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THE CREATION 
 
 EARLY DEVELOPMENTS OF 
 SOCIETY 
 
 JAMES H. CHAPIN, PH. D. 
 
 PhOFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY, ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY 
 
 NEW YORK & LONDON 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 S^Ije Jlniclurbockcr |1r£ss 
 
 1885 
 
Copyright, 1880, by G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 Press of 
 
 G. P. Putnam's Sons 
 
 New York 
 
TO 
 
 MY CONGREGATION 
 
 IN 
 
 MERIDEN, CONNECTICUT, 
 
 AND TO 
 
 THE PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS IN ST. LAWRENCF 
 UNIVERSITY, CANTON, N. Y., 
 
 WHO FIRST GAVE THESE LECTURES A PATIENT HEARING, 
 
 THIS VOLUME 
 
 3s Hff£tt(oTtattl2 3n5wiiclr. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 This little work is written in no spirit of con- 
 troversy. It is not an attempt to reconcile Science 
 and Religion. The author does not believe there 
 is any necessary conflict between them, but that 
 each has a realm of its own — each is capable of 
 sustaining itself — and that, clearly interpreted, each 
 may contribute something to the other, without in- 
 validating its own premises or subverting its own 
 conclusions. 
 
 He leaves the popular theories, therefore, to fall 
 into line with each other or out of line, as the case 
 may be, without any attempt to place a forced 
 meaning on a word, or to draw any conclusions 
 from scientific data that ascertained facts will not 
 reasonably warrant. 
 
 He desires hereby to express his obligations to 
 Rev. A. G. Gaines, D.D., President of St. Lawrence 
 University, for valuable criticisms ; to Rev. I. M, 
 Atwood, D.D., of the Canton Theological School^ 
 
PREFA CE. 
 
 who kindly examined a portion of his manuscript ; 
 to Profs. J. D. Dana and B. Siliiman, of Yale Col- 
 lege, and Prof. J. S. Newberry, of Columbia College, 
 for personal favors received during the preparation 
 of his book. 
 
 He has also availed himself of the published 
 writings of Rev. Thomas Hill, D.D., late President 
 of Harvard University; of Rev. F. H. Hedge, D.D., 
 from whom the subject of one of these lectures is 
 borrowed with the author's consent, and to Dr. 
 J. W. Dawson, of McGill College, Montreal, though 
 from the latter he differs somewhat widely on va- 
 rious points. 
 
 ^ J. H. C. 
 
 Meriden, Conn. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. — Primeval Chaos i 
 
 II. — Light ig 
 
 III,— The Firmament, Sea, and Dry Land , 37 
 
 IV. — Plant Life 57 
 
 V. — Animal Life 75 
 
 Vi. — The Geological Record , ... 1,9 
 
 VII. — Man 123 
 
 VIII. — Problem of Civilization 147 
 
 IX. — Failure of Primeval Society 171 
 
 X. — Diversity OF Tongues 191 
 
 XI. — Antiquity of Man 211 
 
 XII. — Ancient Civilization in North America 243 
 
Primeval Chaos 
 
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' 
 
 Not to the domes, where crumbling arch and column 
 Attest the feebleness of mortal hand, 
 But to that fane, most catholic and solemn. 
 Which God hath planned." 
 
 — Longfellow. 
 
 The tokens of a central force, 
 
 O'erlap and move the universe ; 
 
 The workings of the law whence springs 
 
 The rhythmic harmony of things. 
 
 Which shapes in earth the darkling spar, 
 
 And orbs in heaven the morning star." 
 
PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 
 
 The world exists. Whence came it, and what 
 was the order in which its several parts 
 
 , ^ ^^r 1. • 1 11 1 The subject 
 
 appeared ? We live in the world and 
 
 hold various relations to our fellow-men. 
 
 How came these relations to exist, and what were 
 
 the first steps toward the formation of society as 
 
 it is to-day ? 
 
 Such are the themes of our discourse in the 
 Series of Lectures we now begin. 
 
 We assume the championship of no theory 
 whatever — Scientific or Religious — but propose, 
 with such helps as may be at command, to trace 
 out what seems the most reasonable theory of the 
 origin of the world, with its marvellous harmony 
 and arrangements ; and then, of the first few steps 
 in the progress of human events out of which 
 came social order and civil institutions. 
 
 For the sake of simplicity we shall, 
 
 '■ treatment, 
 
 as far as may be, avoid the use of merely 
 technical names and terms, and employ words in 
 
4 THE CREA TION. 
 
 common use. When for want of a convenient 
 substitute it is necessary to use terms not en- 
 tirely familiar, we shall turn aside from the line 
 of discussion to explain them briefly, that when 
 we proceed we may go on understandingly to- 
 gether. Two or three such words occur in the 
 opening lecture, and others will appear from time 
 to time. 
 
 So to our undertaking. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton sat one day, it is said, exam- 
 ining a new artificial globe of superior design and 
 workmanship, when an Atheistic friend with whom 
 he had had frequent discussions entered the room, 
 and after admiring the new globe asked the very 
 natural question, ''Who made it?" To which 
 the philosopher replied, " Nobody ; it happened/* 
 Such an answer to such question strikes us at 
 once as not only unreasonable but absurd, and 
 yet it is substantially the answer the Atheist must 
 give to the question, " Who made the world ? " 
 
 We are unable to accoiint for the existence of 
 anything having manifest marks of de- 
 
 The world . . ^ . .• c 
 
 sien, contrivance or adaptation ot means 
 
 created. ^ ^ 
 
 to ends, except on the supposition that 
 it was conceived and planned by intelligence and 
 wrought into shape by skill and power. 
 
 It will hardly satisfy any exacting mind to say 
 that if there are sufficient causes in existence to 
 
PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 5 
 
 produce a given result, that explains the result. 
 It may explain the cause, it does not explain the 
 occasion for the thing itself. If, passing by a field 
 where a plough stands in the furrow, we are asked 
 why such an implement was made, it is not 
 sufficient to say, " The force in the blacksmith's 
 arm and the skill of the worker in wood caused it 
 to take form." It was meant for a specific purpose 
 and constructed for a definite use. 
 
 x\nd so our reason forces us back of the world 
 to a cause beyond the world. g^^^ p^^^. 
 
 It is not within the range of our pres- er beyond 
 ent purpose, however, to attempt to prove 
 the existence of a Creator; but taking that for 
 granted, to inquire by and through what processes 
 the world was made to assume the form and 
 nature which it has. We set out, hence, with the 
 assumption stated in the opening of the book of 
 Genesis, that " In the beginning God created the 
 heavens and the earth." 
 
 If the earth was created, manifestly there was 
 a time when it was not, and therefore a time 
 when it began to be. 
 
 We do not attempt to fix the date of this 
 event, or even to guess how long since 
 
 Date of the 
 
 the work began. For if we suppose it ^^^.^^^j^^^ 
 but six thousand years since man ap- 
 peared on the earth — a supposition for which there 
 
O THE CREATION. 
 
 is no sufficient reason in Scripture or elsewhere — 
 that does not help us to determine how long before 
 that the process of world-making began. We can 
 only say it was before all other recorded events, 
 or as the Hebrew record states it, " In the begin- 
 ning." 
 
 We do not attempt to dogmatize as to the 
 meaning of the word " create." It some- 
 times means to produce absolutely, that is 
 
 create. ^ -^ 
 
 to originate — and sometimes to shape 
 and set in order. In this passage it may include 
 both meanings, both the originating of substance 
 or material, and the shaping or setting in order, 
 since, so far as we have any means of ascertaining, 
 up to this time, space was tenantless and the uni_ 
 verse was silent ; an abysmal depth without an 
 occupant. This, of course, we do not absolutely 
 know, but back of that we have no record in na- 
 ture or elsewhere. 
 
 Hutton, a distinguished Scotch geologist of the 
 
 last century, assumed that science had 
 
 Hutton's , . . ... . . - , . 
 
 nothmq- to do with the oris'in of thmes, 
 
 theory. ^ ^ i=> ' 
 
 that it dealt only with existing causes, 
 and that, therefore, anything beyond the range of 
 causes now in operation was out of the reach of 
 science. And on this theory he says : " In the 
 economy of the world I find no traces of a be- 
 ginning, no prospect of an end." This statement 
 
PRIMEVAL CHAOS, 7 
 
 is now regarded as too broad, for in the gradual 
 change and wearing away of things, there is a 
 prospect of an end, whatever may be said of the 
 beginning. And the words already quoted give 
 us our only starting-point : " In the beginning God 
 created the heaven and the earth." 
 
 But it must be said of this account that it 
 merely states the fact^ without any at- Th / / 
 tempt to explain the processes involved, merely stated 
 And for this there was sufficient reason. 
 It was important, in a religious point of view, 
 that men should be persuaded that this world was 
 the work of an intelligent and powerful Creator. 
 The course and method of the work were of less 
 concern. The fact is stated, but there is no clue 
 whatever here to the processes. 
 
 If, now, we wish to know something of the 
 processes by which the work of creation was 
 wrought, we must turn to an entirely different 
 field. 
 
 What, then, has Science to tell us of the ori- 
 gin of things. 
 
 The first condition in which science ^^°^° 
 
 Science. 
 
 assumes to recognize the world is that of 
 a vast nebula, embracing all the matter now con- 
 tained in the solar system ; and though it has 
 been propounded, disputed, accepted, and then 
 doubted again, the most reasonable and best at- 
 
8 THE CREATION. 
 
 tested theory of the origin of the world, is that 
 known as the nebular hypothesis. A nebula is a 
 vaporous or filmy substance, more tenuous than 
 the comet's tail, or the thinnest portions of the 
 milky way. Tyndall not inaptly terms it *' star- 
 dust," and Herschell more accurately describes it 
 as "an im.palpable haze," as it has no more ap- 
 pearance of solidity or substance than the most 
 delicate or subtile cloud. 
 
 The nebular hypothesis may be briefly indi- 
 cated thus : If we sweep the heavens 
 
 The nebular • i i i • i 
 
 - . With a telescope, on any clear nio^ht, we 
 
 hypothesis. -^ ' -^ fc. ' 
 
 may observe nebulae at frequent inter- 
 vals ; some having the appearance merely of a 
 very tenuous cloud, others with a small nucleus 
 at the centre, surrounded by a vaporous substance, 
 denser near the centre, and thinning toward the 
 edges, as if it were gradually condensing to a 
 solid substance. Such bodies, larger or smaller, 
 have inhabited the heavens during the whole 
 period covered by history and tradition, and proba- 
 bly from the beginning until now. And each of 
 the solid planets, like the earth, was once a neb- 
 ula. Then, as to the origin of these several 
 bodies, they were at first all one. Far back in the 
 remotest ages, or in the very beginning, all the 
 depths of space were filled with this impalpable 
 substance. By the law of gravitation, it assumed 
 
PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 9 
 
 a spherical form, as any substance will whose par- 
 ticles are free to move, as the tear upon the 
 cheek, or the dewdrop on the grass, is round ; 
 and the whole mass had a rotary or whirling 
 motion, for law and energy were already operating 
 upon it. That is to say, it was not a chance 
 agglomeration of waste atoms, rolling through 
 space on a fruitless errand ; it was the material 
 of which this complete and wonderful world was 
 to be constructed: it was intended for something, 
 and to that end energy was put into it, and law 
 controlled it from the first. 
 
 As this vast body wheeled on through space, 
 portions of its bulk became detached from time 
 to time, as water flies from the surface of a wheel 
 in rapid motion; or, an exterior ring became de- 
 tached, as the centrifugal force overcame the cen- 
 tripetal, and this ring first breaking up became 
 aggregated in a single mass. And this process 
 was repeated from time to time. However the 
 separation may have taken place, the parts so de- 
 tached not only continued the whirling or rotary 
 motion, each on its own account, but received 
 also an additional motion, dependent on the at- 
 traction of gravitation, which sent it in a circuit 
 about the central mass. And from that time 
 forth it had a separate existence, was a separate 
 nebula, still retaining, however, something of the 
 
lO THE CREA TIOIV. 
 
 energy, and obeying the law that controlled it 
 from the beginning. 
 
 How many of these lesser bodies were de- 
 tached from time to time from the cen- 
 tral mass, or whether the process still 
 
 nebulae. 
 
 goes on, we have no certain means of 
 knowing, nor is it of any consequence in the dis- 
 cussion that lies before us. 
 
 In process of time, however, the vast central 
 body, or what remained of it, shapeless and dark 
 at first, became the sun that gives us light and 
 heat to-day — and one of the detached portions be- 
 came the solid earth on which we live. Our first 
 knowledge of the earth, then, so far as science 
 is able to lead us back, is that of a nebula — a 
 tenuous, cloudy mass, embracing in an intensely 
 heated state, all the material that have since en- 
 tered into the various forms of rock and air and 
 soil and sea. 
 
 It may seem a marvellous thing that the solid 
 
 substance of this earth could ever have 
 
 na ogy o ^^^^^ .^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^ ^ cloud or vapor, 
 
 Steam. 
 
 not only the waters and the soils, but 
 even the metallic ores, the iron and the gold, and 
 the almost imperishable granite, flint, and trap. 
 But we need not go far to prove that such a 
 thing is possible. Take a piece of ice at dead of 
 winter, and few things seem harder or more un- 
 
PRIMEVAL CHAOS. II 
 
 yielding; subject it to heat, and it becomes a 
 fluid, losing all its shape and hardness. Then put 
 that water into the boiler oi a locomotive, and 
 as the train moves off, a white cloud streams 
 away like a snowy banner. What is it ? We call 
 it steam. It is the same substance precisely that 
 was ice an hour before, but no longer solid ice, 
 or liquid water, it is a vapor. If, now, instead of 
 allowing the steam to be dissipated in the air we 
 could collect it in a cooling vessel, as we may 
 from the spout of a tea-kettle, it would become 
 water again, and if subjected again to cold, would 
 assume the solid form in which we found it 
 when we began our experiment. And thus it is 
 proven that the substance, the material is the 
 same, only different in form in these three states. 
 And, now, what has been so often done with 
 water, may be done with most if not all sub- 
 stances of which we have any knowledge. 
 
 Matter may exjst in any of these forms, solid, 
 liquid, or vapor. Iron may be melted, 
 
 1 . , 1 r ,1 T 1 Three forms 
 
 that IS, changed from the solid to a c .. 
 
 ^ of matter. 
 
 liquid State. And, as in the case of ice 
 
 changed to water, it needs only to be more 
 
 highly heated to become a vapor. 
 
 And the same may be said, so far as experi- 
 ment has been made, of all the materials of rock 
 and ores that make up the substance of the earth 
 
12 THE CREATION. 
 
 Hence we conclude that the nebula of which the 
 earth was made embraced all these materials, so dis- 
 solved and attenuated by heat, there was no more 
 density or apparent solidity than in the cloud that 
 floats now against a summer sky. Rather unsub- 
 stantial material this may seem to make a world 
 of, in which mankind are to live, create industries, 
 and build their monuments. But so seems the 
 steam as it streams away from the locomotive, but 
 which in a very short time may be ice again. 
 
 That the earth was once heated far beyond its 
 present temperature, is evident from the fact that 
 many of the hardest rocks are simply cooled 
 masses that were once in a state of mobility. It 
 may still be seen how they boiled up and over- 
 flowed, and ran out in this direction and in that, 
 like heated tar, till they cooled so as to preserve 
 their shape. Also, melted matter, that on cooling 
 assumes the character of rock, is still thrown out 
 from the interior of the earth by volcanoes, so 
 that the former fluid and heated condition of the 
 earth is not a mere theory, it proves itself to 
 everyone who has eyes to see. 
 
 Again, Astronomy tells us that our globe has 
 
 Conclusions '^^^^ form at present, that of a sphere 
 
 from depressed at the poles, that would be 
 
 Astronomy. , , • n i 
 
 taken by a mass m a fluent state sub- 
 jected to such conditions. 
 
PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 1 3 
 
 And if the earth was once heated to a molten 
 state, it only required a higher heat to reduce it 
 to a gaseous, that is to say, a nebulous condition. 
 And, therefore, the nebular theory of the origin 
 and formation of the earth, is not only every way 
 reasonable, but in good degree absolutely proven. 
 Indeed Prof. Guyot, in a paper read in Septem- 
 ber, 1874, before the Evangelical Alliance in New 
 York, stated that it had been demonstrated in an 
 exhaustive mathematical calculation, by Prof. Alex- 
 ander, of Princeton. Whether finally settled or not, 
 this may at present be regarded as the 
 theory of science, the one that best ex- theory 
 plains the known facts. 
 
 One thing more we must notice before we pass, 
 to indicate the changes that came upon this neb- 
 ula in its progress toward the completion of the 
 world. 
 
 If the earth came originally from the sun, it 
 must be that the material in the two are xhe earth 
 the same; and it has been one of the andsunsimi- 
 
 lar in compo- 
 
 latest triumphs of science to prove this sition. 
 fact — that the material of which the sun is com- 
 posed, and the substance of which the earth is 
 made, are one and the same, and may, therefore, 
 well have come from a common laboratory. 
 
 For a long time the sun defied all attempts to 
 analyze its substance. We^ could survey its sur- 
 
14 THE CREATION. 
 
 face, and note its movements, but what its com- 
 position was, was a matter of pure conjecture. But 
 the spectroscope now enables us to determine its 
 substance, even more accurately than the telescope 
 reveals its form and motions. 
 
 The spectroscope is an instrument invented 
 
 some twenty years ago, by two German 
 
 TheSpectro- ^^^^^^^^^ ^t Heidelberg." It consists es- 
 
 scope. ^ 
 
 sentially of a series of prisms, and is 
 used to determine the composition of a substance 
 by the bright lines in its spectrum. Let us briefly 
 explain. It has long been known that white light, 
 as the clear light of the sun, is composed of seven 
 colors— called the prismatic colors— so combined as 
 to neutralize each other, producing white light. If 
 a ray of sunlight be passed through a prism and 
 thrown upon a screen, the colors are separated, 
 and so separated are called the spectrum of the 
 sun. A spectrum may also be produced by any 
 other kind of light. 
 
 It has been found further, that while a heated 
 solid or liquid substance produces a con- 
 Spectrum ^.j^^Q^g spectrum— that is, one in which 
 
 analysis. 
 
 the colors are closely matched together 
 —that a heated gas or vapor produces a broken 
 spectrum— that is, consisting of bright bands or 
 lines of light, separated by dark intervening spaces. 
 
 * Professors Bunsen and Kirchoff, 1857. 
 
PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 15 
 
 Of nearly seventy chemical elements^' known tc 
 exist in nature, each produces a spectrum pecuHar 
 to itself, and therefore the composition of any 
 substance may be determined, when reduced to a 
 vapor, by the bright lines it yields in the spec- 
 trum, by the number of those lines, or by the 
 order of their occurrence with reference to the dark 
 spaces that intervene. 
 
 Now the sun produces all kinds of light. If, 
 however, a vapor of any kind cross the path of 
 the sun-ray — in other words, if the ray be made 
 to pass through a gaseous substance — a dark band 
 will appear in the spectrum, and in that part of 
 it the color of which is produced by the like 
 substance. That is the substance absorbs in one 
 condition what it produces in another. 
 
 The application of spectrum analysis to the sun, 
 therefore, is on this wise. It is observed, ^ ^ 
 
 ' Spectrum an- 
 
 for instance, that burning sodium, the basis aiysis applied 
 of common salt, produces a yellow flame, 
 and that in the spectrum produced by such flame, 
 the yellow assumes the form of a broad bright 
 band in a particular position ; and that in the so- 
 lar spectrum this bright band is replaced by a dark 
 
 * Prof. J, N. Lockyer, of London, on the strength of some re- 
 cent experiments, ventures the suggestion that all the elements may 
 yet be found reducible to the single element Hydrogen. The theory 
 lacks confirmation, and seems as yet to command little or no coufi 
 dence among scientific men. 
 
i6 
 
 THE CREATION. 
 
 band of corresponding proportions. Why is this ? 
 The matter is easily explained. Any element will 
 absorb the kind of light it produces. If the color 
 in the solar spectrurh is absorbed, it must be by 
 the same element that produces it. If the sodium 
 band is absorbed — replaced by a dark band — it 
 shows the presence of sodium in the sun. 
 
 The same rule holds good of other substances.* 
 
 Thallium yields a green band ; lithium a red 
 
 , band, with a thin orange one ; hydroo-en 
 
 Spectra of ' fc> J ->' & 
 
 different sub- three bands, a red, a green, and a blue 
 one. And so on, each holding in every 
 case its own exact position. And these all have 
 their corresponding bands in the spectrum of the 
 sun; whence we are led, rather driven to the 
 conclusion that all these substances exist in the 
 sun, as they are known to exist in the earth. 
 
 It is too much, as yet, to say all the elements 
 
 Sun and found in one appear in the other, for in- 
 
 Earth identi- yestic^ation has not s^one so far ; the sci- 
 
 cal in sub- '=' "^ 
 
 stance. eucc is Comparatively new. But sufficient 
 has been learned to warrant the presumption that 
 the earth and sun are identical in substance, and 
 without any reasonable doubt had a common origin. 
 By this method of analysis we not only learn 
 of what material the sun consists, but have also a 
 very certain clue as to its condition. 
 
 * See lithographic chart (frontispiece). 
 
PRIMEVAL CHAOS. 1 7 
 
 These elements show their colors only when 
 heated. We must hence conclude that 
 the sun, which shows all these colors so , ^ 
 
 ' the Sun 
 
 vividly, is in a highly heated state, even 
 if we had not sufficient evidence of that fact from 
 the light and heat that we obtain from the sun. 
 These considerations, some of which are of quite 
 recent development, are regarded in the scientific 
 world as practically settling the matter that the 
 earth was once a nebula that came from the sun. 
 What, then, must have been its appearance at this 
 early date ? 
 
 It is easy to understand that when all space 
 was filled with this vaporous substance, a dense 
 darkness must have been in and over all — darkness 
 was on the face of the deep, or the abyss, for as 
 yet there was no sun or moon or star, as they 
 exist to-day ; and when the change had proceeded 
 so far that both earth and sun had assumed definite 
 forms and motions, even approaching a solid mass 
 at centre, that still surrounded by a deep belt ot 
 vapor, steam, or cloud, there would be no light. 
 Impenetrable* darkness would hover over all, until 
 by processes at first unknown, the conditions should 
 be gradually modified and the original nebula pass 
 upon that series of changes for which it was evi- 
 dently destined, and through which it is passing 
 still. We have to do in this discourse, however, 
 
I o THE CREA ITON. 
 
 merely with tJie beginning — that chaos out of which 
 order came. 
 
 So let us, in closing, mark well the correspond- 
 ence between the theory of Science here- 
 Conciusion. in set fortli and the opening sentences of 
 the book of Genesis. 
 
 The one tells us of a nebulous mass, already 
 yielding obedience to the plastic touch of energy 
 and law, already preparing for a grand career of 
 development into forms of usefulness and beauty, 
 but enveloped still in deep clouds, a desolate and 
 shapeless waste, incapable as yet, of supporting life. 
 The other tells us that, " In the beginning God 
 created the heaven and the earth, and the earth 
 was without form, and void ; and darkness was 
 upon the face of the deep." 
 
 The correspondence could hardly be more strik- 
 ing or complete. 
 
11 
 
 Light. 
 
" Let there be light." 
 
 ' Hail ! holy light, offspring of heaven, first born, 
 Or of the eternal co-eternal beam." 
 
 " They say 
 The solid earth whereon we tread. 
 In tracts of fluent heat began." 
 
 " God said, * Let there be light.' 
 Grim darkness felt his might, 
 And fled away ; 
 
 The startled seas and mountains cold 
 Shone forth, all bright in blue and gold. 
 And cried, ' 'Tis day ! 'Tis day ! ' " 
 
II. 
 
 LIGHT. 
 
 In the first lecture we collected the material of 
 which to build the world, and so far as we were 
 able determined its origin. 
 
