With a loathing and horror that words cannot express I turn from this scene—in which, though latent at this moment, there lie all the horrors of the Roman amphitheatre, and wars of the legions of Scipio, Marius, Tiberius, Cæsar, Nero, Severus, Decius, Valerianus, of Alaric, Attila, and Genghis Khan—to the dawn of liberty, peace, and enlightenment on the American continent, where, though old forms and institutions may survive, their interior nature or life is changed,—where the apostate church is slowly relinquishing its apostacy and growing into harmony with modern liberty and progress.
The time is coming, I trust, when Christian churches in the United States shall return to follow the sublime examples of the founders of Christianity; shall practise and diffuse that spirit of love in which is all freedom, all toleration and co-operation; shall welcome science and philosophy, and become the centre of all cooperative efforts for human amelioration.
The ameliorations of the last hundred years are so great that we may well anticipate still greater changes in the coming century; for, as Whittier says:
“Still the new transcends the old,
In signs and tokens manifold.”
It is reasonable to anticipate this change, because the old battle between religion and science, which placed each in a false position, must come to an end. The battle is still in progress,—there is still an antagonism; and scientists will object to the Journal of Man because its science is associated with religion; while theologians will object to its religion because based on science; but the contest now proceeds with diminishing rancor, and there have been minor reconciliations or truces between scientists and theologians. But finally the grand reconciliation must come from this, that when science advances into the psychic realm,—when it demonstrates the existence of the soul, and demonstrates that heaven is not a morbid dream but a splendid reality,—the religious sentiment will recognize such science as its friend; and when science goes farther, and interprets the Divine laws as written by omnipotent wisdom in the constitution of man, more plainly and far more fully than they have ever been expressed in religious writings, then will religion perceive that such science is the Divine messenger before whom it should bow in reverence, and whose every utterance should be held sacred.
It is thus the mission of anthropology to enlighten religion, to interpret the Divine law, and to reign in the kingdom of heaven, to which it is to lead us; and it is the mission of the Journal of Man to present and keep before the enlightened few the guiding wisdom of anthropology.
The Phrenological Doctrines of Dr. Gall.
THEIR PAST AND PRESENT STATUS.