tion as one of the most important phases in the method of revelation itself. But such faith is wholly inconsistent with the radical idea dominating materialistic conceptions of evolution,- namely, that the process of growth really explains the cause as well as the history of life on the earth, and also with the radical idea dominating the view of Matthew Arnold and the modern Dutch school of divines, - that there is nothing but an abstract ideal which is higher than man, that religion is only "morality touched with emotion," and God an expression for "a stream of tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness," in other words, not the foundation of our life, but its visionary goal. Now with both these conceptions as Dr. Tulloch showed, the Christian teaching as to sin,-a teaching which, like all other similar lessons of the Church, had its history of gradual growth, and was no more fully developed at first than the doctrine of divine grace,- is entirely inconsistent. If sin represent a fact at all in human experience, it is a fact which cannot be explained on the principle of finding in every new phase of existence nothing but the transformed shape of some antecedent state of existence. If sin were to the previous condition of circumstances and character what the blossom is to the bud, or the fruit to the blossom, then though it might be a morbid growth, a parasitic growth, a growth tending to disfigure and ruin the character out of which it grows, it would no more call for remorse, or penitence, or judgment, than the gall-apple on the oak, or water on the brain. Yet the attempt to eliminate the sense of sin from human consciousness is just as ineffectual as the attempt to eliminate the sense of cause and effect, or the sense of hope and fear. The "historical method," as it is called, which recognizes everything as having some real right to an appropriate commemoration in the life of man which is found alike in all ages, and developed as the life of the race is developed, demands that the sense of sin should be recognized as a constituent part of human history, no less than the feeling for art, or the thirst for knowledge, or the life of imagination. Indeed, it is far more pervading than any of these. While they are developed by only a portion of the community, the moral feeling of deep self-reproach and remorse for voluntary evil is shared by all, not least by the most ignorant who do not participate at all in the life of culture or of abstract thought. In the early history of every people, it is indeed remarkable how uniformly the nation feels that all its guilt or goodness is shared by all, that the penalty of impiety will light upon all alike, even when it seems to be due only to the acts of a few. As the Jews recognized that Egypt suffered for the tyranny of its king, and themselves expected that, in the long wanderings of the wilderness, all would incur the penalty of acts committed only by a few, —as the Athenians regarded their whole city as liable to a curse for the acts of desecration committed by a few thoughtless youths, so the early literature of all nations is full of the Nemesis which descends on one member of a family for the sins of his ancestors, a conception of which the earliest dogmatic trace is probably found in the story of the fall and the wide extermination which followed it in the flood. It will be said that this fact only proves that, originally at least, sin is no more distinguished from the antecedent conditions from which it is "evolved," than other human characteristics or qualities; that the peculiar remorse attending it, whatever it may be due to, is not due to any keen sense of personal responsibility. But it might be as well said that because in a dim light we cannot distinguish from each other the shadows of contiguous objects, we have no impression of the true meaning of a shadow. The line of discrimination between the range of the suffering, and the exact range of personal or tribal responsibility for the suffering, is necessarily a delicate line to draw. Society is so constituted, especially in its earlier stages, that it sins and suffers collectively, that it is often impossible to distinguish who is and who is not responsible for a calamity which overshadows all alike. Early tribes were units, rather than collections of units. What they did was done perhaps by the chief, but then the chief carried the whole tribe with him, and what he did, they consented to. In such cases, the sense of sin was necessarily almost as collective as the suffering which came of it. No one was in the same way sepa rately responsible as in more individualized societies, but no one was in the same way distinctly innocent of the guilt. It is only in later stages of society that it is possible to distinguish effectually between the range of the guilt and the range of the suffering caused by that guilt, which last necessarily spreads far beyond the limits of the guilt itself. When a whole city trembles because one or two of that city have done something impious, as Athens trembled at the mutilation of the Hermes, it is probable | Does not the whole story imply the conthat all feel, though not perhaps respon- ception of a divine horror of sin, and a sible for the impiety, yet accountable for more and more complete discrimination of the moral recklessness and selfish audac- its origin, its consequences, and its remedy, ity which caused the impiety. Athenian every step in which renders the divine awelessness seemed almost the contradic- ground-work of creation more evident? tion of Athenian superstition, but the Surely Principal Tulloch is right in saying Athenian mob felt in some dim way, we that the theistic and Christian conception presume, that the cruel awelessness of the of evolution excludes the idea of the growth young scapegraces, and the cruel supersti- of the higher forms of life out of the lowtion which cried out for vengeance on er, and requires that of the gradual revelathem, were somehow a growth of the tion of divine purposes which in the earsame stock. And to us, looking back at lier stages of human life