 . . . The subject 
 
 We are to speak now of the Origm ot ^^^^^^_ 
 Light, with special reference to the time in 
 the order of creative events at which it appeared. 
 
 If, to dispose of that matter at once, we turn 
 to the account in the book of Genesis, we find 
 these words in connection with the first mention 
 of the subject : " The spirit of God moved upon 
 the face of the waters. And God said, 
 
 .. , ,, The Hebrew 
 
 Let there be light ; and there was light. ^^^^^^_ 
 Again, a brief, concise statement of the 
 fact, without any attempt to explain the processes 
 by which it was done. It is simply that the great 
 and mighty one who evoked the completed world 
 from chaos, did at this point cause light to appear. 
 It would not be in place here to speculate as 
 to the precise meaning of the passage, " The spirit 
 of God moved on the deep." The word translated 
 
22 THE CREATION. 
 
 spirit is sometimes rendered breath, and some- 
 times wind or breeze, so that there is opportunity 
 for speculation, for such as have the time and dis- 
 position. / We prefer rather to regard the passage 
 simply as a reverent recognition of the power and 
 wisdom manifest in the changes that came by de- 
 grees over the dark abysmal depth, since these 
 were not fortuitous happenings that might come to 
 something or might come to nothing, but the sys- 
 tematic development of a plan devised and deter- 
 mined before the work began, and in which, there- 
 fore, every change and every movement contributed 
 to the result intended from the first. And to ex- 
 press this idea in brief, no words could be more fit- 
 ting than these. The Spirit of God moved upon the 
 chaotic deep. It was the first beating of nature's 
 pulse, " the first throbbing of her mighty heart." 
 
 Another mention is made of light farther on in 
 this account. But there was reason for the wide 
 separation of the two events, which will appear as 
 we proceed. And with this brief statement of the 
 ancient Hebrew record, we turn, as before, to an 
 entirely different field of inquiry. 
 
 What, then, has Science to teach us 
 
 n-in o ^ ^^^^ oric^in of licfht and date of its 
 Light. ^ ^ 
 
 appearance. 
 
 First of all, let us keep in mind the substance 
 
 with which we have to deal and of which we spoke 
 
LIGHT. 23 
 
 in the preceding lecture. Chaos means confusion. 
 The nebula was but a subtle vapor. As yet noth- 
 ing had assumed definite form or character. There 
 was the germ of worlds, but no world. There were 
 the elements of water and air and light, while as 
 yet there were none of these, none of the chemical 
 combinations or mechanical unions so familiar to us 
 now ; and the various changes in nature that we 
 know so well to-day, had not begun. There was 
 absolutely nothing but the dark chaotic deep. But 
 while it is possible to conceive of the original nebula 
 as dark — for dark as well as luminous nebulae still 
 exist — we cannot suppose it continued long in abso- 
 lute darkness, for one of the first effects of chemical 
 action would be the production of light, though that 
 light might be long obscured by overlying vapors. 
 ^'^''we need not concern ourselves here with the 
 nature of light — whether, according to the 
 older physicists it is luminous matter ra- 
 
 ^ ^ Light. 
 
 diated with immense velocity from the 
 light-giving body or centre, or according to the 
 more recent and probable theory that it is merely 
 the undulations of a universally diffused ether. 
 Either theory will answer our present purpose. 
 
 For the sake of convenience in this 
 discussion we shall speak of lia;ht as of "^' 
 
 ^ ^ Solar Light 
 
 two kinds, cosmic and solar; the first pro- 
 duced bv chemical action in the nebula itself, the 
 
24 THE CREATION. 
 
 Other coming from the sun. This use of the term, 
 " cosmic " may be open to criticism, but we use it 
 for want of a better, meaning by it just what is 
 stated, Hght caused by the nebula of the earth it- 
 self, after it was thrown off from the greater mass. 
 It may, therefore, be called earth light or world 
 light. While by solar light is meant that proceed- 
 ing from the sun. 
 
 And now, going back to the point at which we 
 left the incipient earth in the former lecture, let us 
 carefully observe what changes came about. We 
 deal now with the earth nebula, leaving for the 
 time, all the others out of the account. 
 
 There is a dark nebulous mass, some two thou- 
 sand times as great in diameter as the 
 
 The earth a ^ .in- , , . 
 
 nebula P^^scnt earth, floating or wheelmg its am- 
 ple bulk through space. 
 But as steam does not remain steam long after 
 exposure to the air, but changes to a 
 
 The nebula 
 
 chanj 
 
 ing-. 
 
 denser form occupying so much less 
 space, so this vast vaporous body had 
 not proceeded far in its course till the outer por- 
 tions began to condense, or change toward a liquid 
 and then a solid form, by which operation, of 
 course, the mass was being continually reduced in 
 size. The heavier particles gradually gathered to- 
 ward the centre, forming the nucleus possibly of a 
 solid globe, while the greater part still remained. 
 
LIGHT. 25 
 
 a sort of cloudy envelop about it. But while the 
 steam from the locomotive may change to a mist 
 that we feel upon the face, or fall like scattered 
 rain-drops on the ground, leaving their imprint in 
 the dust, this nebula contains not merely water 
 reduced to steam, but all the elements of all the 
 material that now enter into rock and soil, in the 
 form of a finely attenuated gas or vapor ; and these 
 are undergoing a change from their present to a 
 more stable condition.' The minute atoms of iron 
 are uniting, forming larger particles ; the atoms of 
 lime are combining, and so on through a long list. 
 And as this process goes on a glow comes 
 over the mass like the first faint dawnings 
 of the day. The surface of the body is ,. ^ . 
 
 ^ •' lighting up. 
 
 at white heat, and it gives forth a dim 
 light. 
 
 But as the process still goes on, the gathered 
 particles change to a clear red color. The surface 
 is now red-hot, and lights up all the space around, 
 and the earth has the appearance of a blazing 
 star. To state it more concisely, the earth nebula 
 is a blazing star. 
 
 This is what we have called cosmic light — not 
 coming from the sun, but produced by the earth 
 itself as it hung like a brilliant meteor in the sky. 
 Something analagous to this may be easily wit- 
 nessed. 
 
26 THE CREATION. 
 
 Go into a blacksmith's shop, and heat a piece 
 
 of iron as highly as can be done with a 
 
 na ogy o ^^^j^^j^ bellows. It comes from the fire, 
 
 heated iron. ' 
 
 of a whitish color, emitting an indistinct 
 glow, not unlike the aurora or the dawn. Wait a 
 moment, and at a different temperature it changes 
 to red. It is red-hot, and will cast a glow of light 
 far out into the night. Such was the change 
 through which the earth nebula passed, from a 
 dark, chaotic state, till it became a luminous body, 
 shining with its own light. And it was by such 
 means the fiat, " Let there be light," was first an- 
 swered and obeyed. 
 
 But now comes another important change. 
 
 To extend the foregoing illustration : if you ob- 
 _, , serve the iron in the fors^e, from the 
 
 The earth ^ ' 
 
 becomes brilliant and luminous condition of red 
 opaque. j^gg^^^ j|. soon changes to a dark color and 
 becomes opaque, showing no light at all, any more 
 than if it were cold iron, though it may still be 
 somewhat hot. A similar change passed upon the 
 earth ; not immediately, for the larger the body 
 the longer the time required in cooling. But in 
 process of time the earth became dark again ; for 
 it had so far cooled, and the matter had so far 
 condensed, that a thin crust had formed all around 
 it, on the same principle that a slag will form on 
 a pot of melted metal, though the interior may 
 
LIGHT. 2y 
 
 remain a long time after in a heated and even 
 molten condition. A bed of fresh volcanic lava, 
 also, will retain a perceptible degree of warmth 
 for many years, varying according to its thickness 
 . and other modifying circumstances. 
 
 Thus we trace the series of changes through 
 which the earth passed ; from, first, a 
 vast ball of vapor to a body of liquid or ^ p^o<^^ss 
 
 ■■• y T. reviewed. 
 
 molten substance — emitting first the glow 
 of white heat and then the light of red heat — and 
 thence to a globe having a thin crust upon it, 
 and so beginning to assume somewhat the ap- 
 pearance and character of the modern earth. As 
 the process continued and the cooling went on, 
 of course the crust grew thicker by degrees and 
 more substantial, and thus was it fitted at length 
 for the production and maintenance of life in its 
 various forms. 
 
 We are not yet prepared, however, to follow 
 the earth in its development of soils and seas and 
 rocks and rivers, for there are other matters that 
 must be considered before we can present an in- 
 telligible view of the creation as a whole. 
 
 We have to do in this chapter especially with 
 Light. We have spoken of light as of Distinctions 
 two kinds, and it is important that we °nd°^T^ 
 keep in mind the distinction between the ^ig:ht. 
 two. That already described as Cosmic Light, not 
 
28 THE CREATION. 
 
 light from a foreign body— not reflected light, but 
 that produced in and by the earth itself in its 
 progress from the nebula to the condition of a 
 solid or encrusted globe. 
 
 We have now to speak of the other kind of 
 light, of far more practical importance as it seems 
 to us to-day— Solar Light, that coming from the 
 sun. 
 
 It will readily occur to the reader, that if the 
 nebula out of which the earth was made was origi- 
 nally from the sun, or if all the substance of sun 
 and planets was once one nebulous mass, and if, as 
 has been elsewhere stated, the substance of the 
 earth and sun is the same, it is reasonable to sup- 
 pose the sun would pass through a series of 
 changes similar to those of the earth. 
 
 And that is even so. 
 
 As the earth was once nebulous and dark, so 
 was the sun once nebulous and dark. 
 
 Analogies of 
 
 sun and " Darkness was upon the face of the 
 ^^^^^' deep " was as applicable to the sun as 
 to the earth, though the passage quoted probably 
 had reference only to the earth. 
 
 The analogy between the earth and sun may 
 be traced still farther. As the earth, by the earlier 
 condensation of its vapors became a glowing ball 
 that shot out rays of light far into the depths of 
 space, sordid the sun by the same process pre- 
 
LIGHT. 29 
 
 cisely. And that condition, the condition in which 
 it glows by its own light and sends its rays afar, is 
 the condition in which the sun exists to-day; and by 
 virtue of which it supplies light and heat, to what 
 without it would be a dark if not a frozen world. 
 
 It required a much longer time for these 
 chanp-es to pass upon the sun than upon ^^ 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ Changes less 
 
 the earth, for the sun is more than rapid in the 
 twelve hundred thousand times larger 
 than the earth ; and the time required to work im- 
 portant changes bears some proportion to the bulk. 
 But the great luminary passed its incipient period 
 of darkness, then its dawn of white heat, and is 
 now in the condition of the blazing star. 
 
 And so it will appear that the two kinds of 
 licrht, designated as cosmic and solar, are _ ^.^ ^ 
 
 i5 ' ^ Identity of 
 
 the same in constitution ; that is, are cosmic and 
 
 1-1 -1 1-1 solar light. 
 
 produced from like material and m the 
 same way ; by the combustion of elements that 
 enter into sun and earth alike. And the two 
 terms are used merely for the convenience of dis- 
 tinction. The period of cosmic light for the earth 
 is long since passed. It closed with the first for- 
 mation of a crust upon the globe, unless we ex- 
 cept the tongues of flame that for a time shot 
 up here and there through the rifted envelop. 
 The light on which we now depend is borrowed 
 from the sun. 
 
^ 
 
 30 THE CREATION. 
 
 It must occur to the thoughtful reader at this 
 point, that as these changes are slowly 
 
 Interval ^ ' ^ : 
 
 between the wrought, there must have been a consid- 
 erable lapse of time between the appear- 
 ance of cosmic light and that of solar light. A 
 longer time was required for the sun to reach its 
 highly luminous condition, by reason of its greater 
 mass, to say nothing of the fact that the over- 
 lying vapors of the encrusted earth, as will be 
 explained in the succeeding chapter, must have 
 long obscured the solar rays, or prevented the free 
 access of the sunlight to the earth. 
 
 It is worthy of particular remark that the He- 
 brew record so represents it ; the one event being 
 placed in the first day, the other upon the fourth. 
 We have no means at command for any definite 
 calculation of the period. 
 
 We might dilate to almost any extent, did it 
 
 come within the purpose of this discus- 
 Offices of the . ^^ rn r .\ 
 
 sion, upon the omce or uses 01 the sun ; 
 
 sun. ^ 
 
 not only as the promoter of life and 
 growth and organic change, but considered as di- 
 viding the light from the darkness, serving the 
 purpose of a time-keeper. Without this provision 
 we should have no definite and convenient measure 
 of time. Without a definite chronology consecu- 
 tive history would be hardly possible. And with- 
 out history, transmitted experience would count 
 
LIGHT. 
 
 for nothing in the economy of human life. Each 
 generation would begin untutored by the past ; 
 there would be Httle or no progress, and any high 
 degree of civilization would be beyond the reach 
 of man. 
 
 The sun is not only a '* luminary," but marks 
 off '' seasons, days, and years," and that with re- 
 markable precision. He gives us now the light of 
 day, and again leaves us in the darkness of the 
 nieht. He brings, moreover, the seed-time and har- 
 vest, and the various seasons of the year, accord- 
 ing as he is near or far, and his heat falls upon us 
 in direct or slanting rays. 
 
 Such wonderful adaptation of means to ends, 
 such accurate adjustment of the forces ^^^^^^^^^^ 
 that still operate in the world, and such and evident 
 
 purpose. 
 
 Studious regard for the approachmg needs 
 of human life, may well command our devoutest 
 admiration. For none of these offices of the sun, 
 or the feebler service of the moon, seem to have 
 been fortunate accidents, but essential parts of a 
 complex, an elaborate, a divine economy. 
 
 Two or three considerations, not belonging es- 
 sentially to the history of the creation, but grow- 
 in^ out of it, claim brief attention here because of 
 their bearing on the general subject. We are pro- 
 ceeding on the supposition that the earth was once 
 a nebula that came from the sun; that the sun 
 
32 THE CREATION. 
 
 and earth are, therefore, of one substance or compo. 
 sition ; and that the sun is undergoing changes, simi- 
 lar to those that have already passed upon the earth. 
 We have traced the history of the earth from 
 , the condition of a dark, chaotic mass to 
 
 Progress of ' 
 
 our discus- that of a glowing orb and then a blazing 
 sphere, and then to that of an encrusted 
 globe shining no longer by its own but by bor- 
 rowed light. 
 
 We have traced the history of the sun from 
 the same original condition, through the same series 
 of changes, as far as that of the blazing orb that 
 sends its light and heat afar. 
 
 Now, since the earth has passed through these 
 
 several changes by reason of a cooling 
 
 cooiin off P^*^c^sS' ^^^ radiation of its heat into 
 
 space, the question arises, is the earth 
 
 gradually cooling off, so that by and by it can no 
 
 longer support life ? 
 
 Yes ; that is the plain and irresistible conclusion. 
 Have we any proof of this, aside from the de- 
 ductions of a theory ? 
 Yes. It is this. 
 
 The other planets in our system, with their 
 ^ .^ satellites, must have had the same ori- 
 
 Evidence 
 
 from other gin as the earth; they have also like 
 
 motions; and it is every way reasonable 
 
 to suppose they are passing through similar changes. 
 
LIGHT. 33 
 
 And observation and experiment indicate that 
 the planets Saturn and Jupiter, very much larger 
 than the earth, are not yet wholly freed from their 
 nebulous surroundings ; whence we conclude they 
 are still in a heated state. 
 
 Moreover, since the difference in gravity is much 
 less than the difference in size, it must be these 
 larger planets are so much less dense, and there- 
 fore so much less advanced in a geological sense 
 than the earth. They are relatively "younger," 
 that is, less mature than the earth. Not but that 
 thejr origin may have been as remote, indeed more 
 remote, since they are farther from the sun, but 
 that their greater volume makes the longer time 
 necessary to reach the same condifion. 
 
 While on the other hand our moon, very much 
 smaller than the earth, is already cold, „ 
 
 ' -' ' Present con- 
 
 through and through. A mere skeleton dition of the 
 of a world, scarred with storms and gap- 
 ing with craters of extinct volcanoes, but without 
 any semblance of life. 
 
 That is what the earth is coming to by and 
 by ; destined not to burn up, but to freeze out. 
 
 This may be a startling conclusion ; though, 
 when we reflect how many thousands of years the 
 earth has already been inhabited, and that the 
 crust as yet may not exceed a hundred miles in 
 thickness, and that it must thicken possibly to four 
 
34 THE CREATION. 
 
 thousand miles before the internal fires are entirely 
 out, it is clear there is no immediate occasion for 
 alarm. 
 
 It will appear, then, that Mr. Hutton's statement 
 quoted in the preceding lecture, that " Science 
 finds no prospect of an end " of this world, was 
 premature. It teaches us, on the contrary, that in 
 the natural order of events an end must come at 
 length to the existing order of things throughout 
 the material universe. But it is not of the end 
 but of the beginnings of the world we are es- 
 pecially to speak — the passing of this earth from 
 the chaos and vacuity in which it began to a con- 
 dition of order, harmony, usefulness, and life. 
 
 And so we return from this digression to mark, 
 in closing, the point in the development of our 
 subject to which the present discussion carries us. 
 
 The appearance of the sun is not yet reached 
 ^ ^ ^ in the resf"ular order of events. We have 
 
 Epoch of ^ 
 
 the sun's ap- spokcn of it here for the sake of unifying 
 
 pearance. . r i • i i i 
 
 our discussion oi light, but the event it- 
 self occurred at a later period. It was after the 
 establishment of the firmament — after the gathering 
 of the waters into the sea — after the first appear- 
 ance of dry land probably, that the sun-light 
 struggled through the vapors that surrounded the 
 sun upon the one hand and shrouded the earth 
 upon the other. 
 
LIGHT. 35 
 
 Our present discussion takes us only to the first 
 appearance of clear light, and that was 
 
 " Let tllGTG 
 
 not from the sun. The skilful chemist ^^ jj^j^^ „ 
 will show you now how, by the combina- 
 tion of certain simple elements, both light and 
 heat may be produced. But this production was 
 not dependent on man's invention or discovery. 
 Far back in the line of ages, before there was a 
 man upon the earth, aye before there was any solid 
 earth or the sun in yonder heavens had begun to 
 shine, the principle we now call chemical affinity, 
 with gravitation and various forms of energy, were 
 created and set at work ; and out of the diffused 
 and attenuated material that swung in chaos and 
 disorder and black night, were gathering and as- 
 sorting and combining the elements in due har- 
 mony and proportion. And in compliance with the 
 divine plan, and in obedience to the fiat of the 
 Eternal, " Let there be light," there was light. 
 
Ill 
 
 The Firmament, 
 The Sea and Dry Land. 
 
" And God made the firmament, and divided the waters that 
 were under the firmament from the waters which were above the 
 firmament." 
 
 " The mountains huge appear 
 Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave 
 Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky. 
 So high as heaved the tumid hills, so low 
 Down sunk a hollow bottom, broad and deep. 
 Capacious bed of waters." 
 
III. 
 
 THE FIRMAMENT, AND THE GATHERING 
 OF THE WATERS. 
 
 We are now to speak of the establishment of 
 the firmament, the gathering of the waters 
 
 ' r The subject 
 
 mto the sea, and the first appearance ot ^^^^^^ 
 dry land. These events were next in 
 order after the first formation of a crust upon the 
 earth. It was the point, to all seeming, at which 
 order began to reign. 
 
 The period of dark chaos was long past. The 
 brooding spirit had evoked light from the 
 
 , , , The situa- 
 
 gradually condensmg nebula, and then ^.^^^ 
 the blazing star had given place to an 
 opaque body bearing some resemblance to the earth 
 as it exists to-day. 
 
 By these several changes the earth was gradu- 
 ally approaching the condition for which it was 
 evidently intended from the first. There were no 
 accidents, no mere fortunate happenings. They 
 were parts, each in place, of the plan of the master 
 mind that was over and in it all. And the forces, 
 
40 THE CREATION. 
 
 operating then and operating now, which we call 
 electricity, gravitation, and the like, were of his 
 creation- and his appointment, and the obedient ser- 
 vants of his will. 
 
 After the breaking up of the original nebula 
 _, . into the several parts that now constitute 
 
 The inter- 
 spaces the solar system, must have come a period 
 
 of gradual separation. Even if we make 
 no account of the force .with which the parts were 
 thrown off, but suppose each disjoined fragment, in 
 turn, to have lain immediately without the slowly 
 shrinking central nebula, there must have been 
 gradually widening spaces between the parts suc- 
 cessively thrown off. The centre of the earth from 
 the centre of the sun is, in round numbers, ninety- 
 three million miles. Mercury, thrown off later, lies 
 at a less distance, while Jupiter, thrown off much 
 earlier, is at a much greater distance. 
 
 As these separated nebulae condensed, or 
 changed to a more compact form by the opera- 
 tion of gravity and radiation, the distances be- 
 tween them were increased, and so each planet 
 came to have a space of its own in which to spin 
 its daily round and make its annual revolution. 
 These intervening spaces would seem thus to have 
 been left unoccupied by any visible substance, 
 making a vast expanse between sun and planet, 
 and between one planet and another. 
 
THE FIRMAMENT, ETC, 4I 
 
 And here we approach what seems to have 
 been in the mind of the writer in Gene- 
 sis, when he penned the following words : ^he record m 
 " And God made the firmament, and di- 
 vided the waters that were under the firmament 
 from the waters that were above the firmament." 
 
 The word here translated "firmament" is from 
 a verb that is said to mean primarily to 
 *' hammer out," or extend, as metal may ■fij.^iament 
 be drawn out into a thin sheet, and 
 alludes to the overarched and transparent appear- 
 ance of the sky. But the word is also rendered 
 " expanse " and sometimes " heavens," which 
 means simply " heaved up." Neither of these 
 words, as we use them, has a very definite mean- 
 ing. We speak of the birds flying through the 
 heavens, of the clouds floating in the heavens, and 
 of the stars that fill the heavens. Of course there 
 is no correspondence, actual or implied, between 
 the height attained by the birds, the clouds, and 
 the stars. And the word expanse is scarcely more 
 definite, since it means merely an open space. 
 
 But if we substitute the word " expanse," in 
 the passage quoted, for firmament, we shall get 
 the idea more near the literal fact. For there is 
 a separation of the water-producing cloud from the 
 water-embracing sea, by the expanse of the atmos- 
 phere between. 
 
42 THE CREATION. 
 
 But let US trace the process carefully from the 
 time evaporation first began till the sep- 
 tocTd!^^ aration was complete. For that purpose 
 we go back to the condition of the earth 
 as we left it in the preceding lecture. It had just 
 passed through the " ordeal by fire." Frpm a blaz- 
 ing meteor in the sky it had so far cooled as to 
 assume . a nearly opaque form with a thin crust 
 surrounding it for the first time. But the heat 
 within was still so great that the crust was seamed 
 and rent at a thousand points, whence issued jets 
 of steam and tongues of flame, and sometimes 
 streams of liquid matter. 
 
 In consequence, the atmosphere, or the region 
 about the earth now occupied by the atmosphere, 
 was full of various vapors. The waters when 
 formed could not remain water, for the great 
 heat immediately reduced them to steam. The 
 steam went aloft, formed into clouds — fell in tor- 
 rents of rain upon the hissing hot surface only to 
 be immediately revaporized and rise again in a 
 continual round ; and thus the earth lay imbedded 
 in a sort of perpetual London fog. 
 
 But as the process continued and the crust 
 grew firmer, the outbreaks from within became less 
 frequent. And the crust gradually thickening and 
 cooling, the revaporizing became less general. The 
 waters falling in rain found here and there a spot 
 
THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 43 
 
 cool enough to remain upon, and thus by degrees 
 the atmosphere was cleared of vapors. The clouds 
 rose above, the seas settled beneath, and in pro- 
 cess of time, the waters that were above the ex- 
 panse were separated from the waters that were 
 under the expanse. 
 
