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CHAPTER V.

DOES THE HISTORY OF MANKIND ESTABLISH MR COMBE'S THEORY REGARDING PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT?

THAT mankind are, on the whole, making advancement in knowledge and civilisation, we admit. This advancement, however, is not owing to the mere development of inherent elements of improvement in human nature. For this advancement of mankind, we must assign a very different cause. That cause is divine mercy. Our world, though fallen, is not forsaken. It is marred; but there are agencies working to effect its restoration to order, beauty, and blessedness. Apostate man is the object of redeeming love, and the subject of renewing grace. The providence which guides the world is a gracious and remedial providence. In the curse itself, there was the embryo blessing. Human nature, now fallen and dishonoured, is yet to rise, in the saved, to an elevation far higher than that on which it originally stood, and to shine forth with a lustre far surpassing that with which it was originally invested. God's voice of restoring love mingled itself even with the sentence which devoted man

to fatigue, sorrow, and death. These are curative as well as punitive; and, when submitted to in the manner our Creator intends and requires, they produce a rich harvest of felicity even in this world. Labour has its happy excitement.

It is the nurse of health and the parent of animal enjoyment. Even the sorrow of the virtuous and holy issues in joy. They die to live-to live for ever. Rich showers of undeserved beneficence are continually descending to refresh our world, notwithstanding all its guilt and debasement. God loves it still. His long suffering goodness leads men to repent. His free and boundless redeeming grace rejoices over all that repent. He is powerfully, though secretly, putting forth influences whose tendency is to effect the restitution of the world. Elements of improvement there are in the moral world: these elements are being developed; but these elements are not inherent; they do not belong to human nature as such; they are superadded. Human nature, unaided by new communications from the Father of lights, would grow darker and darker. It needs to be elevated and purified by divine power, as well as pardoned through divine mercy.

Such

is the view of human nature given in the sacred Scriptures. In them we are plainly taught that the world" does not contain within itself the elements of its own rectification."

Such views are not inconsistent with the fact that the moral department of the world has on the whole improved. They are, however, quite irreconcileable with the hypothesis, "that the moral department of the world contains WITHIN ITSELF the elements of improvement, which time will evolve and bring to maturity." On the theory, that human nature is being improved through Divine agency, we are entitled to expect that at successive eras in the world's history more and more knowledge, virtue, and felicity should be

found in it. We are also entitled to expect the same, on the theory that "the world contains within itself the elements of improvement, which time will evolve and bring to maturity." The fact of progress proves nothing in favour of either theory. We must look more closely into the history and circumstances of human progress in knowledge, goodness, and happiness, in order to learn which of the assigned causes is the real

one.

Mr Combe refers us to the history of our own country since the time of the invasion of Britain by the Romans. Now, before examining the actual circumstances of this history, let us ask what each of the theories should lead us to expect.

On the theory of successive development of the inherent elements of human improvement which Mr Combe advocates, there appears a very strange and anomalous fact at the very outset. It is announced in his first brief sentence," At the time of the Roman invasion the inhabitants of Britain lived as savages, and appeared in painted skins." The fact is admitted on all hands; but how are we to account for it? How, we ask, on Mr Combe's hypothesis, had one portion of the human family progressed so slowly compared with another portion, all having sprung from the same root, all having in them originally the same elements of improvement? 66 Time," Mr Combe contends, "will evolve those elements and bring them to maturity." Well; the world was just as old to the savage Britons as to the civilised Romans. The same elemental principles were originally in the one race that were in the

other. The same time had been allowed for maturing those elements. Why, then, was there such a difference between the Britons and their invaders in point of knowledge and of civilisation? It was not the sun nor the soil; they remain. Look to Italy and to Britain. The

inhabitants of the latter are not now less civilised than the inhabitants of the former country. Why, then, we again ask,-why this difference in progress, during the same time, of the same elements of human improvement? Mr Combe tells us, that "The Creator, having designed a higher path for man than for the lower creatures, has given him intellect to discover his own nature and that of external objects, and left him, by the exercise of that intellect, to find out for himself the method of placing his faculties in harmony among themselves, and in accordance with the external world."* Well; the question is, How came different portions of the one race, with "the elementary principles both of mind and body the same," to make progress in knowledge, and in conformity to the natural laws, so very unequally? Why, for instance, did the Romans clothe themselves, while the Britons ignorantly and foolishly exposed themselves to all the severity of our climate in their painted skins? It will not do to tell us that time and experience are requisite to this progress, when the same time was afforded in both cases, and the same experience of the effects of heat and cold; or, if there was a difference, our ancestors had possessed the larger share of experience to teach them the advantage of being comfortably

* Constitution of Man, p. 3.

clothed. Mr Combe says truly, that "history exhibits the human race only in a state of progress towards the full development of their powers and the attainment of rational enjoyment."* Granted; but why do not all advance with equal speed? That is the question. On his hypothesis, we should expect ceaseless advancement among all the tribes of mankind; for they all have in them the elements of improvement-the same elements" which time will evolve and bring to maturity." On this principle, there should be no regress of any tribe towards barbarism. Is this the case? Let the present condition of society in Italy itself answer. Look at Spain, and say whether it has progressed or retrograded since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella. Look at Greece, when Byron sought to rouse her from apathy and degradation, and, contrasting her condition then with what she was in the days of her sages, her poets, and her heroes, exclaimed,—

"The soil, the sun, but not the slave the same."

Rude tribes now occupy the fields once covered with splendid palaces. Why this degeneracy? It will not do to attribute the degeneracy,-the decay of a people solely to extraneous causes, such as the irruptions of barbarous hordes. A civilised people, if not enervated by vice, must be more powerful than a rude one.

Imperial Rome, it is well known, sunk into the abyss of gross wickedness, before the Goth was able to trample on her eagles, and snatch from her the sceptre of the world.

* Constitution of Man, p. 3.

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