With this “religious” theory admirably coincides the hypothesis of man’s having been originally created a savage, from which he was gradually exalted to the lowest stages of civilization,—­a theory which I thought had (in mere shame) been abandoned to some few Deists of the last century, or the commencement of this.  It is true that these writers do not expressly indorse it; but it is easy to see that they favor it; and it is most certain that it alone is consistent with their parallel theory of man’s “religious development” from the vilest Fetichism to (shall we say?) a mythical Christianity; though even to that very few have yet arrived.  According to this theory, the Great Father—­supposed a being of infinite power, wisdom, and Goodness—­threw his miserable offering on the face of the earth, with an admirable “absolute religion,” no doubt, and an “admirable spiritual faculty,” but the “idea” so inevitably subject to thwarting “conceptions,” and the “spiritual faculty” so perpetually debauched by “awe and reverence,” and the whole rabble of emotions and affections with which it was to keep company,—­in fact, with the elements of his nature originally so ill poised and compounded, —­that everywhere and for unnumbered ages man has been doomed and necessitated, and for unnumbered ages will be doomed and necessitated, to wallow in the most hideous, degrading, cruel forms of superstition, —­inflicting and suffering reciprocally all the dreadful evils and wrongs which are entailed by them.  For this man was created; such a thing he was,—­through this “ordeal” he passes,—­by original destination.  If this be the picture of the Father of All, he is less kind to his off-spring than the most intimate “intuitions” teach them to be to theirs.  The voice of nature teaches them not to expose their children; the Universal Father, according to this theory, remorselessly exposed his!  Such a God, projected by the “spiritual faculties” of Mr. Newman and Mr. Parker, may be imagined to be a more worthy object of worship than the “God of the Bible”:  he shall never receive mine.  If I am to abjure the Bible because it gives me unworthy conceptions of the Deity, I must, with more reason, abjure, on similar grounds, such a detestable theory of man’s creation, destination, and history.

As to that “progress” which is promised for the future, it is like the necessity for the past, purely an invention of Mr. Parker; if I receive it, I must receive it simply as matter of prophecy.  If the necessity has continued so long, then, for aught I know, it may continue for ever; the evil is all too certain,—­the bright futurity is still a futurity.  But if it ever became a reality, it would not neutralize one of the dark imputations which such a theory of the original destination and creation of man casts on the Divine character; not to say, that, if Mr. Newman’s doubts of man’s immortality be well founded, that better future will be of no more avail to the myriads of our race who have suffered under the long iron regime of necessity, than a reprieve to the wretch who was executed yesterday!