 We should here recall the fact, which has 
 before been stated, that the earth neb- 
 
 ,, . . 1 • 1 Substance of 
 
 ula contamed all the material smce gath- j^e nebula, 
 ered into the various forms that nature 
 assumes in rock and soil and sea. And while the 
 process just described was going on, the heavier 
 substances tended to sink and gather toward the 
 centre, or at least to remain within the crust or 
 flow over the surface in volcanic vents, while the 
 more volatile substances, including the various 
 gases with which we are familiar to-day, rose and 
 mingled in the vaporous surroundings. 
 
 And we shall find, as we proceed with our dis- 
 cussion, that an important consideration 
 
 The atmos- 
 
 in the preparation of the earth was the phere clear- 
 clearing of the atmosphere of these nox- ^"^* 
 ious vapors. Open a gas-jet in your room ; the 
 gas mingles with the air, without changing its ap- 
 pearance to the eye, but so far changing its char- 
 acter as to make it first offensive to the smell, 
 and then oppressive to the lungs. Now, this early 
 atmosphere that which enveloped the forming 
 
44 THE CREATION. 
 
 earth, must have been full of such poisonous 
 gases ; for they existed, had not yet been ab- 
 sorbed or compacted into solid material, and by 
 reason of their volatility must have mingled freely 
 with the air. Besides, we find the atmosphere 
 about the craters of volcanoes of this noxious and 
 oppressive character to-day as much perhaps as it 
 ever was. 
 
 '^ There was another end to be gained by this 
 clearing of the atmosphere, first of mists and 
 then of volcanic vapors, besides the dividing of 
 the waters that were above from those that were 
 beneath. 
 
 The world was being prepared for the abode of 
 life. As vet no form of life could exist 
 
 The earth •' 
 
 preparing Upon the earth, by reason, first of the 
 heat, and second of the poisonous air. 
 But the way was preparing, for to that end was 
 the world created. Not merely as a wonderful ex- 
 periment with nebulous matter, but for the abode 
 and happiness of man. Toward this result had all 
 the energies involved in the creation been mani- 
 festly working from the first. And, certainly, 
 nothing in the whole progress of events went 
 farther to fit the earth for the maintenance of 
 life, than the establishment of a clear atmos- 
 phere between the clouds above and the seas 
 beneath. 
 
THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 45 
 
 We pass now to a consideration of the second 
 topic embraced in the subject of the lee- .^ 
 
 ture : the gathering of the waters into of sea and 
 
 • c <^'^y land. 
 
 the sea and the consequent appearnig ot 
 dry land. 
 
 After the clearing of the expanse about the 
 earth, it seems, to our common conception, to have 
 assumed at once a more definite and independent 
 character than it had ever had before. It now had 
 the appearance for the first time of a solid globe 
 swinging in open space. But it must be kept in 
 mind that the crust as yet was comparatively 
 thin, and liable to rupture at frequent intervals 
 by the operation of the giant forces as yet un- 
 tamed within. Geologists sometimes speak of the 
 earth as passing through an " ordeal by fire," as 
 described in the last lecture, and then through an 
 " ordeal by water." 
 
 The latter came about in this way. 
 
 When the crust had so far cooled as to per- 
 mit water to lie upon it, without being 
 
 . . The ordeal 
 
 immediately converted into steam, the i^^ water, 
 waters that now constitute the sea must 
 have covered the whole surface of the earth. For 
 the surface, as yet, was comparatively smooth, and 
 there was no cause for the water to stand in one 
 place or flow in one direction rather than in 
 another. There was, therefore, no dry land. All 
 
46 THE CREATION. 
 
 was sea. But this was not to continue. The im- 
 prisoned forces kept in action by the heat within 
 the crust, here and there broke their bounds, burst 
 through to the surface. And as the volcanic mat- 
 ter ran out, the water very Hkely ran in, causing 
 great explosions. We have an example of the 
 kind in comparatively recent history. 
 
 A submarine volcano broke out in the bed of 
 the Mediterranean Sea, not far from 
 Mount ^tna, and for a time there was a 
 
 ruptures. 
 
 lively contest between the fires within 
 and the waters without. But the sea seemed to 
 have most resources at command and quenched at 
 length the volcanic flames. 
 
 But these explosions in the early crust were 
 to work important changes in the surface of the 
 earth ; changes that in modified form and degree 
 are still going on. 
 
 Around the opening formed in the crust the 
 exuded material gathered till it rose quite above 
 the general level, as some volcanoes do at the 
 present day. Mount Vesuvius is little, if anything, 
 more than an accumulation of material ejected 
 from the interior through its own crater ; a refuse 
 heap of volcanic matter. 
 
 Besides, water was working in another way than 
 that of merely irritating or antagonizing the vol- 
 canic forces. 
 
THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 47 
 
 The seas, which at this time covered the whole 
 surface of the ^lobe, loaded with corro- ^ 
 
 *^ Corrosive 
 
 sive acids, began at once to eat into and action 
 
 d, 1 , of water, 
 
 away the crust. 
 
 And the waters as they flowed, bore along- the 
 
 fine dust thus formed till it lodged 
 
 against the incipient mountain about the ^°^^°^ i" 
 
 •^ ^ currents. 
 
 volcanic rim, or some other obstruction 
 that presented itself, and there settled as a fine 
 mud ; and warmed by the crust beneath, and 
 pressed down by the weight of waters above, grad- 
 ually hardened, till it became a part of the rock 
 or crust again. This was the beginning of sedi- 
 mentary rocks, that now form much the greater 
 portion of the rocks open to the investigation of 
 the geologist. 
 
 And as this operation was continually repeated 
 — the acids continually corroding the surface, and 
 the sea continually wearing it away, and the 
 waters continually carrying the loose and fine ma- 
 terial till it found a lodgment — the surface was 
 steadily growing more and more uneven. 
 
 We may suppose that wherever there was a vol- 
 canic vent made by the imprisoned forces, with the 
 outfiow cooling round it and the sweepings of the 
 ocean heaped upon it, or against it, there was the 
 beginning of a hill or mountain that might rise to 
 considerable height or spread over a wide extent, 
 
48 THE CREATION. 
 
 according to the time occupied and the energy with 
 which the forces operated. 
 
 But it was not in this way that the principal 
 
 Q^j^^^ inequahties were made on the surface of 
 
 modifying: the earth. The highest mountains are 
 
 agencies. 
 
 not made up of volcanic matter ejected 
 from vents within themselves, much less are great 
 mountain chains of this specific character. In 
 other words volcanoes are not the chief mountain 
 builders. — We must seek some other explanation. 
 And fortunately it is not hard to find. 
 
 As the crust thickened, and so opposed a 
 greater resistance to the action of the internal 
 heat, the outbreaks became less frequent ; but the 
 seething, boiling sea of liquid fire within was 
 active and potent as ever, and sometimes oper- 
 ated with such tremendous energy, that while not 
 breaking through, it caused a grand uplift of a 
 wide area of the surface. And as we may readily 
 understand, if there was an elevation of the crust 
 in one place, there would be a correspondiiig de- 
 pression or subsidence in another, usually in the 
 immediate vicinity. And in this way the " high 
 places and low places of the earth " were formed. 
 The waters, which till now had spread the whole 
 surface over, gathered by their own weight into 
 the " low places " and formed the seas, and the 
 dry land appeared. 
 
I THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 49 
 
 That this theory of the elevation and subsi- 
 dence of portions of the earth's crust is not mere 
 theory is sufficiently proven by the fact that the 
 same operation is going on, to a limited extent, to- 
 day. 
 
 At the old town of Pozzuoli, on the shore of 
 the Bay of Naples, a few miles distant ^ j^ 
 only from Mount Vesuvius, stand sev- of Jupiter 
 
 , . Serapis. 
 
 eral marble columns on a marble pave- 
 ment of what was once a pagan temple, built 
 probably before the time of Christ. The temple 
 was built on dry land ; but the floor or pavement 
 is now nine feet under the water of the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea. Moreover, the columns show by marks 
 upon them, that they have been submerged to the 
 height of twenty-three feet. Whence we infer that 
 the land there subsided or sank to that depth and 
 has since risen again. Indeed it is apparent within 
 the past seven years that there is still an upward 
 movement, and it is by no means improbable that 
 it may by and by, regain its former level. Such 
 oscillations, or alternate elevations and subsidences 
 are by no means rare or unfrequent in volcanic 
 regions. And such movements, on a larger scale, 
 are perceptible on some continental borders, though 
 the rate of progress is usually very slow. We 
 mark this, then, as one of the efficient causes of 
 diversities in the surface of the earth. 
 
so THE CREATION. • 
 
 Since we touch here upon it we may as well 
 dispose at once of the subject of moun- 
 
 Mountain . , . 
 
 making. ^ain making, or of the vast inequalities 
 of surface between the mountain tops and 
 the bottom of the sea. 
 
 When the crust first formed upon the earth, it 
 was a larger body than after the condensation had 
 proceeded farther, and many of the gases had es- 
 caped or entered into solid forms ; and therefore 
 the crust was larger at first, and afterward shrunk 
 to meet the changed requirements of the case. By 
 this shrinking the crust or envelop became wrin- 
 kled ; sunk here into a deep trough, and rose there 
 in a huge fold that we call a mountain chain. 
 
 A roast apple as it comes from the oven is 
 plump and smooth, but as it cools the inside 
 shrinks and the skin is wrinkled. A very similar 
 operation occurred in the earth as it changed from 
 a highly heated state to a condition in which the 
 crust, at least, was cool. And mountain ranges are 
 often nothing more nor less than folds in the crust, 
 wrinkles on the surface of the earth. 
 
 If this cause seems inadequate to produce such 
 effects, we have only to consider the height of 
 mountains in comparison with the diameter of the 
 earth. The highest mountains rise less than six 
 miles above the level of the sea. The diameter of 
 the earth is, in round numbers, eight thousand 
 
THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 51 
 
 miles. Upon an artificial globe two feet in diame- 
 ter a corresponding elevation would not exceed the 
 thickness of common writing-paper. 
 
 Another cause of mountain making, of which 
 some authors make much account, is due 
 
 roiding' by 
 
 to the gradual accumulation of material lateral pres- 
 
 ... . sure. 
 
 along a certain line or trough till the 
 pressure becomes so great as to rupture the crust, 
 when the surface layers are squeezed together with 
 such tremendous force as to cause them to assume 
 a crumpled and folded position. Such is supposed 
 to have been the origin of that portion of the Ap- 
 palachian chain which includes the coal measures 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Here our discussion might properly end. 
 
 But since we refer from time to time to the 
 Hebrew record in the book of Genesis, The term 
 
 , . r J u day in the 
 
 and note points of correspondence be- y^^qx^^x&c- 
 tween that and the theory we are de- ord. 
 veloping from independent sources, we may fairly 
 be required to offer some reasonable interpretation 
 of the oft-recurring word " day," which we find in 
 the passage, " The evening and the morning were 
 the first day," or, as it is more accurately rendered, 
 "There was evening, there was morning, day one," 
 and the half-dozen passages of like import that 
 occur in this primeval account of the creation. 
 No other word in the whole account has been 
 
52 THE CREATION. 
 
 SO much discussed, both by those who assert and 
 those who deny the authenticity and value of the 
 record. 
 
 The most obvious interpretation is, that it is a 
 period of twenty-four hours — a solar day. 
 
 But the term is used without modification, in at 
 least three different senses in this account : to indi- 
 cate light as distinguished from darkness, without 
 any reference to duration ; then in the passages 
 above named, and again to indicate the whole 
 period of the creation. By no amount of ingeni- 
 ous construction can these three terms be inter- 
 preted alike. We must seek some other expla- 
 nation. 
 
 No competent critic now, so far as we know, 
 regards the term day in the recurring passages as 
 representing a solar day, a period of twenty-four 
 hours. There is nothing analogous in the actual 
 work of the creation; besides, three days are re- 
 corded before the appearance of the sun, which 
 alone measures and makes a solar day. 
 
 The attempt to correlate the " days " with cer- 
 tain periods of rock formations, as the Silurian, the 
 Devonian, and so on, is equally futile, for there is 
 no evidence in the rocks that there was any cor- 
 respondence in point of time between these differ- 
 ent formations. It is impracticable, then, to assign 
 any definite limit to the term day in the Hebrew 
 
THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 53 
 
 record, since it represents no exact or assignable 
 duration. 
 
 What, then, may it be supposed to represent ? 
 Let us seek that which best explains the facts. 
 
 Premising that the passage, " There was even- 
 ing, there was morning, day one," and 
 the correspondino; sentences, constitute ^^^^' ^^^^^^'^ 
 
 ^ ^ ' theory. 
 
 merely a poetical refrain, closing the 
 successive measures of the half-rhythmic account, 
 Prof. Benjamin Pierce, some years ago, suggested 
 an interpretation which has the merit of some- 
 thing more than ingenious novelty, though it may 
 not precisely represent the primary meaning of the 
 writer. 
 
 The theory is elaborated with some detail by 
 Dr. Thomas Hill, in his " Natural Sources of The- 
 ology," namely, that the term is not a measure 
 of time or space at all, but that the six days are 
 '' logical divisions in the survey of the universe," 
 the logical order of thought in the mind of the 
 author of the account. As if it were written "In 
 the first place there was light ; in the second place 
 a firmament, with uplifted mountains and depressed 
 ocean basins ; in the next place plants appeared, 
 and then the sun," and so on, following the record 
 through to the end. 
 
 Viewed in this light, says Dr. Hill, "all the 
 work of Ritter and Guyot, all the arguments of the 
 
54 THE CREATION. 
 
 Bridgewater Treatises and the Graham Lectures 
 are thus foretold in these brief sentences." 
 
 We go farther than Dr. Hill, and say the 
 account not only sets forth the logical order of 
 thought, but approximately the actual order of 
 events."^ Let us see. 
 
 I. The elements in chaotic darkness and con- 
 fusion, followed by light resulting from 
 
 Comparison i • i 
 
 of data. chemical action. 
 
 2. The separation of the earth and 
 heavens by an intervening firmament, together with 
 the upheaval of mountains and corresponding de- 
 pression of ocean beds. 
 
 3. The appearance of life in the form of vegeta- 
 tion, as will appear in the next lecture. 
 
 4. Appearance of the sun. If the theory devel- 
 oped in the second lecture be correct, this occurred 
 at a somewhat advanced stage of the work. There 
 was an extended lapse between the appearance of 
 cosmic and solar light, though we have no means 
 of calculating the actual or even probable length 
 of the period. 
 
 5. Appearance of the animal world. 
 
 6. The appearance of man — and 
 
 7. If you please, rest from the work of creat- 
 ing : no additions having been made to the forms 
 
 * Dr. Hill regards this as one of the secondary meanings that may 
 be found in the record in Genesis. It seems to us primary. 
 
THE FIRMAMENT, ETC. 55 
 
 of life since the introduction of man. There is no 
 intimation here of weariness, or exhausted power 
 as some inconsiderately assume. The Supreme 
 Spirit may be as active in guiding and preserving 
 what he created as he was in the act of creating. 
 The meaning is, simply, that at this point he 
 ceased to introduce new types of life. 
 
 In what is usually called a second account of 
 the creation, beginning at the fourth verse of the 
 second chapter, the order of the first is reversed ; 
 that is to say, the order of time is not ob- 
 served. The writer begins with man as the crown 
 of the creation, and proceeds, in order, to those 
 of less importance. 
 
 The reader is left to consider all the facts, to- 
 gether with the suggestions offered, and reach his 
 own conclusion. 
 
 We return now from this digression, to mark, 
 in closing, the point we reach in the de- 
 velopment of our subject. We began Conclusion, 
 with the earth as it emerged from the 
 ordeal by fire to have a thin crust about it, but 
 shrouded still in a bed of fog and noxious gases. 
 We have traced its progress as the vaporous sur- 
 roundings gradually cleared, and a wide expanse 
 separated the clouds that were above from the 
 seas that were beneath. We have traced it, also, 
 as the crust thickened and volcanic vents gave rise 
 
56 THE CREATION. 
 
 to hills and mountains, here and there. And then, 
 as the crust stiffened and grew stronger, so that it 
 was not easily broken, the imprisoned forces, like 
 raging, struggling giants, heaved it into huge folds 
 here and depressed it into deep basins there, till 
 the seas gathered into the deep places of the earth, 
 and " the dry land appeared." 
 
IV, 
 
 Plant Life. 
 
" Let tlie earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and 
 the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself." 
 
 "And then 
 The vacant hills did throb with life ; ai d 
 The waiting fields put on parti-colored robes, 
 As for a bridal day." 
 
IV. 
 
 THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. 
 
 We are to speak now of the world of plants. 
 
 In the preceding lectures we traced the devel- 
 opment of the earth from the nebula, through the 
 ordeal by fire, and the ordeal by water, till it as- 
 sumed the character of a solid globe, or a globe 
 with solid crust upon it, with continents outlined 
 and seas confined within certain bounds ; that is, 
 through the inorganic and lifeless period. 
 
 As yet nothing had an organic form or con- 
 stitution. There is no organism in the _, . 
 
 ^ The mor- 
 
 cloud or nebula. It may change form at ganic period 
 
 of the earth. 
 
 any moment, and be still a cloud or 
 nebula. There are no organic parts in the lava- 
 bed or in the rocks that result from its cooling. 
 A rock may be broken into fragments and each 
 fragment be still a rock. And so in the creation, 
 as far as we have traced it, nothing existed with 
 organs and parts arranged in due order and pro- 
 portion and for specific functions. 
 
 We come now to the organic period, when 
 
6o THE CREATION. 
 
 matter was organized for the introduction and sus- 
 tenance of life. Organism implies life, and 
 The organic ^jthout organism there can be no life. 
 
 period. 
 
 But before proceeding to that it will 
 
 be expedient to notice certain changes that came 
 
 over the " dry land " after it became dry, before it 
 
 could support life. 
 
 The continent, as it emerged from the water, 
 
 through diversities in the surface, was 
 The ^ 
 
 processes of little more than a cinder, or at most a 
 "^ ' volcanic or igneous rock, somewhat like 
 our trap-rock, but more like the beds of lava now 
 found dried and hard on the sides of our volcanoes. 
 Of course nothing could grow, take root, or find 
 nourishment in this. But nature spends no idle 
 moments, and the agencies of change were quickly 
 at their work. There were the acids in the rain 
 and in the air, so much more abundant than at 
 present, as has been explained before, all tending 
 to corrode the surface, which under the beatings 
 of the storm and the continual agitation of the 
 elements soon began to soften and crumble. The 
 same process in a modified form may be witnessed 
 to-day in the little vineyards and gardens of the 
 peasants on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, where 
 the lava-bed is no sooner cooled than it begins to 
 fray and the surface to disintegrate till a soil is 
 formed in which the vine will take root and grow, 
 
PLANT LIFE. 6 1 
 
 Much of the material thus loosened, or set free, 
 was borne off by the winds, or swept down by the 
 floods and deposited at the bottom of the sea, 
 to form the earliest bed of sedimentary rock, or 
 possibly, by refluent wave, to be spread upon the 
 beach again. But from these several causes there 
 was a gradual accumulation of this material upon 
 the land, which absorbing the moisture and dis- 
 tilling the subtle gases, at length formed beds of 
 soil in preparation for the seeds and plants that 
 were next in the order of creation. 
 
 And now, the earth being clothed with soil 
 brings us to the first introduction of life upon it. 
 
 Whence came it ? 
 
 There is nothing more certain than that there 
 was a time when there was no life upon Ljf^ j^ dif- 
 
 the earth. Equally certain is it that the ferent tem- 
 peratures. 
 earth is full of life to-day. We do not 
 
 as yet know through what range of temperature 
 some form of life may exist. Some plants will 
 grow in water raised almost to the boiling point, 
 while there is a minute fungus that flourishes amid 
 polar snows, where the temperature is rarely above 
 the freezing point. And still it is a conceded im- 
 possibility for life to have existed in the nebula, 
 or in the molten condition of the earth preceding 
 the formation of a crust. 
 
 Of the origin of life upon the earth, then, what 
 
62 THE CREATION. 
 
 shall we say ? The more general answer will be in 
 
 substance this ; that at this juncture in 
 
 "^Hfe ° ^^^^ progress of the world, the Creator, 
 
 of his own purpose, in accordance with 
 
 his own plan, and by his Almighty power, created 
 
 the plants ; that is, the germs out of which they 
 
 severally grew. 
 
 It has been suggested by Mr. Darwin, whose 
 name and services entitle his opinion to 
 
 Darwin's , , , - 
 
 theory. rnuch rcspcct, that only a few germs were 
 necessary to begin with, and after that, 
 by the operation of natural causes, the growth went 
 on from one form of life to another. 
 
 But it matters really very little which view we 
 take. Whether the original germs were few or 
 many; whether placed in nature at one time or at 
 different times, the absolute necessity for a first 
 cause — a creator — lies back of it as much in one 
 case as in the other. The question is not lioiv 
 many germs, or at what time ; but whence came 
 they — by whose appointment, and by what power ? 
 And even if we venture on the bold suggestion 
 of Tyndall, in his famous Belfast address, 
 s^Lesdon. ^y which the equanimity of so many well- 
 meaning people was disturbed, that " in 
 matter he found the promise and potency of every 
 form and quality of life," it yet remains to be ex- 
 plained how this potency came there ? Who put 
 
PLANT LIFE. 63 
 
 into matter the promise and potency of life? As 
 the same author says on another occasion, "Granted 
 the nebula and its potential life, the question 
 whence came they remains to baffle and bewilder 
 us." 
 
 This subject will be more fully considered in a 
 subsequent lecture. For the present we content 
 ourselves with the conclusions of some of the lead- 
 ing authorities in the scientific world, and those 
 from whom a different verdict might have been 
 expected, if one were tenable, that the origin of 
 life from matter, by any inherent cause, is " con- 
 trary to experience and observation," and " against 
 all the analogy of current nature." 
 
 We must look beyond nature, then, for the ori- 
 gin O^ li^e. The cause 
 
 If before proceeding farther we turn to beyond 
 the book of Genesis for such light as it 
 may give, we read, " And God said, let the earth 
 brins: forth crrass, the herb yielding seed, 
 
 ^ ^ r ,. The Hebrew 
 
 and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his record, 
 kind, whose seed is in itself. And it was 
 soy Let us briefly analyze this simple statement. 
 The term grass, as it occurs in ancient documents is 
 not so specific as with us to-day, but is a general 
 term for the simpler forms of vegetable life, or for 
 a new and tender growth of any kind of plants. 
 The word corn was once used in a similar way, 
 
 na- 
 ture. 
 
64 THE CREATION. 
 
 and the usage is not yet obsolete — to indicate all 
 kinds of grain. The sons of Jacob went down to 
 Egypt to buy corn, when as yet the kind of grain 
 now so designated was probably unknown. 
 
 With this distinction in mind we need be at 
 no loss for a clear interpretation of the passage. 
 
 And now let us observe the very nice distinc- 
 tions made in this first paragraph relating to life — 
 and we are sure of none more ancient in all litera- 
 ture — between the organic and the inorganic world, 
 and also between the different types of plants. 
 *' And the earth brought forth grass, and herb 
 yielding seed." There is no seed in the rock o.r 
 the gas, the nebula or the lava-bed, that you can 
 plant and raise the like from. These belong to 
 the inorganic world. But when matter was organ- 
 ized in the herb, then a seed was produced, which 
 being planted yields the like again. Further :'' And 
 the tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed 
 is in itself." The seed of the fruit-tree is in the 
 fruit, and being planted will produce a tree of the 
 same kind as that on which it grew. Such is the 
 brief and simple, yet very comprehensive story. 
 
 What, now, may we learn of plant life from 
 other sources ? 
 
 The botanist will give us a far more elaborate 
 statement, with a much longer list of plants, with 
 their divisions and subdivisions. He will tell us of 
 
PLANT LIFE. 65 
 
 the cryptogams and phsenogams, of the acrogens 
 and exogens, of the angiosperms and 
 
 , Scientific 
 
 gyninosperms, all of which terms have ^^^^^^^^^ 
 definite significations, and a place in any 
 concise and complete history of plants. But we 
 need not enter into all this detail. We requife 
 only a simple statement of the most obvious char- 
 acteristics of plants, with such distinctions as will 
 appear to the casual observer who may not be 
 skilled in scientific lore. 
 
