GEOGRAPHY AND TRAVELS. To Cuba and Back; a Vacation Voyage. By Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 288. (See p. 151.) EDUCATION. Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, & Co. 12mo. pp. 365. By George S. Boutwell. Eloquence a Virtue'; or, Outlines of a Systematic Rhetoric. Translated from the German of Dr. Francis Theremin, by William G. T. Shedd. With an Introductory Essay. Revised Edition. Andover: W. F. Draper. 12mo. pp. 216. HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. The Bible in the Levant; or, The Life and Letters of the Rev. C. N. Righter, Agent of the American Bible Society in the Levant. By Samuel Irenæus Prime. New York: Sheldon & Co. 18mo. pp. 336. The Poet Preacher; a Brief Memorial of Charles Wesley. By Charles Adams. 5 Illustrations. New York: Carlton & Porter. 18mo. pp. 234. Life of Jonathan Trumbull, Sen., Governor of Connecticut. By I. W. Stuart. Boston: Crocker & Brewster. 8vo. pp. 700. (See p. 147.) Plutarch's Lives. The Translation called Dryden's, corrected from the Greek and revised by A. H. Clough. 5 vols. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 8vo. POETRY AND FICTION. The Poetical Works of James Gates Percival. With a Biographical Sketch. 2 vols. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. (Blue and gold.) Igdrasil; or, The Tree of Existence. By James Challen. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 12mo. pp. 170. Owen Meredith's Poems. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 32mo. pp. 514. (Blue and gold.) Counterparts, or the Cross of Love. By the Author of Charles Auchester. Boston: Mayhew & Baker. 8vo. pp. 262. Waverley; Woodstock; Old Mortality; The Antiquary; Bride of Lammermoor; The Monastery. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Co. (Paper; "cheap edition," but dear at any price.) The Mother's Mission; Sketches from Real Life. 5 Illustrations. New York: Carlton & Porter. 12mo. pp. 311. The Cassique of Kiawah; a Colonial Romance. By William Gilmore Simms. New York: Redfield. 12mo. pp. 600. The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn. By Henry Kingsley. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp. 525. Mabel, or Heart Histories. A Tale of Truth. By Rosella Rice. Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster, & Co. 12mo. pp. 414. My Early Days. By Eliza W. Farnham. New York: Thatcher & Hutchinson. 12mo. pp. 425. Cranston House. A Novel. By Hannah Anderson Ropes. Boston: Otis Clapp. 12mo. pp. 388. My Sister Margaret. A Temperance Story. By Mrs. C. M. Edwards. (4 Illustrations.) New York: Carlton & Porter. 18mo. pp. 328. JUVENILE. The Seed Sown; a Tale for Young Persons. By Mrs. Thomas Geldart. First American from the Third London Edition. New York: Sheldon & Co. 24mo. pp. 171. The Boy's Book of Modern Travel and Adventure. By Merideth Johnes. Illustrated. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 18mo. pp. 333. Oriental Tales of Fairy Land. New York: Stanford & Delisser. 18mo. pp. 223. Rose Morton's Journal for February. New York: Sheldon & Co. 18mo. pp. 203. MISCELLANEOUS. The Tin Trumpet; or, Heads and Tales for the Wise and Waggish. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 262. The Exploits and Triumphs of Paul Morphy, the Chess Champion; including an Historical Account of Clubs, Biographical Sketches of famous Players, and various Information and Anecdote relating to the noble Game of Chess. By Paul Morphy's late Secretary. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 18mo. pp. 203. Prairie Farming in America; with Notes by the Way on Canada and the United States. By James Caird, M. P. New York: D. Appleton & Co. pp. 130. Army Life on the Pacific; a Journal of the Expedition against the Northern Indians, in the Summer of 1858. By Lawrence Kip. New York: Redfield. 12mo. pp. 144. By Charles Henry Boston: Ticknor & Proverbial and Moral Thoughts, in a Series of Essays. PAMPHLETS. A Discourse on the Evils of Gaming. pp. 24.-A Discourse on Shameful Life. By Rev. E. H. Chapin, D.D. pp. 25.-New York: Thatcher & Hutchinson. Funeral Discourse, delivered in the Unitarian Church of Charleston, at the Obsequies of Rev. Jas. R. McFarland, late Pastor of the Church. By Rev. C. B. Thomas. Together with other Tributes to his Memory. Charleston: Walker, Evans, & Co. pp. 30. (See p. 152.) Norton's Literary Letter: the Bibliography of the State of Maine, and other Papers of Interest; together with a Catalogue of a large Collection of Works upon Bibliography and America. New York: Charles B. Norton. pp. 52. Fourteenth Annual Report of Public Schools in Rhode Island. 1859. Providence Knowles, Anthony, & Co. pp. 43. Charity and Truth; a Sermon preached at the Ordination of the Rev. J. I. T. Coolidge, in St. Paul's Church, Boston, April 14, 1859. By John Cotton Smith. Boston: E. P. Dutton & Co. pp. 30. The Importance of a Positive and Distinct Theology. By H. W. Bellows. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co. pp. 22. A Sermon for Midsummer Day. Beauty in the World of Matter; considered as a Revelation of God. By Rev. Theodore Parker. Boston: H. W. Swett & Co. (See p. 153.) Annual Reports of the American Antislavery Society, by the Executive Committee, for the Years ending May 1, 1857, and May 1, 1858. New York: American Antislavery Society. pp. 203. Church Antislavery Society. Proceedings of the Convention which met at Worcester, Mass., March 1, 1859. New York: John Trow. pp. 31. A Tract for the Times, on Fellowship with Churches or Individuals that uphold Slavery. By Rev. H. T. Cheever. New York: John A. Gray. pp. 23. An Address delivered before the Young Men's Christian Associations of Boston and Richmond. By Robert C. Winthrop. Boston: Little, Brown, & .Co. pp. 64. Anniversary Address on Ministerial Union. By T. H. Stockton. Philadelphia: T. H. Stockton. pp. 36. Eighth Annual Report of the Boston Provident Association. May, 1859. Boston: John Wilson & Son. pp. 112. THE CHRISTIAN EXAMINER. SEPTEMBER, 1859. ART. I. -THE FUTURE OF MAN AND BRUTE. 