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that the legislators of the day will come to him for the solution of the great social problem, and yet no one comes! He has been introducing his Millennium from time to time during half a century or more, yet all his communities have proved abortions, and every attempt to carry out his schemes has failed. Loud lesson to those who would secure the social elevation and political regeneration of the people without any recognition of the existence or the government of God! As well attempt to build a pyramid from its apex, as seek to reform society while ignoring the great fact lying at its very basis, that its cement and its security is its union with God.

At the World's Convention,' on Monday last, Mr. Owen told his old tale. He declared that the principle, which he propounded would secure, under the regime of the new world, without money and without price, to every man everything the heart could desire in superfluity.' The scene strikes us as altogether too melancholy for ridicule. A man sinking into the grave, his labour lost, and every hope of his heart unfulfilled! The same fruitless petitions to both houses of Parliament praying that steps might be taken to carry out the Communistic scheme! The same dreams of all nations, peoples, and languages coming to him for enlightenment and guidance.

As if to symbolize the character of his system as it began to be carried out at Queenwood, a picture of a machine called 'The Devastator,' making terrible havoc among the Russians at Sebastopol, was exhibited after his speech! Sad satire upon the announcement that the Millennium had begun!

Mr. Owen made another prophecy more likely to prove true than any other he has uttered. Having on that day completed his 84th year, he told his audience that he should die before another birth-day, his mission having nearly been fulfilled. A mistaken mission, we fear, from which neither he nor his followers can reap anything but disappointment! O that thou hadst hearkened to the voice of my commandments, then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness like the waves of the sea!'

JOSEPH BARKER'S OPINION OF ROBERT OWEN AND

HIS MILLENNIUM SYSTEM.

The following extract, from Joseph Barker's 'Overthrow of Infidel Socialism," is very appropriate to the present time-as Robert Owen is again prophecying another millennium. Speaking of the defects of Owen's system, Barker says:

There is another defect in socialism: there is nothing in it to support its followers under the disappointments and troubles which they must meet with, in their attempts to establish it. Just look for a moment at the case of Robert Owen and his colleagues; how pitiable is their condition! Robert Owen has been labouring to establish his system for nearly forty years; and after all, if we are to believe his followers, the world is as bad as ever. According to his writings he has frequently been in full expectation of a glorious revolution; and in every instance he has been disappointed. Time after time he has prophecied that the socialist millennium was at hand, and every prophecy has covered him with shame. He has crossed seas, he has traversed continents, he has had conferences with governments, he has written books, he has delivered lectures, he has had public and private discussions, he has neglected his business, he has expended his money, he has formed societies, he has established communities, he has blasphemed God, and betrayed men, and after all, though his hairs are growing grey and his eyes dim, there is not one single spot of earth that is lovelier or happier for his labours !

'While he has been labouring in the cause of infidelity he has lost his friends, he has sacrificed his ease, he has grieved thousands of his fellow-creatures, and

suffered many and grievous hardships; he has been represented as proud, selfwilled, and overbearing; as a mad or ill-designing man; he has been charged with base and interested motives; with fraud, dishonesty, and treachery; with cheating the poor and decieving the rich; and his name is now a proverb for wild and impious, and impracticable schemes. And these are but a part of his sorrows, and after all, the cause on which his heart is so much set, is languishing and dying away, he and his colleagues are vanquished and put to the flight, his followers are quarrelling among themselves, the Christians are triumphing, -and the world is wondering at his phrenzy, and denouncing his schemes as the monstrous offspring of infidel insanity.

'And yet under the weight of all those disappointments and troubles, he has no consolation. He has had no heaven on earth, and he can hope for no hea ven above. He has lost the favour of men, and he has found no friend in Heaven. There is not a whisper of consolation to cheer him, not a hand to uphold him but as he has lived without advantage, so must he grieve without comfort and die without hope. All that his system can do for him is to tell him that he is a brute, a lump of earth, and that if his burden be too heavy for him there is a short way to death, and that he must look to his own right-hand for deliverance. He is an outcast, a self-banished outcast from earth and from heaven, with no way of refuge but through the blood of self-murder to an infamous grave. CAN A MORE PITIABLE OBJECT BE CONCEIVED?'

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Such are the words of one who knew infidelity well-one who has now be come even more degraded, more pitiable, and more obnoxious to the God of Heaven than the individual he has so eloquently criticised! How truly does he represent Owen and his system! How prophetically does he criticise his own present state! How pitiable' is Barker's position now! He has lost friends,' sacrificed his character as an honest and straightforward man! world is wondering at his phrenzy,' and all right-minded people are denouncing him as one of the most hypocritical of public speakers. He has been represented as mad, he has been charged with base and interested motives, he has been represented as proud, self-willed, and overbearing. He has been charged with dishonesty, fraud, and treachery, with cheating the poor and deceiving the rich. And yet these are but a part of his troubles.