 First, a general division may be made into 
 flowerless and flowering plants ; a distinction that is 
 easily marked at certain stages of growth. But 
 that is hardly specific enough for our "purpose. 
 The following is more satisfactory, and for our 
 use sufficiently exact, though the skilled botanist 
 would require more detail. 
 
 Plants may be divided into three general 
 classes, having special reference to their modes of 
 growth. 
 
 First. Acrogens, sometimes though not very 
 accurately styled ''top-growers.""^^ 
 
 Second. Endogens, distinguished as "inside 
 growers." 
 
 Third. Exogens, or " outside growers." 
 
 * For the sake of simplicity and to avoid multiplying terms all 
 the flowerless plants are here included under the single head of 
 Acrogens. 
 
66 
 
 THE creation: 
 
 The first class is of the simplest structure, 
 with tissue chiefly cellular, and includes 
 Acrogens. the sca-wecds, the mosses, the ferns, 
 ground pines, and the like. These have 
 generally an upward growth, flourish best in 
 swampy and retired places, and seem to shun 
 rather than seek the day, as if the sunlight were 
 an intrusion upon their secluded existence. More- 
 over, they produce no seeds — only a spore, that is, 
 a simple cellule, without the store of album.en and 
 starch around it that makes up the perfect seed. 
 The Endogens, '^ inside growers," are so called 
 because their growth is wholly on the in- 
 Endogens. side. They have no proper bark, distinct 
 from the interior structure, and increase 
 in size by pushing out the outer layers as addi- 
 tions of nutriment are made within. If we cut 
 one of the plants across we shall find it is made 
 up of a great number of separate fibres, imbedded 
 in a sort of spongy substance, but with no indica- 
 tion of its term of growth. Familiar examples are 
 the corn, rattan, and palm, the wayside weed and 
 flowering garden plants. These differ from the 
 first class not only in structure and mode of 
 growth, but have distinctly-formed seeds. They 
 are the " herbs bearing seeds." 
 
 The Exogens, or "outside growers," are so 
 called because the additions in growth are made 
 
PLANT LIFE. 67 
 
 each season on the outside of the wood and im- 
 mediately under the bark. If we take a 
 transverse section of one of these, freshly Exogens. 
 cut, we shall be able to distinguish the 
 divisions in the woody fibre which indicate succes- 
 sive years of growth, and thus to approximate at 
 least, the age of the plant. Familiar examples of 
 this class are the oak, apple, pine, and most fruit 
 and nut-growing trees. 
 
 What, now, of the order of succession in which 
 these several classes of plants appeared? 
 
 It would be most natural to look first for 
 those of simplest structure, the plan of 
 
 . - 1 The rational 
 
 nature almost uniformly bemg from the ^^^^^^ 
 simple to the more complex. We 
 should expect, then, first to find the Acrogens. 
 The Exogen is accounted the highest type of 
 plant. If, then, the Endogen is the intermediate, 
 we should expect that to appear second in the 
 order of time. It is not yet definitely settled, 
 however, that it did so appear. The Exogen 
 seems to have come as early, if not before it. 
 
 But as the existence of Exogens implies a 
 warm succeeded by a cold season — a 
 
 . Uncertain 
 
 time of growth succeeded by a time ot conclusions. 
 comparative inaction — we may reasonably 
 suppose, if the year was so divided so long ago, 
 that the Endo^ens growing in summer may have 
 
68 THE CREATION. 
 
 perished in the winter. Many of them are annual 
 plants to-day. The growth of one year decays and 
 disappears, and is succeeded the following season 
 by an entire new growth. Therefore, the non-ap- 
 pearance of traces of Endogens in the earlier ages 
 does not of necessity imply their non-existence at 
 the time. We can only say, in such case, the 
 record may not be complete. 
 
 But what are the indications from such record 
 as we have? How are we to decide which type of 
 plants came first, or if all appeared simultaneously? 
 
 Let us see. 
 
 Iji the various beds of rock built up on the 
 earth's crust, since the dry land first ap- 
 ofthlXs^iis pe^i'^d and began to crumble and wash 
 away into the sea to be there pressed 
 and hardened into rocks, are found fossils — that is, 
 remains of plants and animals that have lived and 
 died. Sometimes it is a bone, sometimes a shell, 
 and again a stem or leaf; sometimes with natural 
 form still complete, but with substance assimilated 
 to that of the rock ; and again only an impres- 
 sion of its form remains. 
 
 In whatever stratum they are found geologists 
 are in the habit of saying, " This plant, or this 
 animal, lived and died when this rock was form- 
 ing. When dead, it was swept by some current of 
 wind or water into the bed of silt or sand then 
 
PLANT LIFE. 69 
 
 gathering at the bottom of the sea, lake, or river ; 
 that mud or sand, when in process of time it 
 became rock, was its tomb ; and when later the 
 rock was unearthed and broken, the fossil appeared 
 to give us hints of the types of life that existed 
 on the earth so long ago." 
 
 Now, the fossil plants found earliest, or at the 
 remotest period from the present, in the _ ,. 
 
 ^ Earliest 
 
 rocks, are all of the first or lowest class plants, Marine 
 of plants, so far as it is possible to dis- cogens. 
 
 tinguish them, and chiefly if not wholly of the 
 character of marine algce, or sea-weeds. And it is 
 quite certain that the earliest life of both -plants 
 and animals was in the sea. 
 
 The plants of simplest structure, and which we 
 have designated as ''top-growers," came first, in 
 accordance with the theory above laid down. 
 Then we must pass through a considerable depth 
 of rock, coming toward the surface and represent- 
 ing, of course, a vast period of time, before we 
 can certainly identify a single specimen of the 
 higher types of plants. 
 
 The Acrogens increased in numbers, variety, and 
 size with each succeeding; a^e, coveringr „ , . ,. 
 
 ^ ^ ' ^ Culmination 
 
 the land at length and encroaching on of 
 
 Acrogens. 
 
 the shallow margms of the sea. Among 
 the ferns, of which a few species now crouch tim- 
 idly in shady nooks, were those of great size and 
 
70 THE CREATION. 
 
 almost numberless varieties, and the club mosses 
 
 attained the dimensions of forest trees. There 
 
 were giants in those days in the world of plants. 
 
 In the coal period, the wide reaches of swampy 
 
 land — for there were as yet i^-sN hieh 
 
 The coal , , ^ ^ 
 
 plants. •^^I'^ds — were covered with a deep, profuse, 
 and tangled growth of stalwart plants 
 chiefly of the first class, Acrogens. And it is to 
 the vast accumulation of these, under long-con- 
 tinued heat and pressure, that we are indebted for 
 the coal beds for which we now find so abundant 
 use. The coal fields were stocked against a time 
 of need ; when the forests should fail in part and 
 man be compelled to look elsewhere for material 
 to keep his fires burning. 
 
 It has before been stated that at this early 
 
 Condition P^^'iod the atmosphere was full of nox- 
 
 of the early ious gascs. According to Prof Tyndall, 
 
 atmosphere. 
 
 the air was so saturated with carbonic 
 acid, that it obstructed radiation from the earth al- 
 most as effectually as a glass roof: the earth thus 
 became a sort of conservatory or hot-house, and 
 therefore plants grew to enormous size. But if this 
 was the cause of the large growth of plants, it is 
 evident that as the atmosphere cleared of this acid 
 the plants must have appeared of reduced size. 
 Not only so, but a radical change occurred in the 
 character of the plant world. To the Acrogens 
 
PLANT LIFE. 7^ 
 
 were clearly added Endogens and Exogens, both 
 of which were unknown in the earlier ages. 
 
 The change was not abrupt, but gradual — some 
 types of exogenous plants appearing as ^pp^^^^^^^ 
 far back as the coal period, or possibly of the higher 
 
 , , , plants. 
 
 the Devonian age; but it was not till 
 comparatively recent times that the " outside 
 growers," the oak, the elm, hickory, and the like 
 became the chief features of the landscape. 
 
 And so it appears, as far as the fossils enable 
 us to decide, that the order of occurrence of the 
 different classes of plants, were, first, those of sim- 
 plest structure, flowerless and seedless; second, those 
 producing flower and seed, and lastly, the fruit and 
 nut-growing trees. In other words the testimony 
 of the rocks bears out the theory suggested above, 
 that the order of appearance of the different types 
 of plants was from the lowest type and simplest 
 structure to the higher and more complex. 
 
 We thus reach the conclusion of our topic 
 proper. But one or two questions may arise 
 which it will be well to answer lest they leave us 
 in some confusion. 
 
 It has been said that the earlier plants rather 
 shun than seek the sunlight. And if our Relation of 
 
 f. . sunlight to 
 
 theory of the gradual approach of the sun early vegeta- 
 from a dark nebula to its present condi- ^ion. 
 tion, as developed in a former lecture, be correct, 
 
'J 2 THE CREATION, 
 
 the appearance of plants before the appearance of 
 the sun is every way probable. The earlier plants 
 required moisture and fed on matter dissolved by 
 acids, of which there was great abundance, but did 
 not to the same extent depend on light. And we 
 are, therefore, warranted in assuming that in the 
 order of the creation, plants may have appeared 
 before the atmosphere was so far freed from clouds 
 and vapors as that the sun appeared. 
 
 Another question follows. 
 
 Were all the types of plants introduced in this 
 early and obscure period — the Acrocren, 
 
 First appear- "^ ■"• o ' 
 
 ance of differ- Endogen, and Exogen? By no means. 
 The answer is readily inferred from what 
 has been said before. By "the introduction of 
 plant life " is meant simply the first appearance of 
 any kind of plants upon the earth. The different 
 types followed each other at somewhat uncertain 
 intervals. The time cannot be definitely stated. 
 We may not be able to determine the precise point 
 at which any particular type made its first appear- 
 ance. We can only judge by the period of its 
 culmination, and that can be determined with 
 little difficulty by reason of the abundant traces 
 left in the rocks. 
 
 The subject of plant life in the Hebrew record 
 is disposed of in a single paragraph, for that 
 account can be taken at best only as announcing 
 
PLANT LIFE. 73 
 
 in the fewest words the several divisions and im- 
 portant steps in the order of creation. We can- 
 not suppose, however, the appearance of the differ- 
 ent kinds of plants there briefly described, to have 
 come in any single period of the world's history — 
 only that at this point the first of plants ap- 
 peared. 
 
 One point more, having some relation to the 
 next lecture. Plant life is represented as ^^^^^^ ^^^^ 
 preceding animal life. The truth is that before 
 
 ^ , . - . 1 r 1 r animals. 
 
 fossil remams of animals are tound as tar 
 back as those of plants. But there are good rea- 
 sons for supposing them to have been a subse- 
 quent creation. Two or three reasons may be 
 briefly stated. 
 
 1. Plants will thrive in an atmosphere too 
 highly charged with noxious gases, and probably 
 in water too highly heated, for the maintenance 
 of animal life. And one office of early vegetation 
 probably was to absorb the gases and clear the 
 atmosphere for animal respiration. Plants can live 
 where animals cannot. 
 
 2. Plants are the natural food of animals. 
 Plants feed chiefly on inorganic matter ; animals 
 on organic. There are exceptions to this rule. 
 Some plants consume organic matter. The mistle- 
 toe, indian-pipe, and other parasites derive their 
 substance almost entirely from the plants to 
 
74 THE CREATION. ' 
 
 which they are attached. A few plants also feed 
 on animals. The Sundew for instance and the 
 Venus'-flytrap capture insects and appropriate 
 them to their own sustenance. But these excep- 
 tions are of comparatively small importance. It 
 may be accepted as the general rule, that plants 
 can live without animals; animals cannot thrive 
 without plants. The conclusion follows, therefore, 
 that the first appearance of plants came before 
 that of animals. The animal kingdom was the 
 later creation. 
 
 Still more conclusive reasons for this statement 
 will be assigned when we come to read the geo- 
 logical record in the sixth lecture. 
 
V. 
 
 Animal Life. 
 
" Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature 
 that hath life, and fowl that may rly above the earth in the open 
 firmament of heaven. And ... let the earth bring forth the 
 living creature after his kind." 
 
 " See through this air, this ocean, and this earth, 
 All matter quick and bursting into birth. 
 Above, how high ! progressive life may go ! 
 Around, how wide ! how deep extend below ! " 
 
V. 
 
 ANIMAL LIFE. 
 
 Our subject is the Animal Kingdom. 
 
 In tracing the history of the creation thus far, 
 it must be obvious to every one that the 
 order has been constantly from a lower ^^^^^^^ ^° 
 
 •^ nature. 
 
 toward a higher condition. A notable 
 illustration may be found in the change from in- 
 organic nature to a state of organism and life. 
 The same fact appeared in the last lecture in the 
 history of plant life ; beginning with plants of 
 spongy texture and the simplest structure, pass- 
 ing through the herbs bearing flower and seeds, 
 and culminating in the fruit and nut-growing trees. 
 The orderly development thus traced will be found 
 no less discernible in the animal kingdom. It is 
 on such facts as these that Mr. Darwin and others 
 base the doctrine of Evolution. 
 
 And to the doctrine of Evolution, as The doctrine 
 
 of 
 
 the development of an order and the Evolution. 
 
 unfolding of a plan in nature, there can 
 
 be no reasonable objection. We frankly confess it 
 
78 THE CREATION, 
 
 seems to us written on the face and stamped in 
 the very nature of things. 
 
 But as Kingsley has well said, " If there has 
 been an evolution there must have been an evolv- 
 er." We cannot predicate or anticipate an order 
 without an ordainer. There must have been an 
 intelligent power back of it to devise the scheme 
 and at least set the train on its way. We cannot 
 conceive of harmony and order as a necessary or 
 even possible outgrowth of chaos and blind con- 
 fusion. With intelligence and power all else is 
 possible ; without these nothing is certain. And if 
 we say lazv regulates and controls the processes in 
 nature, the question merely changes form ; whence 
 came the law ? Nothing is explained by the mere 
 substitution of a word. 
 
 Moreover, it is not true, as some have assumed, 
 that Darwin denies the existence of a 
 
 Darwin's /-> , - r i • 
 
 theism Creator, as one or two passages from his 
 published writings will sufficiently indi- 
 cate. *' To my mind," says he, ''it accords better 
 with what we know of the laws impressed on mat- 
 ter by the Creator, that the production and ex- 
 tinction of the past and present inhabitants of the 
 world should have been due to secondary causes, 
 than that each species has been independently cre- 
 ated." And again, from his ORIGIN OF SPECIES: 
 " There is grandeur in this view of life, with its 
 
ANIMAL LIFE. 79 
 
 several powers, having been originally breathed by 
 the Creator into a few forms or into one ; and 
 that while this planet has gone cycling on accord- 
 ing to the fixed laws of gravity, from so simple a 
 beginning, endless forms, most beautiful and most 
 wonderful, have been and are being evolved." 
 
 He has great faith, that after life was started 
 on the earth there were sufficient causes 
 
 , . r ' 11 .1 Causes in 
 
 in nature to brmg out of it all the sue- ^^^^^.^ 
 cessive types and orders. He does not 
 claim that this has been demonstrated or that it 
 can be conclusively proven, on account of the great 
 number of "missing links" in the chain of devel- 
 opment. But he assumes that because these links 
 cannot now be found, it does not, of necessity, 
 follow that they never existed. That may be true. 
 But until some clear traces of such links can be 
 found the assumption that they ever existed is 
 mere supposition or hypothesis and not established 
 science. 
 
 Prof. Huxley, in his New York lectures in 1877, 
 attached much importance to the series 
 
 •^ 1 • r Missing 
 
 of fossils recently discovered m some ot ^^^^^^ 
 our western territories by Prof O. C. 
 Marsh, because, beginning with a remote resem- 
 blani^ to the horse, they gradually changed to a 
 very close resemblance, and so went far to fill up 
 a hitherto wide hiatus in the chain of development. 
 
80 THE CREATION. 
 
 But if every break in the chain were filled, the 
 question of the origin of life would still remain. 
 
 There are, indeed, two separate ques- 
 
 questions in- tions involved I 
 
 First, the origin of life. 
 
 Second, the method of its transmission. 
 
 Prof. Mivart assumes, and we think rightly, that 
 with the first, physical science has nothing to do, 
 and is incompetent to deal. Nevertheless we are 
 not forbidden to inquire. 
 
 There are two principal theories, with various 
 modifications of each. 
 
 1. The germ theory; that is, that all life pro- 
 ceeds from an antecedent form of life — and which 
 implies a creator. 
 
 2. The theory of spontaneous generation, that is, 
 that life is evolved from dead matter, in certain 
 conditions, without the aid or operation of any- 
 thing beyond itself. 
 
 The latter theory is by no means new. Cen- 
 turies ago it was believed that tadpoles were gen- 
 erated out of the mud along the borders of stag- 
 nant pools, by the vivifying action of the sun ; 
 caterpillars from the leaves on which they fed, and 
 eels from the oozy slime of the Nile. And the 
 hypothesis, in one form or another, has been re- 
 vived or restated many times since the period of 
 early Greek history. 
 
ANIMAL LIFE. 8 1 
 
 The question has been very fully discussed re- 
 cently, and with the aid of elaborate ex- Spontaneous 
 periments, by Profs. Tyndall and H. C. (f^^Xuand 
 Bastian, but with widely differing results. Bastian.) 
 To reach any definite conclusion and make the test 
 satisfactory it was agreed to take dead matter — 
 isolate it from all contact with life — place it under 
 favorable conditions for the development of life, if 
 such thing were possible, and await the result. The 
 experiment was a difficult one, but followed out 
 with faithful detail by both experimenters. The 
 material used was chiefly a Hquid containing an in- 
 fusion of hay, bits of cheese, or other organic sub- 
 stance. This was put in a bottle and brought to 
 the boiling point, to destroy whatever germs it 
 might contain — the bottle then hermetically sealed 
 to protect the liquid from all possible contact with 
 surrounding life, and left in a moderately warm 
 temperature for several days. If at the end of 
 the time the liquid showed signs of fermentation 
 or putrefaction, it was taken as an indication of 
 life ; if no such signs appeared, it was regarded as 
 absolutely sterile. 
 
 A great number of tests were made. But the 
 result, thus far, seems to have been to array these 
 eminent authorities against each other; Bastian 
 claiming to have demonstrated the fact, Tyndall 
 to have disproved the theory. 
 
82 THE CREATION. 
 
 It appeared at one time that the origin of life, 
 in some of its forms at least, misiht be 
 
 ^ Bathybius 
 
 traced to a slime that covered the bot- (Huxley and 
 torn of the deep seas, since specks of liv- 
 ing matter were found in it. The suggestion awak- 
 ened much interest among scientific men, and Profs. 
 Huxley and Haeckel in particular entered into a 
 careful investigation. It afterward appeared that 
 this slime occurs only in isolated sections of the 
 sea-bottom — that oftener than otherwise it con- 
 tains no life ; and finally, by the microscopic in- 
 vestigations of Sir Lionel Beale, that this ooze or 
 slime, instead of a bed of primitive life, is decay- 
 ing matter out of which the life has not yet 
 wholly perished. The living specks were the last 
 of their generation rather than the first. 
 
 Indeed, there is little doubt that further inves- 
 tigation will prove the simple microscopic forms of 
 life known as monad, bacteria, and the like, to be 
 the result of decomposition of higher forms of life, 
 rather than the beginnings of new life. The ooze 
 at the bottom of ponds often shows traces of ani- 
 mal life, but it is decaying rather than primitive 
 life. Instead of representing matter in the pro- 
 cess of changing to the first form of life, it rep- 
 resents life in the last stages of decay, on the 
 point of lapsing into the condition of dead mat- 
 ter. 
 
ANIMAL LIFE. 83 
 
 Prof. Huxley, in his recent study of ''The Cray- 
 fish," speaking- of the wonderful changes 
 
 ^ ^ Huxley's 
 
 that take place in the ^^^ as it develops "The Cray- 
 into the embryo animal, says they are 
 " the necessary consequences of the interaction of 
 the molecular forces resident in the substance of 
 the impregnated ovum with the condition to which 
 it is exposed," and compares it to the process of 
 crystallization in minerals. But, aside from the fact 
 that there is as yet an unbridged chasm between 
 organic and inorganic substances — the one depend- 
 ing upon molecular stability and the other upon 
 the exact opposite, molecular instability, or a con- 
 stant change of atoms — the changes in crystal- 
 lization are purely chemical. Does Prof. Huxley 
 intend to be understood as regarding the changes 
 in the ^^g as purely chemical ? We think not ; and 
 if not, then the comparison fails. There is unques- 
 tionably some force or forces acting in the ^%g. 
 But "the interaction of molecular forces" affords 
 no explanation whatever. That operation needs 
 explanation quite as much as the original process. 
 
 Again, after noting the close resemblance be- 
 tween the lowest forms of animals and plants, he 
 proceeds: ''Given, one of these protoplasmic bodies, 
 of which we are unable to say whether it is plant 
 or animal, and endow it with such inherent capaci- 
 ties of self -modi fie at ion [the italics are our own"" 
 
84 THE CREATION. 
 
 as are manifested under our eyes by developing 
 ova, and we have a sufficient reason for the exist- 
 ence of any animal or any plant." But Prof. Hux- 
 ley will surely concede that the assumption that 
 matter is thus endowed, is the very point to be 
 proved. And further, if such powers of modifica- 
 tion are found in matter in some conditions, the 
 question still remains, Whence came they? Are 
 they due merely to conditions, or is there really 
 an added force? Thus far it must be confessed 
 the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the 
 latter. 
 
 And so, after all this parley and delay, the sci- 
 
 Present ^^^ific world is practically thrown back 
 
 attitude of upon the Professor's own dictum in the 
 
 science. 
 
 "Encyclopedia Britannica," article Biology, 
 that " of the causes which have led to the origrina- 
 tion of living matter, we know absolutely nothing." 
 The curious suggestion of Sir William Thomp- 
 son, that life was imported to the earth 
 
 Meteoric ori- , ^ . j ^ i ^ • 
 
 g-inof life ^^^ meteoric agency, need not detam us 
 long, for it is but a suggestion at the 
 best, with no pretence of proof; and if the fact 
 were conceded, it would only push the question of 
 origin a little farther back : it would explain noth- 
 ing. For manifestly we can predicate nothing of 
 meteoric matter that may not with equal propriety 
 be predicated of the earth. If the meteor is a 
 
ANIMAL LIFE. 85 
 
 fragment of a decayed or disjointed world, how 
 came life into that world ? This attempt at ex- 
 planation, if it is seriously intended as an explana- 
 tion, leaves the inquirer just where it finds him. 
 
 A word, in passing, as to the development of 
 one race of animals out of another. It 
 must be said the like has never been wit- ^ Possible 
 
 development. 
 
 nessed, though many attempts have been 
 made. In no case has one animal ever been 
 known to produce an animal of a race or species 
 essentially different from itself. And though Prof. 
 Hseckel insists, with some show of impatience, that 
 it is unscientific to demand such proof, considering 
 the time required to produce essential variations, 
 it is certainly quite as unreasonable to ask us to 
 accept what it is confessed has never yet been 
 proven. It is true that some modifications have 
 been effected in animals under domestication, as 
 shown by Mr. Darwin, but that is no argument 
 for variation by ''natural selection;" the one im- 
 plies intelligent oversight, the other expressly dis- 
 owns it. 
 
 What, then, of the germ theory? 
 
 It is conceded on all hands that we have no 
 certain knowledge of life produced other- 
 wise than from some antecedent form of theory™ 
 life. The plant springs from a seed 
 which encloses a living germ. The offspring de- 
 
86 THE CREATION. 
 
 scends from the parent through a series of changes 
 beginning in a living cell. 
 
 All our knowledge and experience, then, are in 
 favor of this theory. 
 
