I do not see how we can avoid such a conclusion. And yet such a conclusion will involve us in very serious difficulties. In Japan and China--the former more especially--if the march of civilization should be found to have rendered animal food more necessary, it has at the same time rendered it less accessible to the mass of the population. The great increase of the human species has crowded out the animals, even the domestic ones. Some of the old historians and geographers tell us that there are not so many domestic animals in the whole kingdom of Japan, as in a single township of Sweden. And must not all nations, as society progresses and the millennium dawns, crowd out the animals in the same way? It cannot be otherwise. True, there may remain about the same supply as at present from the rivers and seas, and perchance from the air; but what can these do for the increasing hundreds of millions of such large countries? What do they for Japan? In short, if the reasoning above were good and valid, it would seem to show that precisely at the point of civilization where animal food becomes most necessary, at precisely that point it becomes most scarce. These things do not seem to me to go well together. We must reject the one or the other. If we believe in a millennium, we must, inevitably, give up our belief in animal food, at least the belief that its necessity grows out of the increasing wants of society. Or if, on the other hand, we believe in the increasing necessity of animal food, we must banish from our minds all hope of what we call a millennium, at least for the present. IX. THE BIBLE ARGUMENT. It is not at all uncommon for those who find themselves driven from all their strong-holds, in this matter, to fly to the Bible. Our Saviour ate flesh and fish, say they; and the God of the New Testament, as well as of the Old, in this and other ways, not only permitted but sanctioned its use. But, to say nothing of the folly of going, for proof of every thing we wish to prove, to a book which was never given for this purpose, or of the fact that in thus adducing Scripture to prove our favorite doctrines, we often go too far, and prove too much; is it true that the Saviour ate flesh and fish? Or, if this could be proved, is it true that his example binds us forever to that which other evidence as well as science show to be of doubtful utility? Paul did not think so, most certainly. It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine, he says, if it cause our brother to offend. Did not Paul understand, at least as well as we, the precepts and example of our Saviour?