1. Modern Materialism. A Sermon preached at the Ordination of 1852. Mr. Charles Lowe. By JOHN WEISS. New Bedford. 2. Chapters on Mental Philosophy. By HENRY HOLLAND, M.D., F. R. S. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1852. 3. Athanasia, or Foregleams of Immortality. By EDMUND H. SEARS. Boston: American Unitarian Association. 1858. 4. The Passions of Animals. By EDWARD P. THOMPSON. London: Chapman and Hall. 1851. MAN claims reason and immortality as belonging to himself alone among the inhabitants of the earth. The lower orders of being possess certain attributes which he calls instincts; they possess a life, which is superior, indeed, to that of the plant, but which ceases entirely with death. The animal has no future. When man looks upon the lofty works of human genius; when he surveys statues and temples; when his soul is borne heavenward on the wings of music; when it is thrilled by the fire of poetry; when he looks upon the broad civilizations which are the work of ages; when he looks within the breast of his fellow-man, or even into his own, and sees the lofty aspirations, the embracing love, the mighty intellect that inspires; and then looks down upon the speechless and apparently unreasoning brute, he sees nothing to disturb him in this self-satisfaction. But when he looks at the lower forms of humanity, at the ignorant savage of the wilderness, at the scarcely VOL. LXVII. 5TH S. VOL. V. NO. II. 14 less ignorant and more debased products of an overwrought civilization, his pride is somewhat lessened. When he examines, on the other hand, step by step, the progressive development of lower life, and finds nowhere any break; when he examines the structure of the highest forms of brute life, and finds a caricature of himself; when he sees the skeleton of the orang-outang hanging by the side of the human skeleton, and seeming to cast towards it a grin of recognition and relationship; when he studies the more internal faculties of the higher animal, and finds there in germ the types of all or nearly all his own; he is for the moment startled. The gulf which was infinite appears narrow, as if a leap might pass it. He feels at first somewhat like a man who, having been raised from some low estate to the midst of wealth and fashion, trembles whenever he sees one of his old neighbors and kinsfolk, fearing lest he should recognize and betray him, and the world of fashion should cast him out, and he should topple back again into the depths which he would fain forget. So man, with one hand warm in the grasp of the angels, shudders to feel upon the other the clammy fingers of the chimpanzee. So, too, with his reasonings on the subject of immortality. He is at times bewildered to find how easily their application admits of extension. The faculties of the animal, do not they prove the presence of something immaterial, and this something, must it not then continue to exist, in a universe where there seems to be no destruction? Is the life of the animal equalized? Look at the poor horse staggering under his burden, suffering from rude and heavy blows, who has perhaps never had a moment free from pain and hunger, from the time when this burden of existence, the heaviest he has ever had to bear, was laid upon him, and never will, until he yields to the weight of this burden, and stumbles and falls into death. Is there no recompense for him, nothing to equalize his lot? Man looks backward upon the geologic eras. He sees each race of plants and animals imperfect, pointing to and typifying a higher. This higher comes; but it is a new race replacing the old, and not the re-formation and the development of this old. Why may it not be so in his case? These powers and capacities of his, which seemed to prophesy a higher stage of being, which he looks upon almost as certificates pledging to him this being, why may not these also meet with their fulfilment in a new race, as distinct from his as that of the horse is from that of the icthyosaurus? These questions and these analogies seem at first sight to admit of but two solutions: either, so far as the revelations of nature alone are concerned, man is shut out from a personal immortality; or else he presses into it, as Noah did into the ark, with the crowds of these lower creations which he despises. He feels something as the fashionable parvenu who has been referred to would feel, if, invited to some princely banquet, he should go, full of self-complacency, and find there these despised connections of his, the beggars and horse-stealers, invited like himself, as if to mortify and debase him. These are questions which are rising with more or less distinctness in many minds, and which demand a solution. They contain weapons which infidelity knows how to use, and stumbling-stones over which faith has bruised itself. Revelation, it is true, is clear enough to satisfy them so far as the immortality of man is concerned; but yet the mind gladly sees a harmony between the written and the unwritten word. The question divides itself into two parts: the first has to do with the physical structure of man in its relation to that of the animal; and the second, with his mental and psychological structure in the same relation. The first of these questions more fully stated is this: Why, as in the creation one race succeeded another, cannot the next step be that another race shall succeed, and supersede man? This question we can here discuss only in a very brief and general manner. All the different forms of organic life are formed upon the same general plan. All are developed alike from the minute cellule. The leaf formation of the plant furnishes a type only less general than this. The germs of the highest organisms are found in the lowest. The skull of man, for instance, may be considered as an enlargement of the vertebral column. The rudiments of the limbs are found in the bony structure of the fish. So far as our present argument is concerned, we are willing to grant all that has been claimed by the most extravagant defenders of the theory of develop |