 But the existence of a living germ, whether 
 one or more, with the possibility of definite de- 
 velopment, implies the existence of a Creator with 
 intelligence, power, will, and purpose. And, as be- 
 fore said, with so much conceded, all else follows 
 easily. 
 
 To enter with more detail upon the various 
 theories touching the origin and transmission of life 
 would lead us quite outside the range of discus- 
 sion contemplated in these pages, and we turn now, 
 after so long a digression, to the immediate sub- 
 ject of the present lecture: The Animal Kingdom. 
 
 After the appearance of plants which might 
 serve as food for animals, and after the 
 \vorid atmosphere was so far cleared of poison- 
 ous gases as to adapt it for respiration, 
 came a new order of existence, the animal creation, 
 briefly epitomized in Genesis thus: "And God said, 
 let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving 
 creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above 
 the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And 
 . . . let the earth bring forth the living creature 
 after his kind, cattle and creeping things and 
 beasts of the earth . . . and it was so." 
 
ANIMAL LIFE. 8/ 
 
 It is here stated that the water and the earth 
 
 brought forth Hving things. But, as we 
 
 ^ l^ have had occasion to note before, the 
 
 recoi-Q. ' 
 
 narrative recognizes no fortuitous hap- 
 pening in this — no chance development or occur- 
 rence. It was according to the divine ordering of 
 events. There the author finds, every time, his 
 sure cause and sufficient starting-point. It was the 
 Creator working by plain and definite methods, 
 with intent to bring out of chaos the order, har- 
 mony, and beauty of a completed and peopled 
 world. "^^ 
 
 * Since the above was written a notable work by R. W. Wright", 
 entitled ^' Life its True Genesis" has appeared, in which the posi- 
 tion is assumed and defended with much skill and labor that " the 
 primordial germs (meaning germinal principles of life) of all living 
 tilings, man alone excepted, are in themselves upon the earth, and 
 that they severally make their appearance, each after its kind, when- 
 ever and wherever the necessary environing conditions exist." In 
 these facts he finds the interpretation of the words, " Let the earth 
 bring forth," etc. Not that the germs develop from the soil, ac- 
 cording to evolution, but that they exist, were implanted in the earth, 
 and that they not only may but must appear, whenever the heces- 
 sary conditions occur. He illustrates by the alternations of forest 
 trees and changes of vegetable growth, \\'ithout the known presence 
 of seeds, as the fire-weed appears in a burnt forest though it may 
 not have been known within hundreds of miles before, plantain 
 springs up about a new house, aconite about an alpine hut, and 
 white clover instead of the native wild grasses, in a used pasture. 
 On the same principle he would account for the simultaneous ap- 
 pearance of like flora, in widely remote sections of the earth. If 
 we understand the author — we could wish he had been more ex- 
 plicit on this point — he would apply the same reasoning to the ani- 
 mal world, man alone excepted. The theory is a bold and some- 
 what novel one. 
 
88 THE CREATION. 
 
 According to this record, the earliest Hfe was 
 in the sea. There is nothing definite as to form 
 or quality, only that it was a "moving thing that 
 had life," and was thus distinguished from the 
 plant which is usually fixed, and that it " brought 
 forth abundantly," or multiplied rapidly. The de- 
 scription is that of an animal of low grade or of 
 the simplest structure. The next mention is of 
 fowl, or what is deemed a more accurate render- 
 ing, " winged creatures," and must include the 
 forms of life that are in the air. Allusion is next 
 made again to life in the water under the general 
 term " great whales," or reptiles. 
 
 And following this by so wide an interval as to 
 be placed at the beginning of the following day, 
 came " the beasts of the earth," including cattle 
 and creeping things, or the animals in general that 
 live on the land, as distinguished from those that 
 live in the air or dwell in the sea. 
 
 Let us claim no more for this account than the 
 language fully warrants. Life, first in the water, 
 then in the air, then on the land. This is the 
 order indicated, and we must suppose the order in- 
 tended. Again, we are led to infer that the first 
 forms of animal life were very simple, scarcely dif- 
 fering from plants, except that they were endowed 
 with power to move, and that in process of time 
 and with some orderly sequence, the line proceeded 
 
ANIMAL LIFE, 89 
 
 toward higher and more complex forms ; to the 
 fishes that inhabit the waters, the birds that peo- 
 ple the air, the cattle that roam on the hills, and 
 the beasts that prowl in the jungle. 
 
 This is, in brief, the story told us in Genesis of 
 the creation and appearance of the animal world. 
 
 Let us now turn to other fields of inquiry with 
 reference to the same things. 
 
 First, let us note what science teaches of the 
 varieties of animal life, or the divisions of 
 the animal kingdom as a whole. And ^'''f ^' ^^^ 
 
 ° alysis. 
 
 then let us read in the rocks, as far as 
 we are able, the order in which these several divis- 
 ions made their first appearance. For it is on the 
 fossils we must rely at last to know positively 
 which came first and which came afterward. And 
 fortunately, we shall find this an easier task than 
 in the case of plants, especially in the earlier ages, 
 as the remains are so much more abundant and 
 more perfectly preserved in form. 
 
 We encounter a difficulty here in adopting a di- 
 vision of the animal kingdom that will be intelligi- 
 ble to all without extended explanation. 
 
 There are certain broad distinctions in Different 
 the animal world that are useful in such ^^^^^^fi<^^^'""^- 
 discussions, as far as they go. There are the cold- 
 blooded animals and the warm-blooded. There are 
 the gill-breathers and the lung-breathers. But these 
 
90 THE CREATION. 
 
 are not sufficiently specific for our purpose. A di- 
 vision was suggested by an eminent naturalist a 
 few years ago, which for its simplicity we hoped 
 might come into use. It was substantially this. 
 Animals may be approximately classified thus : — 
 I. Those with stomachs. 2. Those with shells. 3. 
 Those with legs or other limbs. 4. Those with 
 heads. That is to say, these parts severally are 
 the specific characteristics of the different groups. 
 The lowest type of animal has little if any organ- 
 ism except a stomach. Then come those with 
 stomachs, to be sure, but adding a shell for pro- 
 tection ; or some type of limb for locomotion, 
 whether on the ground, in the water, or in the 
 air. While the most important part about the 
 higher animal, as a distinctive type, is the head. 
 
 But this classification, while peculiarly sugges- 
 tive, was not sufficiently specific for scientific work, 
 and never came into use. 
 
 And there seems no resource left us but to 
 turn to zoology, as in the last lecture to botany, 
 and, simplifying the scientific terms as far as we 
 may, adopt the classification there employed. 
 
 Naturalists recognize five divisions of the ani- 
 mal kingdom, namely: 
 Zoological Y Protozoans; literally "first livers," 
 
 distinctions. 
 
 generally microscopic, though sometimes 
 attainincr to considerable size. 
 
ANIMAL LIFE. 9 1 
 
 II. Radiates, or star-shaped animals. 
 
 III. MoUusks, or soft-bodied animals, generally 
 with shells. 
 
 IV. Articulates, having a jointed or ring-like 
 structure. 
 
 V. Vertebrates, or animals with internal skeleton, 
 including a vertebral column, or backbone. 
 
 All animals that live, and all of which we find 
 any traces in the rocks, are of one of these classes. 
 Let us examine the structure and mode of life of 
 each. A single specimen of the first, the Proto- 
 zoan, will answer our purpose. 
 
 The xA.moeba, a minute animal sometimes found 
 in stagnant pools, seems nothing but a bit 
 of pulp. The outside is much like jelly; '^^^^ P'"°*° 
 
 ^ ^ J / > zoan. 
 
 the inside somewhat granular. It has no 
 limbs proper, and still it moves. It has no mouth, 
 and still it eats. It will fasten on a seed, or other 
 substance that will serve as food, no matter what 
 part the seed touches first, and soon it will dis- 
 appear inside the animal, and in due time the 
 refuse is cast out in an equally mysterious way ; 
 the animal having absorbed whatever was nutritious, 
 ejects what does not serve its purpose. This is a 
 type of the animal with a stomach, the first essen- 
 tial in the living creature, and one that never 
 looses its importance. Without a stomach that 
 performs its functions well, there can be no sound 
 
92 THE CREATION. 
 
 and healthy organism in any animal whether of 
 high or low degree. The little animal just de- 
 scribed will serve as an illustration of the simplest 
 form of life, though the sponge is a more familiar 
 example and one more easily examined. 
 
 Next come the Radiates, so called from their 
 star-like form, which in addition to a 
 The Radiate, stomach have a perceptible mouth. They 
 have also rays or parts branching in all 
 directions much like the leaves of a plant, which 
 serve them in moving through the water or in 
 gathering food. 
 
 Among the best known examples of these are 
 the star-fish, the jelly fish, and most corals. Their 
 structure and habits are simple, but a considerable 
 advance over the Protozoans. 
 
 Next in order come the Mollusks, including 
 
 everything that wears a shell, either with- 
 
 ^7^^ . out or within, from the commonplace clam 
 
 Mollusk. ^ 
 
 and oyster to the artistically formed am- 
 monite and the delicately tinted nautilus, and from 
 the slow-footed snail to the slimy and voracious 
 cuttle-fish, which there is little doubt is the mys- 
 terious and dreaded sea-serpent of the modern seas. 
 The almost infinite variety that make up this 
 branch of the animal world will appear on exami- 
 nation of any large collection of shells, such as 
 natural history cabinets afford. 
 
ANIMAL LIFE. 93 
 
 Most of these animals are included under the 
 general name of " shell-fish." But they are in no 
 proper sense fishes. They have no more similarity 
 in structure or habit to the fish than to the seal 
 or manatee, which also inhabit the sea. 
 
 And, now, does it occur to the reader that in 
 all these classes of animals. Protozoans, Radiates, 
 and Mollusks, there are scarcely any that live on 
 dry land ? The sea swarmed with life while as 
 yet the land was destitute. 
 
 But let us go a little farther, and we shall find 
 there were different orders of life in store. 
 
 The next division of the animal kingdom, the 
 Articulates, having a ring-like or jointed 
 structure, includes the lobster, which in The 
 
 Articulate. 
 
 place of shell has a closely articulated 
 crust, together with the worms and all the insect 
 world. This division has a few representatives in 
 the sea, but takes us, for the most part, on to the 
 land and into the air. It is unnecessary to cite 
 particular examples. 
 
 Finally comes the division known as the Verte- 
 brates, in which the animal kingdom cul- 
 minates, or reaches its highest perfection. velLe. 
 
 Among the animals with backbon s 
 we shall find those that live in the water, those 
 that live in the air, and those that live on the 
 land. But it is a fact quite in accord with the 
 
94 THE CREATION. 
 
 principle already established, that that in the sea 
 came first, that in the air followed, and then that 
 on the land. 
 
 First the fishes, then the birds, then the beasts. 
 
 So much for what science teaches of the divis- 
 ions and characteristics of the animal kingdom. 
 
 The question follows next, in what order did 
 these several types of life appear, or was 
 
 The order of , . . . ___ 
 
 succession, their appearance simultaneous ? We pur- 
 sue the same course as in dealing with 
 plants in the last lecture. In the earliest rocks 
 containing fossils of animals are found only Pro- 
 tozoans, " first livers " as they are appropriately 
 styled on that account. The remains are few, as 
 might be expected, for they are slight and simple 
 in structure, and therefore perishable. 
 
 Next we find, in rocks somewhat later, the re- 
 mains of Radiates, especially corals, and MoUusks of 
 almost infinite variety. Beds of limestone are often 
 found consisting almost wholly of one or the other 
 of these. In coral limestone, however, traces of the 
 original skeletons are comparatively rare ; they 
 were broken and crushed in the process of con- 
 solidation ; but in " shell-limestone " made up of 
 the remains of mollusks, as that found near St. 
 Augustine, Florida, the skeletons are often found 
 almost as perfect as in the living animal. 
 
 The foregoing, it will be observed, comprise the 
 
ANlMiL LIFE. 95 
 
 first three types of life above described. As we 
 proceed in our investigation, from the older toward 
 the more recent rock formations, we shall find 
 these several groups still, together with the Ar- 
 ticulates, and the Vertebrates are also added, thus 
 completing the list of distinct types of animal life. 
 But the indications of an onward and upward pro- 
 gress in the forms of life do not cease here. Each 
 succeeding age witnesses a marked change in the 
 several groups or types of life. And this is par- 
 ticularly observable among Vertebrates. 
 
 First or lowest among vertebrated animals are 
 fishes. And to such rank did they attain at one 
 time, in point of numbers, variety, and size, that the 
 period has received the name of the Age of Fishes. 
 After this came an Age of Reptiles ; the reptile 
 ranking above the fish in completeness of structure 
 and adaptedness to different conditions of life. 
 Then came the Age of Mammals, generally large 
 land animals. And finally the Age of Man, who 
 represents the highest class in the whole group of 
 vertebrated animals. 
 
 Such is the story, in brief, the rocks tell us of 
 the various types and classes of animals that have 
 lived and died upon the earth, together with the 
 order in which they succeeded one another. 
 
 How do we know such animals as these ever 
 lived ? In the same way that if, digging in an 
 
9^ THE CREATION. 
 
 ancient cemetery, we came upon the skeleton of a 
 
 Testimon ^^^^ large man, we should know that a 
 
 of giant had sometime been buried there. 
 
 tliG rocks 
 
 We find the remains of them in the rocks 
 that compose the crust of the earth. No such re- 
 mains would appear had not such creatures lived. 
 Nor would such relics have been embodied in the 
 rocks, had they not lived and died at the time 
 such rocks were in process of formation. But this 
 will more fully appear in the succeeding lecture. 
 
 And now the reader may be interested to know 
 Com arison ^^^^^ points of Correspondence clearly ex- 
 
 of ist between the record just laid down and 
 
 records. i • i 
 
 that which appears m Genesis. It would 
 be idle to say we find in the latter a detailed 
 history or complete analysis. The author was not 
 writing a treatise on zoology. He, at most, indi- 
 cates only the most obvious characteristics of dif- 
 ferent classes of animals, and that chiefly by the 
 element in which they live. The order observed is 
 this. First life — abundant life — in the sea, then life 
 in the air, then life on the land. 
 
 We found by indications in the rocks that the 
 sea abounded with life, while the land was des- 
 titute; then that there was probably life in the 
 air, before any pertaining strictly to the land ; 
 and finally that " the beasts of the earth " — in 
 other words, land animals, were the last to appear 
 
ANIMAL LIFE. 97 
 
 preceding the advent of man. These points will 
 plainly appear to any one who choses to examine 
 the records together. 
 
 The precise point at which each group or di- 
 vision of. animals made its first appearance cannot 
 be certainly determined — for, like the earliest plants, 
 the earliest animals may have disappeared entirely, 
 owing to the condition of the earth, its tempera- 
 ture and surroundings, and the volcanic convulsions 
 that took place. But the time at which each rose 
 into promine7ice^ and became the leading feature or 
 controlling power, can be determined with all the 
 accuracy science can give, with the aid of the most 
 abundant fossils. 
 
 And so we return to the point from which we 
 started — that after the surface of the 
 earth was divided into land and sea, and Conclusion, 
 the hardened crust had worn and softened 
 into beds of soil — after plants had had all the life 
 to themselves awhile, and the air was so far purified 
 it could be breathed ; then, by the divine fiat, came 
 forth in the waters the moving creature that had 
 life, and winged creatures that fly above the earth ; 
 and then appeared on the land, cattle and creeping 
 things and beasts of the earth, each after his kind. 
 
 And thus was the earth made ready, by long 
 process of preparation, for the abode of intelli- 
 gence and the use of man. 
 
VI 
 
 Reading the Record, 
 
" The invisible things of him are clearly seen, being- under- 
 stood by the things that are made." 
 
 ■ In contemplation of created things, 
 By steps we may ascend to God." 
 
 — Milton. 
 
 Nature hath made nothing so base, but can 
 Read some instruction to the wisest man." 
 
 " And in that rock are shapes of shells, and forms 
 Of creatures in old worlds. 
 Whose generations lived and died ere man 
 Appeared upon the scene." 
 
 — Adapted from Crabbe. 
 
VI. 
 
 READING THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 
 
 We propose in this discourse to see what kind 
 of record geology can give us of Hfe upon the 
 earth. 
 
 To that end we must speak first of certain 
 rock formations; whence the material 
 comes, how it is deposited, and what of rocks 
 changes follow. And as nature's methods 
 are very constant, if we determine the processes 
 for one age we solve the problem for all ages. 
 
 The formation of different kinds of rocks may 
 be illustrated as follows. After a heavy rain, the 
 water that flows along the streets of a country 
 village, where the conditions of nature are but 
 slightly changed, will be turbid and muddy; mov- 
 ing more or less rapidly according to the descent 
 of the ground, and carrying along sand, clay, 
 gravel, and such refuse as may come in its way. 
 Moreover, if the surface be uneven and the soil 
 soft or friable, the hillsides will be furrowed out 
 and partially washed away. As the rivulets from 
 
I02 THE CREATION. 
 
 Streets or hills collect in a valley, they will form 
 
 a current of increased volume and force, that will 
 
 still bear onward its accumulation of sediment. 
 
 If, now, the stream enter a pond or lake the 
 
 ^ ,. current will widen, and so lose its force, 
 
 Sediment 
 
 g:athered and and this hetcrogeneous mass of material, 
 will be assorted and distributed some- 
 what as follows. The heavier particles, that is, the 
 gravel, will sink first and be deposited in a bed of 
 comparatively narrow limits near the entrance of 
 the stream. The sand, being lighter, will be borne 
 farther out, till the current can carry it no longer, 
 when it will sink, and in consequence be dis- 
 tributed over a wider surface and above the gravel. 
 And if the quantity of sand and gravel be about 
 equal, it is evident the layer of sand will be as 
 much thinner than that of the gravel, as the area 
 covered is greater. 
 
 Then, again, the silt — finely comminuted clay, 
 called dust when dry — being still lighter than sand, 
 will be borne still farther out, and distributed in 
 consequence over a still larger area than either of 
 the others. 
 
 And, now, when in process of ages these beds 
 of sedimentary deposits solidify — change to solid 
 rock, the lower bed will be conglomerate, the mid- 
 dle one sandstone, and the upper slate. A similar 
 process goes on, on a much larger scale in the 
 
READING THE RECORD. IO3 
 
 ocean, especially in the formation of the two va- 
 rieties last named, but the smaller body of water 
 is more convenient for our purpose of illustration. 
 
 But there is another important matter to be 
 considered in this connection. 
 
 In case of heavy rains various fragments of 
 organic remains, vegetable or animal, are 
 
 1-11 1 11- 1 Orig:in of 
 
 likely to be washed mto the stream fossils, 
 and deposited with the other sediment. 
 Such a fragment may be buried in the gravel, in 
 the sand, or in the silt; and so imbedded becomes 
 a fossil, that may appear if the ledge of rock is 
 ever opened. It is clear that it must drift in and 
 be deposited while the sediment is gathering and 
 before it is solidified. And we may, therefore, con- 
 clude that such fossil is a relic of a plant or ani- 
 mal that lived on the earth when that rock was 
 forming, or at no very long period before ; and 
 that it, therefore, gives us a clue to the kind oi 
 life in that period. 
 
 The chances of the fossil being preserved, 
 however, depend largely on the particu- 
 
 , . , . , •- r 11 Preservation 
 
 lar bed mto which it falls. ^^ ^^^^jj^^ 
 
 Conglomerate is not favorable for the 
 preservation of a foreign body : first, because the 
 gravel tends to grind and destroy it; and, second, 
 because the rock being porous, water percolates 
 through and tends to dissolve it. Nor is the slate 
 
104 THE CREATION. 
 
 much more favorable. Owing to the crystallizing 
 process that makes the slate bed easily divisible 
 into thin plates, the form of the fossil is likely 
 to be distorted beyond recognition, if not entirely 
 destroyed. Of the formations described, therefore, 
 the sandstone is likely to show most fossils in a 
 fair state of preservation. We have now indicated 
 the mode of origin of three important kinds of 
 rocks. There is a fourth, formed in a different 
 way, we must also notice, as it is the most im- 
 portant of all the fossilliferous series. 
 
 Lime, which makes up so large a portion of the 
 
 rock systems, is held in solution in the 
 
 Origin of ^y^^gj-g of the sea as well as of lakes and 
 
 limestone. 
 
 rivers, and contributes largely to the 
 structure of both animals and plants. When an 
 animal dies, its skeleton, whether bone or shell, is 
 readily transformed into limestone, unless the con- 
 ditions are entirely adverse. And many limestone 
 beds are made up almost wholly of such remains. 
 From the earliest formation of sedimentary rocks, 
 this process has been going on, especially in the 
 sea, and is still going on. 
 
 With each geological epoch, a new layer of 
 limestone is added to some part of the earth's 
 crust. 
 
 Oftentimes these remains lose their shape en- 
 tirely, may be finely powdered by a process of 
 
READING THE RECORD. 105 
 
 attrition, or crushed and folded by superincumbent 
 pressure, before the bed is finally solidified. Or, 
 after solidification they may undergo a sort of 
 metamorphosis by which the original structure is 
 lost, though the substance remains, as in finely 
 grained marble which is nothing but common lime- 
 stone changed by pressure and heat. 
 
 And, again, the fossils may be unearthed ages 
 on ages after they are deposited, almost as dis- 
 tinctly shaped as they were in life. They con- 
 tribute in either case, however, to the substance of 
 the bed of which they form a part. 
 
 With this analysis of rock formations, if we 
 will briefly recall the divisions and distinctions be- 
 fore noted in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 
 whence all fossils come, we shall now be able to 
 make out a fairly complete history of life on the 
 earth, from its early if not its first appearance, to 
 the present era. 
 
 Plants are divisible into three general classes, 
 distinguished by their modes of growth 
 and fruiting or seeding, and conveniently 7!^^ 7^?^^^- 
 
 ^ ^' J Die kingdom. 
 
 designated as Acrogens, Endogens, and 
 Exogens. We need not restate the distinctions in 
 detail. 
 
 The animal kingdom is divisible into The animal 
 five general classes: Protozoans, Radiates, ^'"^'^°"- 
 MoUusks, Articulates, and Vertebrates, the distinc 
 
I06 THE CREATION. 
 
 tions between which will be readily recalled. The 
 first is represented by the infusoria and the sponge ; 
 the second by the coral and the star-fish ; the third 
 by the snail on land and oyster in the sea ; the 
 fourth by the worm on land, the insect in the air, 
 and lobster in the sea ; and the fifth by the fish, 
 reptile, bird, quadruped, and man. 
 
 We have, then, before us a view of the princi- 
 pal rock formations in which fossils may be "found. 
 And also the two sources or kingdoms which con- 
 tribute fossils to the rocks when forming. 
 
 And, now, to the record itself. 
 
 The first formed rocks were, of course, of 
 ^ . . io^neous orio;in — came out of the fire, or 
 
 Origin ^ ^ 
 
 of earliest were Solidified by cooling from a molten 
 state. In these there could have been 
 no life or remains of life ; for till after this period, 
 no living thing could have existed on the earth, 
 by reason of the intense heat. Moreover, the first 
 formed rocks, resulting from the cooling process, 
 must have been corroded on the surface and worn 
 away, forming soft beds of soil, either on the 
 rocks, or by drifting, at the bottom of the sea, 
 before there could have been any kind of even 
 vegetable life. But this seems not to have been 
 long delayed, for in very early beds of sedimen- 
 tary rocks are found traces of some forms of life. 
 For convenience we adopt the geologist's desig- 
 
READING THE RECORD. IO7 
 
 nations of the successive eras or ages. \See chari 
 following this lecture.'] 
 
 The earliest sedimentary rocks of any consider 
 able extent are known as the Laurentian, 
 
 Earliest 
 
 and in parts oi America are estimated sedimentary 
 to have attained a thickness or depth of 
 thirty thousand feet. The period in which they 
 were formed was long supposed to have been life- 
 less. But recent discoveries have changed that 
 conclusion. The plants, as plants, have entirely 
 disappeared, no form of one being distinguishable 
 in fossil. 
 
