ignore or malign the efforts in progress to preach Christ in China or India, or to the most savage and degraded of races. Most gratifying evidence is accumulating on every side, and in amount is overwhelming, that this notable century of beginnings, of experiments, of searching out effective ways and means for campaigning against idolatry, superstition and barbarism, is to be followed by another, and another, which shall carry on to glorious completion the mighty undertaking well set on foot during the years that have elapsed since Carey in his deep poverty and at his bench began to pray and plan. The schools and the churches so numerous, and planted in so many lands, with the converts gathered by the hundred thousand, are but the trifling first fruits of the abundant harvest in later days to be gathered. What an increase of laborers from the handful in the field in 1792, with Carey and Thomas the only representatives of Englishspeaking Christendom. Of ordained missionaries there are now some 3500, with unordained men and women enough to raise the number to 8000. But much better, even more significant and full of promise, of ordained native pastors there are already almost 3000, with additional native helpers of various kinds, teachers, catechists, bible-readers, etc., to make a noble sum of almost 38,000. Therefore the Lord's army marshalled on heathen soil is a panoplied host of well nigh 50,000! And further in the same direction, the tiny mustard-seed planted by those twelve Baptists in Kettering, which the churchly and scholarly Sydney Smith fifteen years later could ridicule as a lunatic attempt to convert 420,000,ooo pagans with a subscription of £13 2s 6d, has brought forth steadily after its kind, and has so increased that the gold and silver annually offered, though still in amount so culpably and scandalously small, not a tithe of what it ought to be, equals or even exceeds $12,000,000. Then as showing the effect of the gospel in heathen lands, proving conclusively that their profession of godliness is not vain, the

converts contribute upward of $1,300,000 to sustain their Christian institutions.

And then, finally, as indicating another valid ground for encouragement and assurance, as pointing plainly to even better things to come, cases are multiplying like that of the Hawaiian Islands, which in 1820 were utterly and grossly heathen, but now are so thoroughly Christian that the fostering American Board feels at liberty to withdraw its aid, home missions are sustained among the Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese, and scores of preachers and teachers have been sent thence to carry the news of salvation to Micronesia. As a source of supply for laborers in New Guinea the London Society looks largely not to England, but to Samoa and the Hervey group, while the Wesleyans have turned over various missions in the South Pacific, and Fiji among the rest, to be cared for by the Australasian Conference, a body of churches located in a region which in Carey's day was savage, and brutal and cannibal! It is no longer any great stretch of faith to hold that the world's evangelization is not only possible, but is also certain.

All things considered, the missionary achievements of this century, made on so vast a scale and shared in by so many denominations, though largely consisting, as they necessarily must, of exploration, pioneering, experimenting and laying foundations, cannot but be esteemed something very substantial and notable. But much better, they are a sure prophecy of astonishing conquests for the Gospel presently to be made on every continent, and in every nation under heaven. And, though hitherto his name has been little known, and the value of his work little appreciated, it can scarcely be but that in all generations to come the name of William Carey, as an apostle and master-workman in missions, will stand higher than any other, that of the great apostle to the gentiles only excepted.

ARTICLE VI.

PROFESSOR HUXLEY VERSUS GENESIS I.

BY CHARLES B. WARRING, PH. D., POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.

SOME twenty years ago, Professor Huxley said "the students of nature will no longer trouble themselves with these theologies," referring to the narratives found in Genesis. The prophecy remains unfulfilled, for every little while we have proof that" these theologies" still cause some students of science a good deal of trouble. That which gives the most, if one may judge by the number of attacks which have been made upon it, is the Story of Creation given in the first chapter of the book. Professor Huxley has tried his great powers of argument and sarcasm on it, I do not know how many times. His most notable assault was made a few years ago in the Nineteenth Century, based on an alleged fatal disagreement between the order of life as laid down in Genesis, and the true order as revealed by geology. In that article he states a number of facts as to the order in which various creatures made their first appearance upon our globe, all of which are very true, but which, it is no disparagement to say, add nothing to the knowledge of any one who has given a moderate degree of attention to any of the excellent manuals of geology which have appeared during the last few decades.

I must confess to a feeling of disappointment in regard to his treatment of the account which he criticises. It was not too much to expect of one trained to original research, accustomed to give little weight to authority, and priding himself upon his devotion to truth irrespective of consequen

ces, that he should cut loose from traditional beliefs, and see for himself just what that chapter says. It may seem very magnanimous in him to admit what its defenders and friends say it means, perhaps it was intended to be magnanimous, but one can hardly avoid the suspicion that it was only the policy of the chess player who gives away a castle to win a queen.

"Yes," he says, "I will grant the interpreters of Genesis almost anything, but one fact they must admit; there is in this account one central idea which cannot be explained away, and by which it must stand or fall. It teaches that the animal species which compose the water population, the air population, and the land population, originated in four distinct and successive periods of time, and only during those periods." Or, if I may put the same idea in another form, Professor Huxley asserts that Genesis teaches that there were no land animals before cattle, no flying creatures before birds, no water creatures before "great whales," and I may add, no plants before "grass, herbs and fruit trees."

That this is the Genesis of tradition cannot be successfully disputed, but whether it is the actual teaching of the account itself is quite another question. Professor Huxley regards the affirmative as too nearly self-evident to need argument. Had it been a matter pertaining to anything in science, he would be the last to accept traditional teaching without vigorous questioning, and then, having arrived at what he believed the truth, he would wait for the world to come over to his views, undisturbed by the thought that the consensus of former generations was against him.

The only way to know what this story really teaches is to study its own words, and not what somebody says it says. It professes to tell of things before man was created, and, therefore, it must be either a revelation from God, or the work of some ancient worthy who believed in one God, maker of all things, and who, as his thoughts took form, put

them in the words which we now have. The last is the theory which Professor Huxley adopts. He must therefore believe that the plants and animals of which that chapter speaks, were those and those only which were contemporaneous with man, because its writer could have no knowledge of any before them, and as the pictures on the monuments prove there has been no change since, they were the same in kind as those of our own day. If, on the other hand, we adopt the other theory, and believe God the author of the story, we are forced to the same conclusion, for certainly God knew too much, if he intended to speak of the first plants on our globe, to style them grasses, herbs and fruit trees; or, if he purposed to speak of the introduction of animals, to include among the first living creatures "whales " (or vertebrates of any kind) and fowl; or to mention as among the first of land animals "cattle." Hence, whichever theory we adopt, we must believe that this account was intended to speak only of now living plants and animals. Therefore, we need inquire only whether the present flora and fauna, the species now living, did in fact appear on the earth in the order of sequence given in this account.

Turning to the first chapter of Genesis, we see that the land vertebrates are represented as produced after the vertebrates of the water and the air, these occupying but one period. And that earlier yet were brought into existence the plants of to-day. If some ancient student of nature, looking over the broad landscape, had asked, which of the forms of life which delighted his eye, or of which he had heard, came first into being, which second, and third, and last, the answer he could read in this book was: Of the organic forms now before you, the plants are the oldest; at a later epoch ap peared the "great whales" and birds; and still later, the cattle, and the beasts, and the creeping things. Last of all came Adam.

This is all in the account pertaining to the order of life,