children, to avoid the trouble of rearing them; by diseases which they know not how to cure, and which they too often bring on themselves by their own brutishness; by bad food, and exposure to the weather, they die out, and perish off the face of the earth, fulfilling the Lord’s words to Adam: “Thou shalt surely die.” I do not say that their souls go to hell. The Bible tells us nothing of where they go to. God’s mercy is boundless. And the Bible tells us that sin is not imputed where there is no law, as there is none among them. So we may have hope for them, and leave them in God’s hand. But what can we hope for them who are utterly dead in trespasses and sins? Well for them, if, having fallen to the likeness of the brutes, they perish with the brutes. I fancy if you, as some may, ever go to Australia, and there see the wretched black people, who are dying out there, faster and faster, year by year, after having fallen lower than the brutes, then you will understand what original sin may bring a man to, what it would have brought us to, had not God in His mercy raised us and our forefathers up from that fearful down-hill course, when we were on it fifteen hundred years ago. And another thing which shows that these poor savages are not as God intended them to be, but are falling, generation after generation, by the working of original sin, is, that they, almost all of them, show signs of having been better off long ago. Many, like the South Sea Islanders, have curious arts remaining among them in spite of their brutish ignorance, which they could only have learned when they were far more clever and civilised than they are now. And almost all of them have some sad remembrance, handed down from father to son, kept up in songs and foolish tales, of having been richer, and more prosperous, and more numerous, a long while ago. They will confess to you, if you ask them, that they are worse than their fathers—that they are going down, dying out—that the gods are angry with them, as they say. The Lord have mercy upon them! But what is, to my mind, the most awful part of the matter remains yet to be told—and it is this: That man may actually fall by original sin too low to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, and be recovered again by it. For the negroes of Africa and the West Indies, though they have fallen very low, have not fallen too low for the gospel. They have still understanding left to take it in, and conscience, and sense of right and wrong enough left to embrace it; thousands of them do embrace it, and are received unto righteousness, and lead such lives as would shame many a white Englishman, born and bred under the gospel.