 But the existence of extensive beds of graphite 
 — sometimes, though incorrectly, stvled 
 
 ^ /' / Earliest evi- 
 
 black lead — in the Laurentian rocks, im- dence of life 
 plies the existence of plants in that ^^""^P^'*^^- 
 period. For since graphite is believed to have the 
 same origin as coal, namely from plants, it could 
 not have been formed before there were plants of 
 which to form it. 
 
 And as the first distinguishable plants above 
 this formation are all of the first and simplest 
 class, namely Acrogens, we have the best of rea- 
 sons for presuming the Laurentian plants, or the 
 plants which grew when the Laurentian rocks 
 were forming, were entirely of this class. 
 
 Moreover, some diligent explorers, notably Dr. 
 J. W. Dawson, of McGill College, Montreal, has 
 
108 THE CREATION. 
 
 discovered in the upper or later Laurentian, the 
 
 fossil of an animal, Eozoon (dawning life), 
 
 ^ ^ so simple and yet so obscure in struc- 
 
 Lozoon. ^ •' 
 
 ture, that its organic character is still 
 in some doubt. If it is an animal, as it prob- 
 ably is, it is of the very lowest form, one of 
 the minor Protozoans. Life began at the lowest 
 point, and with the simplest mode of growth. 
 Here, then, we find the introduction of life upon 
 the earth, in the form of plants, and possibly of 
 animals also. The occurrence of limestone and 
 beds of iron ore in the same formation are also 
 regarded as signs of the existence of some kind of 
 life, since these owe their origin chiefly to organic 
 agency. But little account has yet been made of 
 this fact by the geologist, however, in dealing with 
 the Laurentian rocks. 
 
 We now move up one step in the series. 
 
 Next in order after the Laurentian came the 
 Silurian rocks, so named from a district 
 
 The 
 
 Silurian in England where they show at the sur- 
 oima ion. ^^^^^ They are made up of successive 
 series of beds of sandstone, limestone, and shale (a 
 soft irregular slate), nature having now got fairly 
 to work, wearing away rocks, transporting the 
 abraded material by means of wind and ocean 
 currents, and building them up in other places. 
 We find in these rocks the remains of both 
 
READING THE RECORD. IO9 
 
 plants and animals, many still of low type and 
 very simple structure, such as the sea-weed among 
 plants and the sponge and coral among animals ; 
 but there are found also both plants and animals of 
 higher forms and more varied constitutions, showing 
 a great advance over the life of the former period. 
 
 The Radiates doubtless existed in great num- 
 bers, especially corals and crinoids, or flower ani- 
 mals, as they are sometimes called by reason of 
 their peculiar shape ; but as they are fragile or 
 pulpy in substance, and therefore easily destroyed, 
 they do not appear in great numbers in the rocks. 
 But the Mollusk, with his strong shell to protect 
 him in life and keep his memory alive when he 
 is dead, appeared in strong force, and some beds 
 of the Silurian rocks, as those which appear at 
 Trenton Falls, New York, are composed almost 
 wholly of its remains. To walk along the shelv- 
 ing banks of that stream (Canada Creek), or on 
 portions of its dry bed when the water is low, 
 as it is sometimes late in summer, is to tread 
 upon millions of skeletons or casements of these 
 animals that lived in the sea in the Silurian age. 
 
 This formation, extending eastward _, _ 
 
 ' ^ The Green 
 
 into Vermont, was metamorphosed or Mountain 
 crystallized in the upheaval of the Green 
 Mountains, and constitutes the extensive marble 
 beds of that region. 
 
no THE CREATION. 
 
 -There was as yet little if any life upon the 
 land. The ocean was inhabited — the scene, per- 
 haps, of strife and depredation ; the land was 
 almost utterly bare and still. 
 
 The plants of this period either did not ad- 
 vance so rapidly, or, as seems riiore proba- 
 antso te ^^^ their softer substance rendered them 
 
 Silurian age. ' 
 
 more liable to destruction in the geologic 
 convulsions and revolutions that marked, at that 
 early day, the changes from one period to another. 
 What plants do reveal themselves, however, show 
 a considerable variety, including a large number of 
 marine plants and in the upper layers a few that 
 grew on the land. Some additions have been 
 made by recent explorations, and others may still 
 be added to the list. The whole number of plants 
 that can be identified is small in comparison with 
 the number of animals, and they are chiefly if not 
 entirely of the class of Acrogens. This difference 
 in number is nothing remarkable, however, consid- 
 ering the readiness with which tender herbage 
 yields to the action of the elements. 
 
 Leaving now the Silurian we pass next to the 
 _, Devonian formation, named also from an 
 
 The 
 
 Devonian English district. Hugh Miller styled it 
 
 formation. 
 
 the -'Old Red Sandstone. And here 
 we shall find some marked changes in the types 
 of life among both animals and plants. First the 
 
READING THE RECORD. Ill 
 
 plants were much more numerous; or if not more 
 numerous in growth, then more successfully pre- 
 served in fossil. They belong chiefly still to the 
 first class of plants, though one or two, of higher 
 but uncertain type, have been identified. It must 
 be borne in mind that the extent of sea was much 
 greater than at a later period, and that of land 
 correspondingly less. And this may account for 
 the fact that the plants continued of that class 
 that flourishes best in the sea, or 'in immediate 
 proximity to it. The higher plants require high 
 and comparatively dry land. 
 
 But the animal life of the Devonian period was 
 abundant and varied. Not only did the Mollusks 
 hold a place, as to numbers, almost equalling that 
 of their Silurian congeners, differing merely in 
 slight structural details, attaining perhaps some- 
 thing more of symmetry and something more of 
 distinctive character ; and the Radiates, especially 
 corals, multiply and extend with great rapidity 
 and contribute their short-lived skeletons to the 
 forming rocks, and the Articulate — insect — begin 
 to wing its way upon the humid air, but the fish 
 also appeared, which, having a backbone, belongs 
 to the highest class of animals, the Vertebrates. 
 
 The latter were of considerable variety and 
 vast numbers, insomuch that the period i« known 
 in geology as the Age of Fishes. It was evidentl> 
 
112 THE CREATION. 
 
 also a time of depredation and reprisals among 
 these denizens of the deep. And many 
 rSies ^^ them were amply equipped for the 
 fray. They had coats of mail, consisting 
 of thick bony plates, with carapace, like a shield 
 about the head, and sharp spike-like teeth that 
 not only fitted them for self-defence, but must 
 have made them the terror of their less securely 
 armored neighbors. But such is the way of animal 
 life. The stronger subsist upon the weaker. And 
 but for their prodigious rapidity of increase, 
 " bringing forth abundantly," the tribes of smaller 
 animals would long ago have disappeared. What 
 is lost in one way, however, is gained in another, 
 and nature is never defeated of her ends by any 
 casual contingency. 
 
 We move now one step farther upward in the 
 scale. 
 
 Next in order above the Devonian rocks comes 
 the Carboniferous system, including the 
 period extensive coal formations which supply 
 so important a necessity to-day. In this 
 period the development of plants was most re- 
 markable, both as to numbers and variety. 
 Hitherto we have found very few higher than the 
 first and lowest class. In the coal period this 
 division still held the leading place. They grew 
 to enormous size, and formed rank and tancjled 
 
READING THE RECORD. II3 
 
 jungles in the low and marshy districts which bor- 
 dered on the sea, and held some low valleys of 
 the interior. 
 
 The tree-fern, the sigillaria a huge club-moss, 
 and the calamite a giant rush, were among the 
 striking forms of vegetable life. To these were 
 due the vast accumulations of vegetable matter of 
 which the coal beds were formed. Crushed down 
 and pressed together beneath still later rock for- 
 mations, they lost their fibrous structure and were 
 thus metamorphosed into the coal that serves the 
 world so well. 
 
 But though Acrogens still held the first rank 
 in point of numbers and probably of size, 
 they did not comprise the entire vege- ^"ants*^ 
 tation of the period. The higher types, 
 introduced sparingly in the preceding period, now 
 advanced to a place of some importance. Exogens 
 appeared upon the uplands and drifted, sometimes 
 in the form of prostrate trunks, into the swamps, 
 where the coal plants proper grew. The varieties 
 of Exogens were few, however, and bore a remote 
 resemblance to some of the pines of the modern 
 world. 
 
 The period was remarkable for this fact, that 
 it first comprehended all the general classes of 
 vegetable life. What changes followed in succeed- 
 ing ages consisted in new orders and varieties, 
 
114 ^'^^^ CREATION. 
 
 not new modes of growth. The system of plant 
 life was complete. 
 
 The same remark will apply to the animal 
 kingdom in the period of the coal formations. 
 
 The Protozoans still existed as they had from 
 the early dawn of life. Among Radiates 
 
 Variety of , , i i • , ' • 
 
 animals, the corals were less luxuriant than in 
 the preceding age, for much of the shal- 
 low sea had a muddy bottom, which corals do not 
 like. 
 
 The Mollusks still held important rank, and left 
 their contributions of shells to the forming rocks. 
 
 The Articulates grew into more importance, and 
 included a few related to the trilobite, that luxu- 
 riated in the mud along the borders of the seas 
 and lakes, and insects that crawled in and out 
 among the reeking plants, or buzzed and hummed 
 in myriad numbers in the moist warm atmosphere. 
 While among Vertebrates, the fishes of the Devo- 
 nian period were greatly reduced in numbers and 
 in part superseded by different species ; and several 
 varieties of creatures classed among the reptiles 
 were added, especially those of amphibious nature. 
 The system of life was thus complete, both in the 
 animal and the vegetable kingdoms. There were 
 no new general classes or divisions to be added, 
 though the variety of orders, families, and species 
 that followed was almost numberless. 
 
READING THE RECORD. II5 
 
 And now there came a change in the method 
 of advance ; beq-innino- with forms of ex- 
 
 ^ ^ Chancre 
 
 traordinary size, first plants and then ani- in method of 
 mals — the natural order, observe — and 
 then subordinating size to other and higher char- 
 acteristics. 
 
 This series of changes began in the coal period, 
 when plants attained to gigantic propor- 
 tions, and was followed, as we shall find ^ "^t^ 
 
 ' ' Reptiles. 
 
 by taking another upward step, by the 
 Reptilian Age, during the formation of the Meso- 
 zoic (middle life) rocks. 
 
 In this period all the several classes of animals 
 existed, in more or less numerous types, from the 
 Protozoan to the Vertebrate, and the usual pro- 
 cesses of rock formation went on ; but the reptile, 
 introduced sparingly, in the form of a few swim- 
 ming lizards and the like, in the preceding age, 
 now assumed the leading place in the animal cre- 
 ation, and gave name to the age as known in geo- 
 logical history. 
 
 Among the reptiles of the period were the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 The Plesiosaurus, a swimming saurian, with 
 snake-like neck sometimes of forty vertebrae, a 
 small head, with slender teeth, a body compact 
 and flexible, and provided with small paddles for 
 pushing its way through the water; the Ichthyo- 
 
Il6 THE CREATION. 
 
 saurus (fish-lizard) unlike the foregoing in almost 
 every particular, sometimes thirty feet in length, 
 with jaws six feet long, set with sabre-like teeth, 
 and eyes of enormous size ; the Mosasaurus, the 
 sea-serpent of the period, as Dana aptly describes 
 it, seventy-five feet in length and provided with 
 double rows of saw-like teeth for seizing its prey 
 and tearing it; the Pterosaurians (flying reptiles) 
 loathsome creatures bearing some resemblance to 
 the modern bat; the Labyrinthodont, with the hab- 
 its of the frog, but as large almost as a common 
 ox ; and the immense creatures, whether bird or 
 biped reptile, is yet uncertain, that left their foot- 
 prints in great numbers in the red sandstone of the 
 Connecticut valley. 
 
 Prof. O. C. Marsh, of Yale College, has also, by 
 
 his untiring industry and enterprise, added 
 Prof. o. c. ^ y V ^ 
 
 Marsh's largely to the list of reptiles from the 
 discoveries, p^^so^oic rocks in the Rocky Mountain 
 region. 
 
 Chief among these are the Holosaurus, similar 
 to the Ichthyosaurus, but more serpent-like, and 
 sometimes seventy-five feet in length ; the Atlanto- 
 saurus, crocodilian in type, but immensely larger 
 than the modern alligator ; and a bird he names 
 the Hesperornis *' essentially a carnivorous swim- 
 ming ostrich," which had teeth, and stood full six 
 feet high. 
 
READING THE RECORD. 11/ 
 
 There were also great plants in this age, as 
 there were in the age preceding ; with an advance 
 in number of those belonging to the highest class, 
 including the sassafras, hickory, willow beech, and 
 poplar. But the reptiles furnished the striking and 
 characteristic feature of the period. It was the 
 Age of Reptiles. 
 
 The next upward step brings us to the Ceno- 
 zoic (recent life), better known as the The Tertiary 
 
 , , , . . -Ill formation 
 
 lertiary period, and distmguished also as (Age of 
 the Age of Mammals. The name " Ter- Mammals). 
 tiary " is retained from the early nomenclature, 
 when the terms primary and secondary were applied 
 to the preceding rock-formations. It has no special 
 appropriateness now, but is retained for old ac- 
 quaintance sake. 
 
 But the designation, '' Age of Mammals," is 
 specially appropriate. The mammals, among ani- 
 mals, held the leading place. The reptiles, re- 
 manded to a subordinate position, declined in size 
 and numbers. Among fishes, those with skeletons 
 of bone instead of cartillage (introduced in the 
 preceding age) had become most numerous, and 
 there was a general approach in the animal king- 
 dom toward modern types. 
 
 The mammals were of large size, but otherwise, 
 in many points like those that live to-day. Among 
 those characteristic of the period were the Mam- 
 
ii8 THE creation: 
 
 moth, a gigantic elephant, and the Mastodon, the 
 Zeuglodon, bearing some resemblance to the whale 
 but with great molar-teeth, and the Dinoceras, a 
 huge creature, larger than the rhinoceros, and very 
 similar in habit. 
 
 Prof. Marsh has laid the scientific world under 
 
 Recent ad- further obligations by additions to this 
 
 ditions from ^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ tertiary formations 
 
 our western •' 
 
 territories. of the " Terrcs mauvaiscs" (bad lands) in 
 our western territories. The list includes the Oro- 
 hippus, Miohippus, and their congeners, in which 
 Prof. Huxley so confidently traces the lineage of 
 the horse. 
 
 The plants of the Tertiary, included all the 
 creneral classes, but the larger proportion 
 
 Great plants ^ 
 
 of were of the second and third, or the 
 
 the Tertiary, ^^j^^^^ ^^^^ highest divisions, and ap- 
 proached in form and variety those of the present 
 time. Many of these, also, were of extraordinary 
 size. A fragment of a palm-leaf found in the 
 upper Missouri region, must have measured when 
 complete, twelve feet in length, and there were 
 trees closely related to the giant Sequoias, "big 
 trees," of California. The life of the period was 
 by no means usurped, however, by plants or ani- 
 mals of great size. 
 
 There are, both in Europe and America, exten- 
 sive deposits in the rocks of the period, made up 
 
READING THE RECORD. 1 19 
 
 almost wholly of siliceous shells, so minute, it is 
 computed by Ehrenberg, that a cubic 
 inch contains more than forty thousand ^g^^th^ 
 millions. And the nummulitic limestones 
 of Southern Europe and Northern Africa, the same 
 of which some of the Egyptian pyramids are built, 
 are made up chiefly of the shells of very minute 
 animals. The forms of life were even more numer- 
 ous than they had been before, and the most in- 
 significant among them seems to have filled some 
 important place in the economy of the world. 
 
 And, now, one more upward step in the rock 
 formations and we come to the Age of ^^^^^^^^^^ 
 Man, of which there is no need that we Age (Age of 
 speak in much detail. The period is 
 passing now. Intelligence and moral power, other 
 than those concerned in the creation from the first, 
 are become potent factors in the life upon the 
 earth ; and all the ambitions and hopes of men find 
 fields of exercise in the tasks it sets before them, 
 and the rewards it holds out to them. 
 
 [The Quaternary Age will be discussed in Lec- 
 ture X/.] 
 
 Our life history of the earth is now complete. 
 
 We began with its early dawning. We 
 found the evidence of plants remaining Review, 
 in the graphite mines, where the plants 
 themselves had disappeared. We found next the 
 
I20 THE CREATION. 
 
 simplest class of plants in fossil. Next came a 
 few, sparingly distributed, which rank in the higher 
 class, herbs bearing seed ; and lastly, growing side 
 by side with these, the fruit and nut-growing trees. 
 
 We turned, then, to the animal kingdom. Con- 
 temporaneous with these varieties of plants we 
 found the various classes of the animal world. 
 The Protozoan first ; a mere '' moving thing," al- 
 most destitute of organism, but followed in an up- 
 ward scale by the Radiate (coral), the MoUusk 
 (shell-fish), the Articulate (insect), and the Ver- 
 tebrate, beginning with the fishes and advancing 
 to the reptile, bird, quadruped, and man. Our 
 task is done. We have read the record in the 
 rocks. 
 
 We have made no attempt, it will be observed, 
 to estimate the age of the earth, or to 
 ^^earth^^^ calculate that of any single layer of the 
 rocks. It cannot be done, except ap- 
 proximately, and then with much uncertainty. 
 
 It is computed it may require a thousand years, 
 under ordinary circumstances, to form a bed of 
 limestone one foot in depth, and possibly five to 
 ten thousand years to form one foot of coal. 
 
 Lyell estimates the accumulations of the Mis- 
 sissippi delta at about nineteen inches in a century, 
 and that of the Nile mud at less than four inches. 
 Dana computes the most rapid growth of coral 
 
READING THE RECORD. 121 
 
 reefs at one sixteenth of an inch per annum, and 
 Le Conte estimates it at one to two feet in a 
 century. But all such data are illusive. 
 
 Two beds of rock forming side by side may 
 differ in their rates of growth, and the same bed 
 may vary from year to year, or century to century. 
 It depends on the material at command, and on 
 the regularity of the currents by which it is de- 
 posited. It is comparatively easy to decide which 
 strata are the oldest, by their position or by the 
 fossils they contain. But we know nothing defi- 
 nite of the time required to form them, nor of 
 the time that has elapsed since they were com- 
 pacted. 
 
 There are other means of estimating the age of 
 the earth, as a whole, as by its temperature and the 
 erosive action of water, and yet the best authori- 
 ties differ widely on the subject. 
 
 A distinguished astronomer estimates the age 
 of the earth since a crust first formed upon it at 
 fifty-seven million years. Sir William Thompson 
 calculates it at one hundred million years. The 
 evolutionists demand more time. They say, what- 
 ever may be the necessities of rock formations, 
 that a hundred million years is not sufficient for 
 the Ascidian to develop into a man. We suspect 
 they are correct. But Prof. Proctor would seem to 
 satisfy all reasonable demands in this direction, 
 
122 THE CREATION. 
 
 when he places the age of the earth at four hun- 
 dred and fifty milHon years. But we have said 
 enough to indicate the uncertain character of all 
 such calculations. We can reach but one sure and 
 safe conclusion ; that if we estimate the time in 
 years, the earth is very old. 
 
GEOLOGICAL CHART. 
 
 123 
 
 Eras. 
 
 Ages. 
 
 Characteristic Life. 
 
 u 
 
 
 
 N 
 
 K 
 
 Quaternary Age, 
 
 or 
 
 Age of Man. 
 
 Periods or Epochs 
 
 of the 
 
 Quaternary. 
 
 Present. 
 Terrace. 
 Chaniplain. 
 Glacial. 
 
 u 
 
 Tertiary Age, 
 
 or 
 
 Age of Mammals. 
 
 Palm, Magnolia, Myrtle, Fig, Beech, Pop- 
 lar, Maple, Oak. 
 
 Infusoria, Oyster, Fishes, Peccary, Masto- 
 don, Rhinoceros, Orohippus, Miohippus. 
 
 u 
 
 
 ° 
 
 w 
 
 Mesozoic Age, 
 
 or 
 Age of Reptiles. 
 
 Cycads, Conifers, Plane-tree, Willow, Sas- 
 safras, Holly, Redwood, Cypress. 
 
 Plesiosauras, Ichthyosaurus, Pterodactyl, 
 Labyrinthodont, Atlantosaurus, Ammo- 
 nite, Hesperornis. 
 
 
 Carboniferous Age, 
 
 or 
 Age of Coal Plants. 
 
 Tree-ferns, Sigillaria, Lepidodendron, Cal- 
 
 amite, Conifers. 
 Rhizopods, Corals, Crinoids, Snails, Insects, 
 
 Lizards, Amphibians. 
 
 
 
 N 
 
 w 
 <: 
 
 Ph 
 
 Devonian Age, 
 
 or 
 Age of Fishes. 
 
 Ferns, Lycopods, Conifers. 
 Corals, Spirifer, Nautilus, Trilobite, 
 Fishes (Ganoids and Sharks). 
 
 
 Silurian Age, 
 or 
 
 Age of Mollusks. 
 
 Sea-Weeds (Fucoids). 
 
 Sponge, Coral, Crinoid, Trilobite, 
 
 Mollusks, in great variety. 
 
 c 
 
 Laurentian Age. 
 
 Sea- Weeds. 
 Eozoon. 
 
 Igneous Rocks — Lifeless Period. 
 
VII, 
 
 Man. 
 
" God created man in his own image." 
 
 " Still I own 
 A love that spreads from zone to zone ; 
 No time the sacred fire can smother ! 
 Where breathes the man, I hail the brother. 
 Man ! how sublime — from heaven his birth — 
 The God's bright image walks the earth ! 
 And if, at times, his footstep strays, 
 I pity where I may not praise." 
 
VII. 
 
 ORIGIN OF MAN AND UNITY OF THE 
 RACE. 
 
 A GENIAL writer of our own time has said : 
 " Once the great question with men was, 
 
 The 
 
 Where are we all going to? Now the question of 
 question that commands chief attention Ongm. 
 is, Where did we all come from ? " And in the 
 present state of the public mind it is hardly pos- 
 sible to allude to the history of man or his rela- 
 tions to the world, but that this question will 
 come to the front. 
 
 The old familiar theory is that man was a 
 direct and immediate creation of God. Another 
 theory is that he has developed, by a process 
 called Evolution, out of the lower orders of the 
 animal kingdom. The latter theory assumes dif- 
 ferent forms, but the one best known, perhaps, is 
 that coupled with the name of Charles Darwin, and 
 known as " Evolution by Natural Selection." 
 
 There is, first, a difference of opinion among 
 
128 THE CREATION-. 
 
 evolutionists themselves as to the primal origin of 
 
 life; some assuming that life is a pro- 
 Doctrine ^ 
 of duct of matter in certain conditions, and 
 
 Evolution. . . 
 
 Others that at some remote period in 
 the earth's history germs of life were introduced, 
 out of which all the forms of life have grown. 
 Without attempting to settle definitely the ques- 
 tion of primal origin, Mr. Darwin's theory, as we 
 read it, is this — that after life was started on the 
 earth, there were sufficient causes in nature to bring 
 out of the first germs all the varieties that have 
 since existed. As a single illustration of the prin- 
 ciple involved, it is said, that the flipper of the 
 whale, the wing of the bird, the fore-leg of the 
 quadruped, and the arm of man are essentially the 
 same in structure; and each in turn developed out 
 of the next lower and preceding type, and that 
 similar analogies may be traced in other parts of 
 the body ; that fiuiction determines form, and that 
 the use a member of the body serves determines 
 the shape it takes. 
 
 There is no time now to trace the evidence in 
 detail for or against this theory. But after a 
 somewhat careful consideration of the subject, and 
 much that has been said and written upon it, 
 we are constrained to say that so far as revealing 
 any connection between man and the brutes, the 
 doctrine of evolution fails utterly. 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 29 
 
 Our reasons for such decided statement are 
 these : — 
 
 Mr. Darwin's theory proceeds on the assump- 
 tion that " nature makes no leaps ; " that postulate 
 the change from one animal or race to of 
 
 Darwinism. 
 
 its mnnediate follower must be very 
 slight. And, therefore, that if two animals differ 
 in any considerable degree, it is certain that the 
 one did not proceed directly from the other, but 
 that there were intermediate links, even though 
 we do not find those links and cannot prove that 
 such ever existed. 
 