are only roughly the history of Judæa and Athens, the real and dimly discerned. identity between the impiety of individual offenders, and the cruel vindictiveness which asked for vengeance on them as a mode of absolving the people from the consequences of such offences, seems plain enough. But as the history of a race develops, the time inevitably comes when finer distinctions are rendered necessary between sin and suffering, and when the notion of expiation is connected rather with the voluntary disinterestedness of more than human love, than with the compulsory suffering of arbitrarily chosen victims. The notion of sin is individualized, the range of the collective suffering which comes from it is better defined, and the conception of the intense and yet willing suffering which is its only adequate cure, comes out in its full grandeur in the doctrine of atoning love. From The Spectator of March 18. THE HURRICANES. FROM Sunday morning to Wednesday night, the north-west corner of Europe was in so much tumult of all kinds from the vagaries of the gases, liquids, and powdered solids which make up the envelope of our little planet, that only an earthquake, when the very foundations of things begin to tumble and collapse, could have created more alarm. No doubt an atmosphere is a most essential provision for human existence, and planets like the moon, which have none, are very desolate wastes indeed; but the vivacity which an atmosphere no doubt produces seems to be rather in excess of what is suitable to such creatures as we are, when rivers, in one place, are heaped up into water-spouts as the Rhine Thus, as Principal Tulloch truly urges, the history of the sense of sin is the truest example of the sort of "evolution" which should be our standard in interpreting the" to the height of a house,"sense to be attached to lower kinds of evo- is stated to have been at Coblenz; when lution. In the first instance, the ideas of omnibus-drivers are beheaded by a wanguilt, responsibility, punishment, expiation are all more or less confused in a vague notion of common evil, common penalty, and common hope of some sort of penance and purification. Then gradually the guilt is discriminated from the penalty, and the penalty from the expiation. It is seen that the doers of evil cannot suffer alone, but that they suffer differently, and in a much more permanent way, than those who only share the evil consequences and not the evil of the cause; and again, it is felt that those who only share involuntarily the evil consequences are in no way helping to remove the evil cause, while the divine love which accepts voluntarily, and for the sake of the guilty, that pain, of the origin of which it was quite innocent, is restoring the moral order which the guilty broke. Now, can "evolution" of this sort be in any sense the mere growth of more organized out of less organized structures? dering telegraph-wire in another; when, in a third place, farmers are entangled and starved to death in that fine white powder which is the only solid held by the atmosphere in reserve against human enterprise; when roofs of churches are swept into the windows of the neighbouring houses, and great blocks of stone are driven from the cliffs like so many hailstones, in other quarters; and when in some European capitals there is a hat and wig and chignon and umbrella storm quite as severe and much more grotesque than the rain and hailstorms with which it is mixed up; most of all, when in the great cities planted on the banks of rivers large suburbs are suddenly turned into lakes, and houses fall like children's playthings beneath the swirling tide. The snowstorm of Sunday and the tornado which lasted in fits till Wednesday morning were real lessons in what the apparently very modest agencies of our atmosphere could against constant repetitions of such scenes do, if by any chance the force which of destruction is the enormous elasticity drove them about were permitted to be of the particles of the atmosphere,for any length of time animated by a mad which causes them to spring asunder in and frantic spirit of destruction. We are so many directions, on the slightest of told now on all hands that invisible agen- impulses, that it is far more difficult to cies of great physical capacity can be ex- hold the force exerted to pushing in a sinerted through persons called "mediums," gle direction than it is in the case of either agencies quite equal to driving heavy furni- liquids or solids. These terribly destructure about rooms, and sending ponderous tive storms are only possible, we suppose, gentlemen and musical boxes sailing away when the forces which act upon the air under the ceiling. Well, suppose a band are so combined as to condense a considof these remakable agencies, which seem erable volume of air and drive it steadily to take so much delight in what is called in a given direction, just as the com"materialization," should get hold of the pressed air which causes the explosion of atmosphere for a few weeks at a time, and an air-gun is kept by the barrel in which make it perform the mad tricks which ta- it is enclosed from expanding in any dibles and chairs are asserted to perform by rection but one. Now, of course, this selthe "Spiritualists." Macbeth's witches dom happens in the case of an atmosphere evidently had some such notion in their which is only tied by the force of gravity heads, and boasted that the object of their to our planet. It is very rare, we suppose, spite should be tempest-tossed, though his under such conditions, for the constraint ship could not be utterly destroyed. And to be so exerted as to overcome the elasit does seem as if it might be easier for tic tendency of the particles of air to spirits to raise the wind, and let the wind spring apart, whereby they lose the conthus raised float the heavy objects which tinuity and coherence requisite for a comthey now exert themselves so much to bined attack on the rickettiness of human drive about the rooms in which séances structures. It is the high volatility of the are held, than to make these great me- air which is our