n a newly discovered or investigated
tribe or specimen, living or dead, would appear to be, the greater was
the value set on the discovery, because the nearer science was supposed
to have come to the missing link, the transition from brute to man. Of
course, the missing link will never be discovered, because it never
existed. There is no transition from brute to man, and never was. But if
there were a species of beings which might be classed either with man or
with brutes, a transitional species, even that would not necessarily
represent a transition in the direction from brute to man. We do not say
that a transition from man to brute is possible; for it is not; but we
do say that the evolutionist who sees in Bushmen and other savages
specimens of humanity representing the earlier stages of development,
through which the more highly developed species had long since passed on
the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a
great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in
supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a
country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which
the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been
evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark
Twain and his friend, who, having slept all day, rushed from the hotel
in scanty clothing, climbed the observatory and to the amusement of the
guests loudly admired what they took to be the famous Rigi sunrise,
while in fact they were vociferating and gesticulating at the setting
sun. But while our tourists had soon found out their mistake, our
evolutionists have not; which does not make it any less a mistake. St.
Paul has drawn a vivid picture of the degenerating influence of sin upon
the nations under the righteous wrath of God,* [[* Rom. 1, 18-32.]] and
the course which the Greek nation and the Roman would have run from
their pristine vigor exhibited in the days of Thermopylae and Cannae
down to the state of _marasmus senilis_ pictured by Juvenal, a state of
rottenness which even the transfusion of German blood into the putrid
veins of that degenerate and decaying race could not remedy, is a
fearful corroboration of the apostle's testimony."

We cannot leave this subject without briefly adverting to a great
historic fact, indeed, the most massive and significant fact in all
history, which, in its remoter bearings, not only strikes