 Now the nearest approach to man is in that 
 type of the monkey tribe known as the 
 Ape. Mr. Huxley, in a little book en- ^\pe 
 titled " Man's Place in Nature," has very 
 carefully traced out certain striking resemblances 
 between the ape and man. And Prof. Mivart has 
 ably supplemented him in his " Man and Apes." 
 The brain of the largest anthropoid ape is smaller, 
 the chest larger, the lower limbs shorter, the upper 
 limbs much longer than in man. The ape can 
 walk on two feet like man, though he generally 
 goes on four. He can stand quite erect, though 
 more inclined to a stooping posture. But while 
 it is possible for the ape thus to stand and walk, 
 the arrangement of the bones and position of the 
 brain plainly indicate that his natural position is 
 
130 THE CREATION. 
 
 on four feet rather than on two. Such are some 
 of the considerations on which the argument for a 
 genetic connection between man and the ape are 
 based. 
 
 But the theory that there has been a series of 
 advances from the lowest animals, through the mon- 
 key tribe, culminating in man, is involved in grave 
 perplexities, unless we suppose some characteris- 
 tic of the animal, though lost to its immediate 
 offspring, may be recovered by a remoter genera- 
 tion. The highest tribes of monkies do not show 
 the closest resemblance to man. The gorilla is 
 accounted the highest, or possibly the chimpanzee 
 may have equal rank. The baboon and gibbon 
 stand lower, and the spider monkey lowest of all 
 the old world tribes. But in point of anatomical 
 structure, the lower approach man more nearly than 
 those that hold the highest rank. For instance, 
 man has twelve pairs of ribs and five lumbar ver- 
 tebrse. The gorilla has thirteen pairs of ribs and 
 three or four vertebrse, while some of the lower 
 apes have the same number, both of ribs and ver- 
 tebrse as man. Long hair on the head and face, 
 resembling that of man, is found in some of the 
 lower apes; never in the highest. In the arrange- 
 ment and structure of the teeth, the half-apes re- 
 semble man more nearly than the highest species. 
 The ape having the frontal shape of the skull most 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. 131 
 
 like man ranks fourth in the scale below the go 
 rilla or chimpanzee. In fact there is no regularly 
 ascending series culminating in man, or distinctly 
 pointing to him. 
 
 Mr. Darwin admits this anomaly, and calls it 
 Reversion, on the samic principle, as we 
 interpret him, that a child may have the ^f ^gj^'^^g^^j^^ 
 black eyes of its grandfather though its 
 father's eyes are blue and its mother's gray ; and 
 that it may show some other resemblance to an- 
 cestors still more remote. But this theory as ap- 
 plied to anatomical structure, is a direct contradic- 
 tion of the principle on which he lays so much 
 stress, that evolution by natural selection requires a 
 constant advance. 
 
 Moreover, naturalists tell us that in all the 
 higher groups of animals their relative 
 
 Brain of man 
 
 rank is determined by the brain. Now ^nd ape. 
 we have the best authority for saying 
 that the largest ape's brain measures not more 
 than thirty-four and a half inches, while the small- 
 est brain of man — with very rare exceptions — meas- 
 ures sixty-three inches ; that of man being nearly 
 double that of the ape. And this is the propor. 
 tion Mr. Huxley adopts in his comparison. 
 
 There is no animal that comes between these 
 two ; and so far as we can ascertain there never 
 was an animal whose rank would place it between 
 
132 THE CREATION. 
 
 them. There is no connecting link living — no trace 
 of any in the recent rocks. And now, recalling the 
 postulate on which Mr. Darwin's theory proceeds, 
 that if animals differ in any considerable degree it 
 is certain that one did not proceed directly from 
 the other, but that there were several links between 
 — here are two animals differing by one half in the 
 size of the brain. It is not possible for nature to 
 make such a leap, and the one could not, therefore, 
 have sprung directly from the other. If there is 
 any, connection between them it must be through 
 intermediate links. But there are no intermediate 
 links, and no evidence that such links ever existed. 
 
 Prof. Asa Gray suggests that man did not de- 
 scend from the monkey, but that the line 
 suggestion. ^^ development branched farther back. 
 But this only makes the possibility of 
 tracing man's lineage the more hopeless. 
 
 This, then, is the ground of the statement that 
 so far as man is concerned, the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion by natural selection, or by the operation of 
 merely natural causes, fails utterly and absolutely. 
 
 We are aware that some attempt is made to ex- 
 plain the absence of these supposed inter- 
 
 The "Miss- ,. ^ 
 
 ing Links." mediate types: 
 
 I. It is said that their remains may 
 have perished with the lapse of ages. That might 
 be possible, if the monkey had existed in very 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. 133 
 
 remote times. But, on the contrary, it is quite a 
 recent animal ; the earliest fossils not dating back 
 beyond the Cenozoic, or recent rocks. 
 
 II. It is said, again, that some great convul- 
 sion of nature, even in recent times, may have de- 
 stroyed all or most of the animals existing at the 
 time, and these intermediate types may have been 
 among them. But there are the most abundant 
 fossils of other animals covering the whole of the 
 recent period ; so that if higher tribes of monkeys 
 or lower tribes of men had existed, it is hardly 
 possible that all trace of them could have disap- 
 peared. 
 
 III. Another curious and certainly very slender 
 assumption is based on the fact that casual men- 
 tion is made by some ancient authors, of an island 
 called Atlantis; and, since no such island is known 
 to-day, it is gravely assumed that it has disap- 
 peared in the sea, and that it may have carried 
 down the missing links. 
 
 In reply, it may be said: 
 
 1. There is no sufficient evidence that there 
 
 ever was such an island as Atlantis. 
 
 The myth 
 
 Atlantis. There is no mention of it in authentic 
 history, and the occasional allusions and 
 traditions do not agree as to its locality. 
 
 2. If there ever was such an island, it is by no 
 means certain that it has disappeared, for it may 
 
134 THE CREATION. 
 
 be known to-day by some other name ; as the 
 island of Corfu is the Corcyra of two or three 
 thousand years ago, and the ancient names of 
 some places have been lost beyond recovery. 
 
 3. Suppose there was such an island, and that 
 in some great convulsion it did disappear beneath 
 the waves, there is still not one shred of proof 
 that it carried down man or monkey, or anything 
 even remotely allied to either of them. 
 
 And still, on such precarious threads will men 
 hang sober arguments to bolster a doubtful cause 
 or defend a favorite theory. And Prof. Hseckel, 
 the most daring and least reliable of all the prom- 
 inent evolutionists, expresses his philosophical dis- 
 may, not to say his natural disgust, that intelligent 
 men of science will longer doubt the doctrine of 
 evolution. 
 
 If, then, man was not developed by natural 
 causes out of the inferior animals, whence came he? 
 
 Here we find ourselves compelled to fall back 
 on that very ancient document, the opening of the 
 book of Genesis, not because it is the only evi- 
 dence we have, but because we find the matter 
 nowhere else so clearly and so concisely stated. 
 
 "And God said, let us make man in 
 
 The Hebrew 1,1 1 1 
 
 record. our own image ; and let them have do- 
 minion over the fish of the sea, and over 
 the fowl of the air, and over the cattle and over all 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 35 
 
 the earth. So God created man in His own image." 
 Of man's mastery in the earth and over it, we can 
 ourselves bear witness, for that mastery he still re- 
 tains. And after all that has been said and writ- 
 ten, it must be confessed this is the only theory of 
 the origin of man that after each assault and par- 
 tial surrender but roots itself the deeper in the 
 minds and hearts of men. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that the word " create," 
 used in the beginning with reference to the world 
 as a whole, is used here with reference to man, 
 and that it occurs but once between, and then, as it 
 seems, incidentally. Whether we are to understand 
 by this, that the creation of man was more a direct 
 operation of the divine power than the creation of 
 other animals and of the plants, or whether it is 
 merely a recurrence of the word to avoid repetition 
 of another, we do not attempt to decide. 
 
 But certain it is that in the beginning the world 
 is said to have been due to the immediate act of 
 the Creator^ nothing else intervening. So here it 
 is said God created man. It was thus the act of 
 God, and the culmination of His plan in the world. 
 
 But right here we encounter another perplexing 
 problem. It relates to the different races 
 of man. Did they have a common ori- question of 
 ein ? Our answer must be brief. 
 
 In the first place, all men, whatever their land 
 
136 THE CREATION. 
 
 or origin, have almost the same anatomical struc- 
 ture, with similar habits both of body and mind. 
 They are subject to the same diseases. They live, 
 under like conditions, about the same length of 
 time. They all shape implements and make use of 
 fire. They all believe in God ; all resort to prayer ; 
 all have funeral ceremonies over their dead, and all 
 believe in a future life. There are individual ex- 
 ceptions, but this is the rule. And that they are all 
 of one species is evident from the fact that any two 
 races may intermarry, and the increase will go on 
 as if each race was confined wholly to itself. 
 
 But there are a variety of races differing in color 
 and to some extent in physiognomy. Whence came 
 these differences ? As they are found divided as to 
 geographical locality, it has been suggested, that 
 they originated in different sections of the world, 
 and sprang from different progenitors. But before 
 we make any such assumption it is well to con- 
 sider whether climate and habits of life may not 
 in process of time, produce these differences, 
 though all were of the same family to begin with. 
 
 I. As to geography and clime. In northern 
 Europe the characteristic complexion is 
 
 Climatic 
 
 variations, light, and the hair is light and straight : 
 
 witness the Swedes. In southern Europe, 
 
 the characteristic complexion is dark, and the hair 
 
 black with a tendency to curl : witness the French 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. I 37 
 
 and Italians. In the interior of Europe, as in 
 Gernaany, these characteristics are not so marked 
 either way. In other words, they are between the 
 two extremes, as the locality is between the two 
 first-named. Then cross to Arabia and Egypt, and 
 we find the complexion still more dark and the 
 countenance still more widely different from those 
 of the north. And yet there is no doubt that 
 these all belong to the same race. The Swede, the 
 Frenchman, and the Arab all belong to the Cau- 
 casian race. If we go into the interior of Africa 
 we shall find people with black skin and woolly 
 hair. But on the coast of Mozambique are peo- 
 ple about as dark skinned as Africans, with feat- 
 ures more like the Arab, while on their heads 
 they have a crisply curled or frizzled hair, some- 
 thing between the curly hair of southern Europe 
 and the wool of Africa. 
 
 2. Then take a single illustration that can be 
 traced somewhat easily. There is no people of 
 more marked physiognomical expression than the 
 Jews — dark complexion, round face, and black hair. 
 Moreover, as they rarely intermarry with other peo- 
 ple, these features are remarkably well preserved. 
 And yet in some of the bitter persecutions that 
 befel the Jews centuries ago, some of them took 
 refuge in Northern Russia ; and though they are 
 not believed to have intermarried with others, but 
 
138 THE CREATION. 
 
 to be still pure-blooded Jews, there are some among 
 them now with red hair and blue eyes. Such 
 changes are wrought, in the course of a few gen- 
 erations, by climate and condition. And it is evi- 
 dent that the variations might be greater still, if 
 the time was longer and the change of climate 
 and condition yet more radical. 
 
 So, notwithstanding all the speculations on the 
 subject, it must be said in all candor, there is no 
 sufficient proof, as yet, that there was more than 
 one primal pair; but that all men are of one family 
 and one blood. 
 
 But even if it should be proved that there were 
 
 more than one primal pair, it does not 
 
 historic invalidate the account given in Genesis, 
 
 for since human nature is everywhere 
 
 essentially the same, the record of the one pair 
 
 would serve as an example for the whole. We 
 
 should then say that Adam and Eve were the Jiis- 
 
 toric pair; the ones chosen as representatives of the 
 
 whole.* 
 
 What, then, of the constitution of man? "So 
 God created man in his own image." No one 
 
 * As these pages go to press a volume by Dr. Alexander Win- 
 chell appears, entitled " Pre-Adamites," in which the author as- 
 sumes, what others had before suggested, that Adam was the progeni- 
 tor only of the white race. On the other hand, Dr. E. B. Tylor, 
 of London, a very high authority, says recent evidences greatly 
 strengthen the probability that all men are of one original stock. 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 39 
 
 probably supposes the likeness here to be in physi- 
 cal form or appearance, or if in that, not in that 
 alone. 
 
 In bodily constitution, man is an animal. He 
 is made up of organs and parts having 
 each a specific function. He is flesh and an animaU 
 bone and blood ; fed with nutritious food, 
 baned with poisons — suffering from neglect, from 
 disease or accident, and returning to the dust when 
 the life is gone out of him. So far he is an animal. 
 
 But this is not all of him ; this is not what makes 
 him a man as distins^uished from an ani- ,^ , 
 
 ^ Man has 
 
 mal. He has spiritual faculties, as well also spiritual 
 as animal powers ; and in tJiis is he cre- 
 ated in the divine similitude. He has intellect- 
 ual faculties of such breadth and strength that no 
 one has ever dared to say what achievements he 
 might attain ; for in the narrow span of human 
 life there is not time to get these powers fairly into 
 working order. He has sentiments and impulses 
 out of which grow the humanest sympathies and 
 the sweetest charities; and aspirations that lead 
 him to holiness of life and to supreme trust in 
 the power above that is more than life. All the 
 heroes and the martyrs that glorify the pages of 
 history go to tell us there is something more in 
 man than that which grows out of fleshly tissue 
 and bony structure. Admit that there are bold 
 
140 THE CREATION. 
 
 contrasts and sharp distinctions among men; one 
 man base almost to the level of brutality, and an- 
 other self-sacrificing and devoted as man can be, the 
 contrast only shows the more clearly, the difference 
 between that which is merely brutish and that 
 which constitutes the man. So let us understand 
 what man is in his natural constitution. Then we 
 can trace his history. One broad distinction be- 
 tween man and the inferior animal is that the lat- 
 ter is controlled by instincts ; the former is the sub- 
 ject of his own intelligence. We do not mean that 
 man has no instincts, for he has ; or that the ani- 
 mal shows no trace of reason, for he does. But 
 that the practical limit of reason is soon reached 
 in the animal, and then in emergency he falls back 
 on his instinct, while in man instinct is soon out- 
 grown by the exercise of reason, and to that ex- 
 ercise no limit in all experience has ever been ap- 
 proached. So marked is this difference between 
 the animal and man, that we do not hesitate to 
 condemn in the one what we praise without stint in 
 the other. The dog droops and dies on the grave 
 of his dead master, and we admire his fidelity; but 
 it would be an ignoble thing for a man to do. 
 When Hamlet in the play leaps into the grave 
 of Ophelia, if he were a dog he would crouch 
 and perish there. But because he is not a dog, 
 but a living soul — with hopes and faith and aspira- 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. I4I 
 
 tions, he rouses himself from his deep despondency, 
 and comes forth to battle yet farther with the stern 
 realities of an already overshadowed life. In the 
 fact that man was created in the image of God we 
 find the explanation, then, of the various powers 
 and faculties that exalt him above the animal. 
 
 What, finally, of his history ? 
 
 The same record that tells us he was given 
 dominion over the earth, orives us farther 
 
 ' ^ History 
 
 on a picture of his life in a " garden," or of 
 
 in " a land of loveliness," as some authors 
 render it, wherein, to the outward seeming, was 
 everything necessary for the sustenance and pros- 
 perity of human life. But a strange blight soon 
 came over this auspicious opening, for these favored 
 subjects disobeyed the law of God and fell ; and 
 thence came pains and penalties they had never 
 known before. 
 
 And, now, how came this strange event about ? 
 
 There is nothing more natural in the experience 
 of the human race. It was the beq-in- 
 
 ^ Duty 
 
 ning of that long conflict which is as old vs. 
 
 as human nature, and destined possibly 
 to continue as long as man dwells upon the earth 
 — '' the conflict of duty with desire." 
 
 Desire is here presented in the figure of the 
 serpent. The serpent has no power of speech or 
 other means of communicating thought to man — 
 
142 THE CREA TION. 
 
 if thought it ever had. But nothing is so sugges- 
 tive of the serpent that comes upon us unawares, 
 as that subtle something we call temptation, which 
 is rooted in the very nature of every moral being, 
 or every being that takes account of right and 
 wroncr. And it was because human nature was so 
 constituted, that the conflict began in Eden with 
 such consequences as are written in the biblical 
 account. Eden was a state of innocence. That 
 is what especially distinguishes it in our minds 
 to-day. It was a state of ignorance as well. This 
 is a point we are apt to overlook ; that human 
 education as yet was scarce begun. There was no 
 history, there was no observation, there was no 
 experience of human life ; none of the agencies by 
 which men grow and learn. There is danger that 
 in our contemplation of this subject we shall for- 
 get one of these potent facts, in our admiration 
 for the other. 
 
 They were created in innocence and in ignor- 
 ^. , ance; innocent as the little child, which 
 
 Primal 
 
 condition of is unconscious of immodcsty or any sense 
 of shame, though utterly unclad ; ignorant 
 of any such thing as good and evil, or that there 
 was any difference between them. So much the 
 record implies, in the very plainest terms. But in 
 them was born a disposition to inquire and learn ; 
 a spirit of curiosity, if you choose to call it so : 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. 143 
 
 an inclination to pry into the hidden things about 
 them. 
 
 Put your child, who has not yet learned to stand 
 in awe of you, into a room in which is every- 
 thing that can amuse and entertain, and say to 
 him, ''You may have free range here, except in 
 that drawer ; there is something you must not 
 see." That is the very first place he will go to. 
 That is human nature. And it is not a vicious 
 disposition. It is the spirit of inquiry and dis- 
 covery, which, to whatever strange excesses and sad 
 results it may lead us sometimes, is the key to all 
 progress. 
 
 The first pair in Eden were warned before the 
 act, it is said, but there is nothing that teaches 
 like experience. And in the absence of any chance 
 to observe effects in others, a warning is but a 
 theory that lacks confirmation. The little child at- 
 tracted by the burning taper, tries to seize it with 
 his hand. The mother warns him a hundred times, 
 and still he does not understand what harm there 
 can be in it. Let him get his hand into the blaze 
 but once, and it satisfies him for a lifetime. 
 
 In this we have an example in different form of 
 the experience that came to man in paradise, and 
 has been a regular inheritance of each generation 
 and of every human being from then till now ; and 
 what did the first pair learn from this experience! 
 
144 THE CREATION. 
 
 I. That there was a Power above them to which 
 ^ , they were in subjection. 
 
 Results ^ ^ 
 
 of 2. That there was such a thing in 
 
 human life as duty, and obligation, and 
 responsibility. 
 
 But that which most forcibly impressed itself 
 upon them, and that is magnified in the account, 
 was that there w^as a penalty attached to disobe- 
 dience. And they learned at once, therefore, the 
 advantage of a strict observance of the divine law 
 in relation to human life. And thus it was that, 
 from their first estate of ignorance, their " eyes 
 were opened," and they knew good and evil — 
 though from their estate of innocence they fell. 
 
 Man was turned out of Eden, it is said. And 
 who, from his childish innocence has come to be 
 conscious of base desires and evil purposes, has not 
 realized something very like this in his own ex- 
 perience ? Who that goes on in evil ways does 
 not sometimes feel himself estranged from God and 
 all pure and holy things, while his own conscience 
 is the watchful guardian, with flaming sword, that 
 keeps the gate. Adam was not to be an idle spec- 
 tator of the world ; his task was set " to dress 
 and keep the garden " when he was first placed 
 therein. And so to work is the mission of man 
 on the earth, and always was. And while this, in 
 obedience to intelligence and law, may be only a 
 
ORIGIN OF MAN. 1 45 
 
 delight, we know full well how indolence and vice 
 and crime multiply the hardships and penalties of 
 life. Adam was the first to pass through this ex- 
 perience, and so he stands for the human race 
 throughout the Bible record ; but he was not the 
 last. 
 
 Every child born into this world repeats, with 
 more or less completeness, the experience 
 
 ^ ^ Human 
 
 of this far-off progenitor. He has his experience 
 little experience of Eden to begin with, ^^^^^ 
 when in unconscious innocence he knows nothing 
 of evil or of good ; nothing of duty, responsibility, 
 or obligation. He soon passes that, for he has an 
 inheritance of evil tendencies, whatever may have 
 been the fact at first. 
 
 He soon passes the early stage, we repeat — 
 " dies to innocence." And the long and old-time 
 conflict between duty and desire begins, with such 
 variety of results as we witness in human life. 
 
 And is every human life a failure, then ? Nay, 
 not so. There was an Eden back of us ; ,, 
 
 Human life 
 
 there is a paradise beyond. The first not 
 
 ... 1 a failure. 
 
 was given us as our inheritance ; the 
 other we must win. The penalty that followed 
 the first disobedience was offset in some degree by 
 the knowledge that it gave of the law that guards 
 and limits the conduct of man. And so with that 
 penalty a new power entered into life, by which 
 
146 THE CREATION. 
 
 man might recover that which he had lost. Mere 
 innocence at the best is but a passive state, with- 
 out merit or reward ; but when refined by trial 
 and experience it assumes the character of virtue, 
 it is a positive force in life. And while innocence 
 is the essential quality of the primal Eden — heroic 
 virtue is the essential feature in the paradise that 
 is to be. 
 
 The first, we repeat, is an inheritance ; the other 
 must be earned. Men inherit wealth, and, as often 
 quite as otherwise, they squander it ; but that 
 which they have gained by slow degrees and per- 
 sistent industry, has a value, and serves a purpose 
 it could never do without. 
 
 So Eden was given to man : he fell. Another 
 lies before and beckons him in all the 
 Conclusion, better moments of his life. And in the 
 Providence that is over him, sin will lose 
 its charm when his eyes are fully open, and sorrow 
 will have done its work in chastening the desires. 
 And as out of conflict cometh victory, and out of 
 struggle a more perfect life, so by slow degrees 
 and sometimes painful steps — God calling him upon 
 the one hand and duty urging him upon the other 
 — by every onward movement and every upward 
 impulse, he shall come again to Eden by and by, 
 and the last estate of man will be better than the 
 first. 
 
VIII. 
 
 Civilization-Cain and 
 Abel. 
 
" Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the 
 ground. . . . And it came to pass when they were in the field, 
 that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him." 
 
 " The first step in civilization was achieved by conflict, and 
 every succeeding step of deep and lasting import has been 
 achieved in the same way. It is the method of history." — 
 F. H. Hedge. 
 
 " Effort is the condition of achievement and conflict the 
 price of victor}." 
 
VIII. 
 PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 Society has its beginnings in a state of bar- 
 barism, and, if we may trust history, tends from 
 time to time to relapse into its primitive condi- 
 tion. By barbarism we do not mean savage life, 
 but a condition intermediate between the savage 
 and the civilized state — a condition in which men 
 have all the instinct, intelligence, and propensities 
 of men without education or systematic training in 
 any of them. 
 
 Place a child, if it were possible, away from 
 all associates, give him shelter, food, and ^^^^^ 
 drink, without care or effort on his own grades of 
 
 society. 
 
 part, and never excite the evil propen- 
 sities that slumber in him, and he will grow up a 
 respectable barbarian, having little disposition for 
 either good or evil. Take another and surround 
 him from the first, with circumstances that tend 
 constantly to rouse the passions and baser pro- 
 pensities, and he will grow up a savage, like our 
 Indian. Then take a third and surround him with 
 
ISO THE CREATIOiV. 
 
 the appliances of cultured life ; give him books and 
 schools and intelligent companionship, and he will 
 become civilized. These represent three distinct 
 conditions of human life, and we readily see out of 
 what surroundings and under what influences they 
 severally grow. 
 
