thing in the history of the world which will justly a sober-minded
man in coming to any positive conclusion as to this promised
"progress" this infidel millennium, either the one way or the
other. The chief facts, apart from such special information,
would certainly point the other way. Look at the condition of the
immense majority of the race in every age,--so far as we can gather
any thing from history,--compare it with that of the immense
majority at the present moment;--what does it tell us? Why, surely,
that, if there be a destiny of indefinite "progress" in religion
and virtue for the race collectively, the hand of the great clock
moves so immeasurably slow that it is impossible to note it. The
experience of the individual, nay, of recorded history,--if we
can say there is any such thing,--fails to trace the movement of
the index on the huge dial. If there be this progress for the race
collectively, it must be accomplished in a cycle vast as those of
the geological eras;--a deposit of a millionth of an inch of
knowledge and virtue over the whole race in fifty million years
or so! Mr. Newman is pleased to say, "Some nations sink, while others
rise; but the lower and higher levels are both generally ascending."
Has this level for the whole race been raised perceptibly within the
memory of so-called history?

Observe; I am not denying that the notion may be true: I am
literally the sceptic I profess to be: I know not--apart from special
information from a superhuman source--whether it be true or false. I
am only venturing to laugh at men, who, denying any such information,
affect to speak with any confidence on the solution of this prodigious
problem, the data for solving which I contend we have not: while those
we have, apart from the direct assurance of supposed inspiration,
more plausibly point to an opposite conclusion. The conclusion
which would more naturally suggest itself from the history of the
past would be that of perpetual advance and perpetual retrogression,
contemporaneously going on in different portions of the race,--
perpetual flux and reflux of the waves of knowledge and science
an different shores; though, alas! as to "religion and virtue;" I
fear that these, like the Mediterranean, are almost without their
tides. For a "progress" in the former,--in the race collectively.--far
more plausible arguments can be adduced than for a progress in the
latter; yet how much might be said that appears to mi