best security against the chanical efforts directly, themselves. At fixity needful for frequent discharges of a superficial guess, at all events, pneu- such artillery as those of the early part of matic exercitations would seem to be more this week. A force which, if exerted to in a spirit's way than the habit of dis- drive a stone or a bullet, would kill at charging heavy projectiles. They always once, and which, even if it were employed used to be called the "powers of the to drive water, would prove a most forair," and there can be no doubt but that, midable power, is almost thrown away in if they want to do mischief, the air is a the air, whose particles reflect it so invery wide sphere of influence for them. stantaneously in all sorts of directions, that only a rapidly diminishing driving power is usually transmitted in the direction of the force impressed. Air is too much adapted for dancing away towards all quarters of the compass to be well fitted, without artificial manipulation, for the purposes of a battering-ram or a Bramah press. Indeed, it is in the gullies and narrow valleys, where something of this artificial constraint is provided for the air-currents, that, when such currents do happen to sweep through them, they are most terrible in the ruin which they bring. So far from its being a marvel that we now and then have these tremendous disturbances in the atmosphere, the marvel ought to be that, considering the perfect fluidity of the transparent and invisible medium which is wrapped round the earth, its great mobility under even slight changes of temperature, and the awful force with which now and again it does sweep over us, we so seldom hear of the sort of confusion which appeared to reign everywhere between Sunday and Wednesday. Why should it be so seldom heard of that every yard within a walk of two miles should be strewn with tiles, chimneypots, brickbats, or some other vestige of the propelling power of the wind, as happened on Sunday, for instance, at Boulogne? Why should not the whole area of our island be oftener in the condition of that appositely named Estaminet des Vents which the hurricane suddenly turned inside out on Sunday in the same town? We suppose that the real guarantee It is, of course, chiefly the physical mischief caused by these tempests which arrests the attention of men. When there is a cloud of hats and chignons in the air, people do not think very much of the state of their brains or nerves, and yet the changes in the pressure of the atmosphere probably do cause more discomfort to most of us through our brains, than they cause even through the rape of our hats, From Chambers' Journal. "MYSTERIOUS SOUNDS." or the wettings due to driving snow or rain. Whenever the barometer sinks very low, heads begin to ache, and sleep to forsake all the considerable class of people THE effect of certain sounds upon the whose nerves require the stimulus of a high mind is often very curious. We do not pressure to discharge their functions with allude to the ordinary phenomena of their usual rapidity and punctuality. There speech, singing, and music, where the are people who can hardly sleep at all at a sound-producing apparatus is tolerably faheight of five or six thousand feet, and miliar, and its distance from the hearer though, of course, no fall of the barometer, estimated with a near approach to accueven in a hurricane, approaches in any de- racy. The effect is only "mysterious " gree to the fall which is due to this ele- when there is any doubt as to where the vation, there appears to be something in sound comes from, and how it has origithe irregularity of the pressure, when a nated; the imagination then begins, and gale sweeps at the rate of sixty miles an sometimes works itself up to very singular hour over the earth, and the mercury hallucinations. Night, or darkness withstands one day at only 28 or 27 1-2 inches out night, has much to do with this matter. in the tube of the weather-glass and at When we cannot see the sound-producing 30° the next, that more than compensates agent, conjecture is apt to run wild; and for the mere diminution of the weight of ghost-stories often depend on no better air which you get in high Alpine situa- foundation than this. For instance, certions. Now that we know that the mere tain sounds may frequently be heard at presence, possibly the mere pressure, of night, coming from the air above, but from light will so far alter the constitution of a an invisible source -a kind of whistling substance like selenium as to turn it from or prolonged cry, the producers of which a very poor conductor of electricity into a are known in certain parts of England as very decent one, we need not be surprised "whistlers." Some legends make it out to find that sudden changes in the condi- that these whistlers are ghosts, some evil tions of atmospheric pressure often lead spirits, some Wandering Jews. But the to changes in the physical constitution of truth is that the sounds proceed from the nerves that are accompanied by both birds, such as wild geese or plovers, which great distress and great loss of power. are in the habit of flying in flocks by But so much the more we have reason to night, either for the purpose of reaching be very thankful that these great disturb- distant feeding-grounds, or during their ances in all the conditions of life do not annual migrations. The cry which is usueffect the physique of the brain even ally uttered by the "leader" during these more than they actually do. Very slight nocturnal bird-flights has, from ignorance forces seem to have so great an influence of its cause, been regarded as weird and on the molecular structure of certain sub-mysterious by superstitious folks, who asstances, that it is wonderful our nerves sociate it with impending evil. should not be more liable than they are to cerebral storms and hurricanes, to disturbances, for instance, which might make whole populations temporarily delirous, and turn a city into a big lunatic asylum, instead of a merely harried, and worried, and wetted population. Indeed, when we think of the wonderful volatility