being an excellent physician to gain the repute of a very bad poet"; which is only another turn upon Horace's satirical hit: Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus." "The lazy ox would saddle have and bit, The steed a yoke; neither for either fit." Bluff "Christopher North" has been looking recently through the windows of our neighbors the "Examiner" and the "Atlantic"; with his "Sun-god" face, "buoyant and beautiful, careless, free, elastic, unfading, ... gentle, earnest, and true,... irrepressible, fuming, rampant." Who shall say anything more about adjectives, disrespectfully? for was not glorious Kit "exuberant, extravagant, enthusiastic, reckless, stupendous, fantastic"? this High Admiral of Windermere, this pugilistic Professor of Moral Philosophy; "robust and fine, bulky and sinewy, ponderous and agile, stalwart and elastic." Here is the genesis of the famous "Translation from an Ancient Chaldee Manuscript," which started "Blackwood" on its career of notoriety, involving its publisher in a lawsuit (a first-rate advertisement) on account of its outrageous personalities. Says the "Monthly": "Hogg, it appears, wrote the first part; Wilson and Lockhart together contributed most of the remainder, amidst side-splitting guffaws, in a session in the house of the Dowager Wilson in Queen Street; while the philosophic Sir William Hamilton, in adding his mite, was so moved by uproarious cachination that he fairly tumbled out of his chair.” A CORRESPONDENT sends us the following stanzas written by him to the music which may be found in the close of Mrs. General Fremont's "Story of the Guard." HYMN. O LAMB of God, once slain for me, And on thy blood relying, Would fain devote that life to thee Which thou didst purchase on the tree O Lamb of God, thou risen One, When thou by death hadst won thy throne, The cross and shame despising; Didst then in triumph o'er the tomb In rising. O Lamb of God, ascended Lamb, From dust and death unending, Thou led'st the way for me to stand Complete with thee at God's right hand, Ascending. O Lamb of God, enthroned on high, To Mercy's seat, with access nigh, O Lamb of God, now glorified, ALL'S WELL. I. THE day is ended. Ere I sink to sleep My weary spirit seeks repose in Thine: Father! forgive my trespasses, and keep This little life of mine. II. With loving kindness curtain Thou my bed, |