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. Uuder the weight of all the disappointments he has experienced-he CAN HAVE NO CONSOLATION. He has lost the favour of men--(and oh! how awful, how infi nitely worse)-he has fouud no friend in HEAVEN!! He is an outcast, a selfbanished outcast from earth and from heaven. COULD a more pitiable object (than Joseph Barker) be conceived?'

Really this extract and the exact fulfilment it has met in Barker himself is full of important lessons. 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed-lest he fall.' Oh! who could imagine that Joseph Barker, who has exposed infidelity so ably, would be an infidel now. 'Of how much greater punishment, think ye, shall he be thought worthy?' It does not become us to judge, but let us take home to ourselves the solemn lessons it teaches us.

His remarks on Robert Owen are to the point-founded on facts-and pungent. At the present time, when Owen is again raving about another millennium of his wild, mad, and immoral socialism, they are very appropriate, and well worth a place in the 'Defender.'

May the readers of this article profit by the important lessons it teaches when applied to Barker himself, and may they all 'take heed how they stand.'

Liverpool.

*The italics and capitals in the extract are mine.

OBSERVER.

THE GOSPEL OF LOVE, AND THE CHILD-DISCIPLE.

One evening, in the spring of 185-, as I passed the end of street, a young mother, evidently in deep distress, accosting me by name, informed me that her little son was "down with the fever," and desired that I would accompany her to her home, which was close at hand.

"He is a scholar in your school, sir," she said, as we walked down the street, "and has been asking for his teacher all the day, but he only knows him as his teacher, and by no other name, so that we could not tell where to send."

On entering the humble cottage, and bending over the couch of the sick little one, I recognised him as a scholar in our infant school. The fever was very virulent-literally burning the life out of that little body, and I saw that unless the teacher saw his stricken scholar soon, it would be too late. With all speed I sought my fellow-labourer, and returned with him to the bedside of the sick child.

It was a scene I shall never forget. There was the father on one side of the couch, and the mother on the other, both in an agony of grief. Their darling boy, a child of six years of age; a fine, robust, intelligent, and affectionate little fellow, suddenly stricken with the fever, lay before us gasping for breath. The "teacher" took one of the little hands in his own, and said in a trembling voice," Poor little Charley is ill." The little sufferer opened his eyes, he knew that voice,-greeted his teacher with a smile of love and recognition, and with difficulty uttered the words, "Happy land, happy land." The hint was understood. The teacher sang the well known hymn: "There is a happy land, &c.," in a low and gentle tone. During the progress of the singing, the countenance of the child was most expressive of satisfied joy, and as the word Jesus occurred, his little eyes glistened with pleasure of no ordinary kind. The desires of the "little one were evidently up to his Father and Redeemer. As the "teacher" was repeating the words of another favourite hymn, the struggles of death seized little Charley, and after a short combat with nature, his young spirit took its flight to fairer and happier scenes.

The weeping mother informed us that her darling boy was taken ill but two days before, and during the time had been singing or repeating the little songs he had been taught at the Sabbath school. When the doctor was called in, and told them there was but little hope of recovery, the broken-hearted mother could not restrain her tears. Little Charley seemed to understand the nature of the suppressed conversation, and the tears of his mother. When the doctor had left, turning his eyes to the face of his weeping mother, "Don't cry mamma," he said, "Teacher says Jesus loves all little boys and girls that love him, and will take them to live with him in heaven when they die." "And does Charley love Jesus?" asked his mother.

"Oh yes," he replied, his little face beaming with pleasure, "Charley loves Jesus, 'cause he died instead of him."

Several conversations of this nature occurred during the short illness of little Charley. His mother retained them with a jealous memory. They were lodgments made in her heart, of the "seed of the Kingdom," sown by the hand of her departed child, and blessed by the Spirit of God to her salvation. She found that peace and joy in believing, which nothing else can give, and was enabled to say, though sometimes with tears, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Little Charley, the child-disciple, being dead yet speaketh. The gospel of love, is adapted for all ages and conditions of men, and can touch with saving power the heart of a child.

Manchester, May 16th, 1855.

J. W.

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACES.

(Review of Agassiz's Theory of the Races.)