of the atmospheric shell in which we live, it is certainly much more surprising that we do not suffer oftener and worse from its high and low tides, its tempests and its stagnations, than that we are now and then forced into grumbling at the excesses from which we are generally so free. Sir David Brewster gives an excellent account of a mysterious night-sound which would have frightened many persons, but which proved innocently harmless when tested by a steady observer. A gentleman heard a strange sound every night, soon after getting into bed; his wife heard it also, but not at the time when she retired, a little earlier than he. No probable cause could be assigned; and the effect upon the imagination became rather unpleasant. He found, some time afterwards, that the sound came from a wardrobe which stood near the head of his bed. He almost always opened and closed this wardrobe when undressing; but as the door was a little tight, he could not quite close it. The door, possibly affected by gradual changes of temperature, forced itself open with a sort of dull sound which was over in an instant. From the lady not being in the habit of using that wardrobe, the mys tery became associated with her husband | feet distance on the Thames, whereas he only. Many a ghost-story would receive could only hear him seventy feet off on its solution by a little attention to the shore. Sound can be heard over ice, also, sounds resulting from the expansion and more easily than over land. When Lieucontraction of wood-work, such as doors, tenant Foster was wintering in the Arctic panels, wainscoting, and articles of furni- regions, he found he could converse with ture. Heard at night, when all is still, the a man a mile and a quarter distant, both sudden creaking of furniture in a room is being on the ice in Bowen Harbour. The apt to be somewhat startling, until one human voice, it is asserted, has been heard comes to know that it is simply due to ten miles off at Gibraltar - -we presume, "the weather." over the water of the strait. The whispering-gallery at St. Paul's is always a mystery to visitors; a whisper becomes distinctly audible at the opposite side of the gallery, but not at intermediate positions. The late Sir Charles Wheatstone once made a curious observation on sound at the Colosseum in the Regent's Park (recently pulled down). Placing himself close to the upper part of the interior wall (a circle a hundred and thirty feet in diameter), he found that a spoken word was repeated many times; that an exclamation appeared like a peal of laughter; and that the tearing of a piece of paper was like the pattering of hail. In the cathedral of Girgenti, Sicily, a whisper can be heard the whole length of the building, if the whisperer places himself in the focus of the semicircular apse at one end. A story is told that, long ago, a confessional-box was inadvertently placed just at that spot; that the details of a confession were audible at another spot near the entrance to the church; and that the authorities were first made acquainted with this awkward fact by a ferment arising out of one particular confession. Sound being generally more audible at night than in the daytime, is often exaggerated by those who overlook that fact. Humboldt specially noted this when listening to the cataracts of the Orinoco, and traced it to differences in the humidity of the air. The atmosphere is sometimes more than usually transparent, and sometimes more than usually opaque, to sounds as well as to light; Dr. Tyndall has recently proved this in a striking way, in relation to the audibility of fog-signals in different states of the weather. A little mystery is also due to the fact that we sometimes know that sound is being produced by an object visible to us, and yet we cannot hear it. The chirp of the sparrow is inaudible to some persons; others, who can hear it, cannot hear the squeak of the bat; and all of us are at the mercy of a kind of tone-deafness (analogous in some degree to Dr. Dalton's colour-blindness), in regard to sounds of acute pitch. A singular case of visible but inaudible drumming occurred during the American War of Independence. English and American troops were drawn up on opposite sides of the river; the outposts were mutually visible; and the English could see an American drummer beating his tattoo, although no sound could be heard. This is attributed to a kind of tone-opacity which affected the air over the river in a particular state of temperature and humidity. Single sounds repeated many times, and a whole sentence repeated after a second or two, are alike mysterious to those who are not conversant with the scientific conditions on which they depend. Some recorded echoes are of very remarkable character. Those on and near the Lakes of Killarney are doubtless familiar to many readers of this sheet. At Woodstock Park, near Oxford, it used to be said that an echo would repeat seventeen syllables by day and twenty by night a statement possibly in need of modern modification. An echo on the banks of the Lago del Lupo, near Terni, is said to repeat seventeen syllables; while the old topographers of Sussex told of an echo of twenty-one syllables in Shipley Church. There is, to most of us, much mystery in sounds when louder than we expected to find them. A well at Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, has water at the bottom; and when even so small an object as a pin is dropped into the water, the sound can be heard above, although the well is more than two hundred feet deep. At St. Alban's Cathedral, it used to be said, the tick of a watch could be heard from end to end of that very long building; whether the Many a mysterious rumbling, a tremrecent restorations have interfered with bling if not a booming, has been fairly atthis phenomenon, we do not know. Sound tributed to distant cannonading heard over can be heard over water at a greater dis-wide stretches of sea, and sometimes of tance than over land; Dr. Hutton heard land. Supposing the statements to be a person reading at a hundred and forty correct (which, of course, we cannot guar |