His exegesis is as curious as his logic. He asserts triumphantly that the Bible is solely an account of the white race, and makes no reference at all to the other, and, as he terms them, the non-historical races. We should be glad to know how he has discovered that Adam and Noah belonged to the white race at all. The best critics have been unable to discover any evidence for it from Scripture; and scientific grounds, we are disposed to think, indicate the primitive type as intermediate between the white and the black. But, however this may be, the assertion that the Bible sanctions the original plurality of the races is amazing. Is it not expressly affirmed, that before the creation of Adam there was not a man to till the ground? That when he was created, man (the generic term always used to denote the whole human race) was created? That he was the head of the human race-the one by whom sin and death entered the world? If, then, the non-historical races sin and die, have they not these proofs of their connection with Adam? Is not Eve called the mother of all living? And did Moses know of no other living races but the white one? Does he not expressly declare (Deut. xxxii. 8,) that the divided nations of the earth are the sons of Adam? Does he not refer the Ethiopian and Egyptian races to Noah through his sons Cush and Mizraim? Is not the physical characteristic of the Cushite unequivocally intimated when it is said that he cannot change his skin? Did not Christ expressly endorse this when he taught monogamy from the original unity of the race in Adam and Eve; and when, to fulfil the prophecies respecting Ethiopia, China, (Sinim,) and the islands of the Sea, he commanded his disciples to go and preach the Gospel to every creature? And can words declare it, if Paul's did not, when in opposition to the Athenian doctrine of a separate, autochthonal creation for Attica, he declares that God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the whole earth? Is not the entire Bible-teaching about sin, the moral government of God, the fall of man, and redemption in Christ, based on this assumption? If we exclude the non-historic races from all connection with Adam, must we not, by the express language of Paul, ("as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive,") also exclude them from all connection with Christ? And if, on the contrary, they are expressly affirmed to be connected with Christ, does not this also affirm their connection with Adam? Must not a cause that requires such exegesis as this be pressed for support?

That Professor Agassiz was aware how wide and deep was the sweep of his views, is apparent from his fling at mock philanthropy; his assertion of the original aud necessary inferiority of the African race; his avowed " inability to decide what is the best education that can be given them; and his magisterial denunciation of the injudiciousness of the attempt to force the peculiarities of our present white civilization on all the nations of the world. The plain meaning of all this is, that the benevolent and missionary operations of the church, in their application to any other than the white race, are foolish and futile attempts to traverse the immutable ordination of the Creator.

We cannot trust ourselves to speak of sentiments like these as perhaps they really deserve. There is something in this cold-blooded and haughty

assignment of more than half the human race to a doom of hopeless, irreversible degradation, for time and eternity, and this by the very act and arrangement of their original creation, from which the Christian heart recoils with indignation and disgust. We thank God that the nations sitting in darkness are not left to the tender mercies of human philosophy, and that its endorsement is not needed to warrant us to go forth into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.

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And we know of no more unanswerable argument for the absolute unity of the race than that furnished by the very phenomena that call for and warrant the efforts so sneeringly derided by the learned Professor ! Alas! the same sad proofs of brotherhood in sin and sorrow, of common parentage and common fall, of depravity transmitted by universal and hereditary taint, meet us in every race. The same wail of remorseful sorrow comes up in mysterious plaint from all; the same mournful memories of primeval purity now soiled and dishonoured; the same gleaming visions of an Eden innocence that has faded away, leaving only these mute longings after its unforgotten brightness; the dire and terrific phantoms of guilt that come forth to awe and affright; the same deep yearnings after the unseen and the eternal in the soul's deepest stirrings; and the same sublime hopes that shoot upward to the "high and terrible crystal,' —are found alike in every race of every hue. The unspeakable gift of Christ and him crucified, is as wide in its efficacy as these mournful symptoms of malady. The lofty intellects of a Pascal and a Newton do not grasp it with a keener relish and a deeper sympathy than the besotted Caffre in the lonely wilds of Africa, or the crouching Pariah in the steaming jungles of India. The Cross is that wondrous talisman that calls forth from every adventitious guise the universal manhood and brotherhood of the races. And when the lowliest African is "born again" in that heavenly birth that links into a a new and holier unity the fallen descendants of the first Adam, he is found to exult with as pure a gladness as the honoured heir of the proudest and noblest blood. O! it is this blessed fact that stands in lofty and indignant rebuke of that cold and cruel philosophy, that would wrest from the humble and the oppressed the only boon that is beyond the grasp of an unfeeling avarice. It is for this reason that we contend so earnestly against this vamping up of the old infidel theories of Voltaire. It is because. we believe that its general reception will not only undermine the authority of the Bible, but also cut the sinews of the noblest charities, and the purest pieties, of our age; sink the unfortunate and degraded into a deeper and more hopeless degradation; give a plausible plea to cruelty and avarice to rivet tighter the fetters of oppression, and fling a pall of despairing gloom over the brightest visions of the future, unfolded on the canvas of prophecy; it is for these reasons that we oppose the theory with such earnestness and warmth.

But having shown, as we think unanswerably, that the old and admitted principles of natural history require us to regard the varieties of the human race as belonging to the same species, and having shown that the last and most ingenious evasion of this argument is an utter failure, we may sit down content with what the Word of God has clearly asserted, and the vast majority of the first naturalists of the world have believed that men

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