 In saying that society begins in a state of bar- 
 barism, we mean simply that humanity 
 
 Primitive ^ . , _ . , . . 
 
 barbarism, comes upon the stage of life m a state 
 of nature, without training or instruction, 
 and that it may so continue, with little knowledge 
 beyond that necessary for supplying the most im- 
 perative wants. But the very simplest life finds 
 means of drill and tuition in its course ; means that 
 cannot escape it, and that it cannot fail in some 
 degree to heed. 
 
 Man, set down in the world without any knowl- 
 edcre of his surroundincrs, and without the 
 
 Learnmg ^ ^ 
 
 by assistance of a teacher, would soon be- 
 
 experience. . ^ i . - , 
 
 come conscious oi hunger and nnd means 
 to satisfy the desire ; and if the climate were 
 severe, would not be long in providing some pro- 
 tection against the inclemencies of the weather. 
 Then, as appetite would keep him on the alert, he 
 would begin to exercise his ingenuity; would decoy 
 animals and trap them, and anon would fashion 
 weapons for slaying them. All these come in the 
 course of nature, and require no other motives 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION: 15I 
 
 than those which nature herself supplies. Then, 
 following on in the same direction, by an easy and 
 natural process, without developing much of either 
 good or evil quality, he might come at length to 
 keep flocks and herds that he would drive from 
 place to place, as pastures failed, and still be noth- 
 ing but a barbarian ; having developed neither the 
 vicious qualities that make the savage, nor the 
 higher traits that lead to the civilized condition. 
 
 While, therefore, we do grave injustice to hu- 
 manity to suppose it came up primarily from a 
 savage state, we do but follow out the plain sug- 
 gestions of nature and reason alike, when we as- 
 sume that the early condition of human society 
 was that of barbarism. 
 
 This was clearly the condition of the tribes and 
 men of which we read in the remotest „ , . 
 
 Barbarism of 
 
 histories, or in the history of the earliest primeval 
 times. Their chief dependence was on 
 their flocks, and they pitched their tents from time 
 to time where the pastures were the best. So 
 long as men confine themselves closely to this 
 kind of life, moving quietly and subsisting on the 
 spontaneous productions of the earth, together with 
 what their flocks may yield, they will not develop 
 rapidly either the baser or the better qualities ; 
 their growth or change will not be marked either 
 way. But if they come to subsist by plunder. 
 
152 THE CREATION. 
 
 added to the chase, they rapidly degenerate in a 
 moral sense, and are so much farther removed 
 from civilization. 
 
 And risfht here, we incline to believe, is one 
 
 secret of our ill success in civilizing the 
 
 n lan j ^^- ^ye forget the step that lies be- 
 
 question. fc> ^ 
 
 tween the state in which we find him 
 and that to which we would introduce him. The 
 Indian is a savage and not a mere barbarian. If 
 you would civilize the Indian and not exterminate 
 him, do not think to call him from the wigwam 
 and the chase to the sickle and the plough. The 
 transition is too abrupt, and the change too abso- 
 lute. But assign him a tract of country sufficient 
 for flocks to roam over and gather their living 
 from the native products of the soil, and the 
 change from his former state will not be so great 
 but that he will inure to it, and then it will be 
 practicable to take the other step. 
 
 But to resume our subject of discourse. If we 
 had no written testimony on the subject we should 
 reasonably conclude, from what we know of hu- 
 man nature, that the early condition of society 
 was that which we have defined as barbarous ; 
 about equally removed from civilization on the one 
 hand and from savage life upon the other. And 
 now, in pursuing this subject, we encounter what 
 seems a paradox or contradiction. 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 153 
 
 Civilized life is unquestionably the highest 
 state ; and yet the very first step out of 
 
 ^ ■> i" The paradox 
 
 barbarism, in the direction of civilization, of 
 
 leads to disputes and war. That is to ^^^' i^ation. 
 say, the change from one condition to the other 
 involves the rights of property in land, about which 
 men and nations have been wont to quarrel, cer- 
 tainly ever since nations had any recognized exist- 
 ence. 
 
 And here we shall find a convenient and forci- 
 ble illustration in the Bible story of Cain and 
 Abel. '' And it came to pass that when they 
 were in the field, Cain rose up against Abel his 
 brother and slew him." 
 
 Cain and Abel, representatives of the early race, 
 were doubtless keepers of flocks and 
 
 Cain and Abel 
 
 herds, as most primitive people were, as g-enerai 
 and as many in remoter sections of the *^^^^' 
 world are to-day. They represent the nomadic 
 tribes, having no permanent abodes, but moving 
 tents instead. 
 
 In process of time, however, Cain grew weary of 
 this kind of life and turned his attention to cul- 
 tivated fields. But Abel, not sharing this disposi- 
 tion, was still content to rove about and live by 
 his flocks. So much we may gather from the ac- 
 count of the religious offering that each one brought. 
 
 Abel may be accounted what we should now call 
 
154 THE CREATION. 
 
 a conservative; thought things well enough as they 
 were, and was possibly annoyed at Cain's sugges- 
 tion or desire for change. Cain, on the other hand, 
 was a radical in a primitive sort of way ; thought 
 he could improve upon existing methods and 
 devise a better way of life, than to wander always 
 homeless, in search of fresh pastures. 
 
 And here comes in the fact so paradoxical, that 
 that which tends to improvement, in its first in- 
 ception tends oftentimes to violence. 
 
 While all men wander at their will, and no 
 one interferes to obstruct the way, be- 
 
 Conditions ^ 
 
 of cause all are equal, and no one s rights 
 
 civilization. ^^^ trampled on, there is no cause of 
 quarrel regarding land or territory. But the mo- 
 ment one sets himself to establish a fixed abode, 
 which he must do to have cultivated fields — not a 
 tent that he will move next week or even the 
 coming year, but a permanent abiding place — he 
 must have a little territory to himself. He must 
 become a landed proprietor ; must assume the right 
 to certain lands and claim them as his own. He 
 builds a fence, digs a ditch, or otherwise marks the 
 boundary of his premises, and demands that other 
 people shall respect his right. 
 
 Here is the root and beginning of all the dis- 
 puted titles that occupy so much the attention of 
 our courts. One man claims a certain tract of land 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. I 55 
 
 and others dispute his right. But this is the re- 
 sult of a condition that is inevitable, if 
 society is ever to advance beyond its titiesTri^d 
 primitive level. There can be no real 
 civilization, nothing above barbarism, without es- 
 tablished homes; and there can be no fixed abodes, 
 or highly cultivated fields, without lines or boun- 
 daries beyond which the public has no right to 
 trespass. 
 
 Here, then, we have the cause of the first quar- 
 rel recorded in human history. And it 
 has more than a personal significance. It Cause of 
 
 quarrel. 
 
 illustrates a principle that is far-reaching 
 and comprehensive, and is applicable to every age 
 and every people. Abel would not consent to the 
 restriction of pasturage implied in Cain's claim to 
 certain lands. On the other hand, Cain did not 
 want Abel's cattle driven across his fields. They 
 met and quarrelled, and in the strife that followed 
 Abel was slain. 
 
 The world has long been in the habit of regard- 
 ing Cain as a depraved and desperate 
 
 Supposed char- 
 character, and Abel as quite the reverse; acterofCain 
 
 ■I , . 1 . . 1 ., 1 and Abel. 
 
 but there is no evidence either way, 
 except in the result of this encounter. And this 
 result was only what has been repeated so often 
 since, and what is repeated still before our eyes, 
 that the cruder types of society and life give way 
 
156 THE CREATION. 
 
 before the advance of higher and better types, 
 even at the cost of violent means. Both men are 
 represented as bringing offerings or sacrifices, one 
 of the fruit of the field, the other of the firstlings 
 of his flock, that is, each such as he had ; which 
 shows the one a shepherd and the other a tiller of 
 the soil. And so far, in a moral sense, there is no 
 difference between them. 
 
 But whatever the merits or demerits of either 
 man, and whatever the tendency of the 
 
 murderer change in men's pursuits, from the bar- 
 condemned. , ^ . . ..... ^ . . 
 
 barous toward the civilized, Cam is repre- 
 sented as condemned to a career of bitterness and 
 fear — of public execration and self-reproach. 
 
 And does not history continually repeat itself 
 in this? The slaying of a fellow-being, save in the 
 extremest case, marks a man in society forever. 
 The law proscribes him and pursues him, and even 
 though he escape judicial sentence, we think of 
 him as a murderer still. The hand of every man 
 is against him, and he wanders for a time at least, 
 a fugitive and vagabond in the earth. It was so 
 then ; it is so now, and will be so as long as men 
 prize life above everything they possess besides. 
 
 These Old Testament stories are wonderfully 
 life-like and real, if read with some exercise of rea- 
 son. 
 
 Cain went to another country to live. It is not 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 157 
 
 reasonable to suppose, after what had happened, 
 that he could have lived among the ^^^^ 
 friends and followers of Abel — if he had migration of 
 followers. And therefore, of necessity, he 
 withdrew to another land, and thus effected the 
 separation of the human family into two classes, in 
 respect to their employments. This change was 
 indeed a necessity if Cain was to persevere in the 
 chancred mode of life he had chosen. If he was 
 not to go back to the barbarian level, he must 
 have a section of country to himself. It was as 
 much a necessity to the one class as to the other. 
 Those who adopted agriculture could not prosper 
 in a country given up to pasturage ; and those who 
 roved about with flocks and dwelt in tents could 
 not live in a thickly populated community, where 
 the best lands were occupied and tilled, any more 
 than the Mexican vaquero could keep his numer- 
 ous herds in Connecticut to-day. The one kind of 
 society and life inevitably pushes the other out, 
 and they must dwell apart. 
 
 The event, therefore, of the first murder de- 
 rives an additional significance from the 
 fact that it represents to us " not merely .j^^g^^^ 
 a contest between two angry men, but 
 between two types or degrees of civilization." 
 
 And now, leaving these typical characters for 
 the time, let us inquire into some of the effects 
 
158 THE CREATION. 
 
 Upon the human race, of this tendency to outgrow 
 or rise above the habits and modes of the bar- 
 barian. 
 
 Although the idea generally prevails that noma- 
 dic life is favorable to physical strensrth 
 
 The better ^ ^ ^ 
 
 qualities and valiancy in battle, all history and ob- 
 servation go to show the contrary. It is 
 the more educated and the better disciplined that 
 win the day, in any but the most unequal con- 
 tests. That degree of civilization which best ad- 
 vances the interests and attainments of men, at the 
 same time best defends them against the assaults 
 and devices of all inferior grades. 
 
 In the middle ages, in Europe, when people 
 were divided into tribes and feudal clans, their lead- 
 ers, by the ill-requited labor of the masses, built ^ 
 great castles ox\ such points as were easily defen- 
 sible ; and then, whatever depredations they might 
 commit on the community without, they were al- 
 ways safe in these strong and inaccessible retreats ; 
 because an army, however numerous, could make 
 no head against the massive walls with such weap- 
 ons as were in existence. 
 
 But a German chemist, quietly experimenting in 
 
 his laboratory, invented an explosive sub- 
 Gunpowder "^ 
 
 and Stance since known as gunpow^der ; and 
 straightway these robber strongholds be- 
 came untenable. They could withstand an attack 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. I 59 
 
 with slings and arrows and an occasional catapult, 
 but not a cannonade. And to-day all over central 
 and southern Europe are the wrecks of these old 
 castles, telling their pregnant story of a condition 
 of society that was but is no more. Gunpowder 
 often serves an evil purpose, but it was a contri- 
 bution of science at the first, which rendered a 
 most important service to society, because it de- 
 livered the multitude from the control and depre- 
 dations of a class of men who lived by plunder, 
 and regarded no man's rights save their own. 
 Here the contest was between intelligent invention 
 and brute force ; between the castle builder and 
 the powder maker. And though the former may 
 at first be the stronger, the latter in the end will 
 win. 
 
 Again, this conflict is sometimes between mere 
 mental activity and moral force. And here under 
 ordinary circumstances the latter bears the palm ; 
 for while a mere adventurer may have dash — may 
 be reckless and even desperate, it is only the man 
 of moral courage who is really brave. This has a 
 good illustration, as we think, in the contest of the 
 Roundheads and Cavaliers of England in the time 
 of Charles I. ; for the question was substantially, 
 whether the people had any rights that the king 
 was in duty bound to consider. The royal troops 
 were better fed, better armed, and better mounted 
 
l6o THE CREATION. 
 
 than their opponents, but it was Cromwell's steady 
 discipline, and the moral purpose of his men, that 
 won at Naseby and Marston Moor. 
 
 So we might go through history ; but we only 
 wish to indicate on this point, the general proposi- 
 tion, that the higher aim and purpose, if steadily 
 pursued, wins against the meaner ; and before any 
 measure that tends to develop and subserve the 
 interest of the human race, that which hinders it 
 must fall. 
 
 In the case of Cain and Abel, the one who 
 would hold men to a nomadic life, in which no 
 great advancement could be made, fell before him 
 who had devised a better way. Cain's way was 
 better because in its course lay all the possible 
 achievements of the world — as we shall see. Fol- 
 lowing out his ideal, he not only tilled the ground, 
 but he built a city also, which is not said of any 
 man before his time — and this witnessed a farther 
 advance of human progress ; for it is in the city or 
 in the larger community that civilization attains its 
 best estate. 
 
 What no man can do alone, many men may do 
 
 together. Hence the peculiar associations 
 Best ==* ^ 
 
 condition of and dependencies of city life. 
 
 life 
 
 If a family make their home apart 
 from the busy world, on some by-way, or in some 
 secluded spot remote from neighborship, they may 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. l6l 
 
 have advantages in their fixed abode they could not 
 if they moved about hke the gypsies from day to 
 day, but cannot have the best opportunities. As 
 to schools, and church, and society, and trade, they 
 live at a disadvantage. These can be had only 
 when people dwell in near communities, and where 
 whatever any man does in the way of business is a 
 matter of interest to his neighbor and the general 
 public, since the welfare of the whole is in some 
 measure dependent upon each. 
 
 It is true, that a state of comparative isolation 
 has fewer temptations than where the associations 
 are more intimate. It is true, that with great op- 
 portunities for good come great inducements to 
 evil ways. But the office of opportunity, and the 
 end of true culture in a man, is to make him 
 strong. We should deem that bodily exercise of 
 little practical value which only enlarged the ca- 
 pacity of the stomach without increasing the physi- 
 cal strength. And so the opportunities which a 
 better condition of life brings to a man are of little 
 profit, unless he is man enough to make them in- 
 strumentalities of good. 
 
 By the combination of means and the union 
 of efforts which are rendered practicable 
 in the city or in the largrer communities, ^^^^^^°" ^^ 
 
 labor. 
 
 invention and progress go on as they 
 
 could not, were each man compelled to eke his 
 
1 62 THE CREATION. 
 
 own living from the soil, or derive it from the 
 chase, or from wandering flocks, in the condition 
 of nomadic life. Some men must be spared this 
 kind of labor, that their thoughts may be given to 
 other things, else the world would always move on 
 the primitive plain of simple uncultured life, and 
 little progress could be made. 
 
 Till men are divided up into trades and profes- 
 sions, each giving his time and thought to some 
 particular line or department of industry, there can 
 be no great advancement, and society does not rise 
 above a semi-barbarous condition. And there must 
 be somewhere and at the hands of some one a 
 starting-point for all improvements. 
 
 Hence, among the descendants of this tiller ot 
 the ground and first builder of a city, we find 
 Tubal-Cain, the " instructor of every artificer in 
 brass and iron." And Tubal the " father of such as 
 handle the harp and organ." Here is the beginning 
 of all mechanic arts, and the root of all improve- 
 ments that have since been made ; and here the 
 beginning of instrumental music, whatever form or 
 fashion it may have since assumed. For whatever 
 advances have yet been witnessed in the various 
 arts, even by the present generation, from the ruder 
 implements of frontier life, to the most finished work 
 of the completest mechanism or the highest art, 
 all must have had somewhere a beginning ; and the 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 6 
 
 condition of society at the time of that beginning, 
 must have been such as to foster investigation in 
 some degree, and promote invention and discovery. 
 
 This condition is best attained, as we have seen, 
 in a large community, where the circumstances per- 
 mit or demand a division of labor; so that while 
 one works with his hands, another works with his 
 brain, and a third in part employs them both ; 
 and thus the whole realm of nature is explored, 
 her secrets are found out, and the forces she holds 
 in trust appropriated to the progress of the world. 
 Everything of material creation is laid under con- 
 tribution to this one great end — the advancement 
 of the human race. And under the impetus given 
 by this means to human life, it assumes a new 
 significance and stands out more boldly among the 
 works of God, as that for which all things else 
 were made, and which by the very extent of its 
 possibilities gives indication of other than earthly 
 origin and destiny. 
 
 But this view of life, when reduced to its ele- 
 ments, forces us back upon the first con- Returns 
 dition. The first step toward this ad- upon the first 
 
 condition, 
 
 vanced community is the permanent abid- 
 ing-place for the family; but the family and the 
 fixed abode necessitate the right of ownership in 
 the soil, and the moment you admit the right of 
 any one to claim one acre of land as his own, that 
 
164 THE CREATION. 
 
 moment you limit the extent of territory over 
 which any one may wander at his will. And that 
 is what Cain and Abel quarrelled about. 
 
 It is hardly probable that either of these men 
 had any adequate conception of the tendency and 
 ultimate result of what he did or attempted to 
 undo. But one of them at least, had an ideal of 
 something different from what he saw and what he 
 had known in the world. 
 
 The fact, however, that has fixed the attention, 
 from the earliest record of this occur- 
 
 Violence a 
 
 condition of rence until now, is that violence and 
 
 advancement. , , ,1 1 • 1 
 
 death came thus early m human experi- 
 ence from the antagonistic ideas and tendencies of 
 men. But the fact appears alike in nature and in 
 human life, that when we foster the good we give 
 harbor to the bad. 
 
 The labor that prepares the soil for the wait- 
 ing erain, fits it as well for the readier growth of 
 weeds. The same stream which, properly directed, 
 obediently turns your mill-wheel, also breaks some- 
 times beyond its banks and spoils your fields. The 
 vapor that lights your dwelling so conveniently and 
 so brilliantly, if left to escape unwittingly, brings 
 death where but yesternight it brought light and 
 gladness. In such close proximity are the evil and 
 the good. It depends on how we use what nature 
 gives us or what our industry achieves, whether it 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 65 
 
 prove a blessing or a curse. It depends on what 
 use we make of life, whether its possession is a 
 penalty or privilege. 
 
 Here were two boys, nourished at the same 
 breast, going out into the world, which we should 
 think was wide enough for both ; and because they 
 had different views and aims in life, the bosom ol 
 the virgin earth was stained with fraternal blood. 
 
 A fearful fact it is ; but it illustrates the world's 
 method of advance. All along the stream of time, 
 from then till now, conflict has preceded victory. 
 No great achievement is ever cheaply won. No 
 great advance is ever made except at some great 
 cost. By violence, civilization was given its first 
 great impulse in the world ; by violence most of 
 its great victories have been w^on. What then ? 
 shall we accept this method as the only one, and 
 pursue it still ? Shall we go about to kill a man 
 when we would improve the world ? 
 
 Let us keep in mind the double or conflicting 
 tendencies in man. He starts out in life when left 
 alone, a barbarian. He begins life in his best 
 estate an untutored child, with possibilities both of 
 evil and of good ; and on the training and associa- 
 tions more than on his native inclinations, depend 
 the life he will lead. Ignorance and brutality will 
 fight for life. They will resist encroachments even 
 by those who seek their good. And when these 
 
1 66 THE CREATION. 
 
 have made great advances, it is rare that their hold 
 is loosed except by something at least approaching 
 violence. But in the child, the better qualities 
 yield as readily to the influences around, as the 
 worse. Now, suppose we begin the education of 
 the child by other than harsh means of govern- 
 ment. There is where his education begins as per- 
 tains to human rights. 
 
 Then think how important a part violence has 
 always played in the education of the world. The 
 rod in the home and the school. Men went out 
 into the world, with the idea of the necessity of 
 compulsion, wherever one mind or power was supe- 
 rior to another. The thought was not to reason 
 and persuade, but to subjugate. 
 
 We have passed, let us hope, the earlier stage 
 of civilization and are already trying dif- 
 Possibiiity of ferent means to accomplish the great 
 purposes of life. Violence is in good 
 measure put away from the home. It is being 
 banished by degrees from the public schools. It 
 has been successfully attempted but recently in the 
 settlement of a national dispute. The question, 
 therefore, as to whether the method of improve- 
 ment and reform can be permanently changed, is 
 simply a question as to whether a nation can be 
 subjected to the same rules as an individual. 
 
 If evil maintains still the master hand, then 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 67 
 
 there is no advancement except by violent means, 
 for evil is stubborn and will resist. But if the bet- 
 ter nature shall gain control, if the ideal becomes 
 the real Christian life, then by easier grades and 
 surer steps progress will hold its course. Reason 
 will take passion's place, and advancement in the 
 civilization of the world will be secured without 
 the effusion of a brother's blood. 
 
 Here our discussion properly ends. 
 
 But since a principle once established finds con- 
 tinual illustration in history and in our 
 observation of the world, so there are " si lary 
 
 ' questions. 
 
 two or three reflections that come in 
 place at this point. 
 
 The first relates to a great advance that has 
 recently been made in the direction of civilization ; 
 and the other to a certain tendency toward a re- 
 trograde movement. 
 
 I. One of the greatest steps ever taken toward 
 a Christian civilization was in the settle- 
 
 Settlement 
 
 ment of the "Alabama Claims," in 1873, of "Alabama 
 when two of the leading nations of the 
 earth — both numerous and powerful — having an 
 occasion of war between them, came together by 
 their representatives, with a third party having no 
 practical interest at stake, and with his aid, ad- 
 justed and settled their cause of quarrel without 
 resort to any violent means. 
 
1 68 THE CREATION. 
 
 2. The other case relates to what is known as 
 the Communal principle — the theory that 
 
 Communism 
 
 aretrogres- ownership of property should be common, 
 ^^^^' or the title vested in the state. This is 
 variously represented by the Socialists of Germany, 
 the Nihilists of Russia, the Communists of France, 
 and a nondescript class of reformers in our own 
 country. 
 
 Whatever merits may be alleged of the sys- 
 tem as a whole, it is very certain that the general 
 adoption of the communal principle would be a 
 return tozvard primitive barbarism. Not a return 
 to it, but a step in that direction. For communism 
 pure and simple was the original condition. 
 
 The time was when there was no such thing 
 as personal ownership of land. And territory was 
 probably claimed by tribes, or by individual leaders 
 for tribes, before ownership of the soil was recog- 
 nized as an individual right. This primitive state 
 of things is still retained in a measure in some 
 European countries. 
 
 In parts of Russia, according to a recent French 
 
 Communal Writer on " Primitive Property," the vil- 
 
 property m j^ ^^ commune owns the land. To 
 
 Russia and ^ 
 
 Switzerland, each adult is allotted a portion on which 
 he may work and get his living, paying a certain 
 percentage into the public treasury, though he can 
 never possess the land in fee simple. He cannot 
 
PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION. 1 69 
 
 sell it, and there may be from time to time a re- 
 division. 
 
 In certain cantons of Switzerland, the commune 
 possesses the land, and is responsible for roads, 
 schools, and police. Each head of a family is en- 
 titled to garden-ground enough for vegetables, fruit, 
 and flax or- -hemp for household use. He is also 
 entitled to the pasturage of two cows in the moun- 
 tain meadows, and wood from the common forest. 
 And for these privileges he pays a definite sum 
 into the public treasury. And while to many peo- 
 ple this seems at a distance, quite an Arcadia, the 
 effect may be seen in the small accumulations of 
 wealth in those cantons and the almost entire lack 
 of individual enterprise. 
 
 The truth is, the moment we take from the in- 
 dividual the right of ownership in the 
 Conclusion, soil, that moment we take from him the 
 chief incentive to productive industry. 
 And taking from him the personal advantage of 
 his own skilled labor, is taking away the incentive 
 to do the best work. 
 
 The idea of a state of society in which all men 
 shall be equal in point of ownership, whether a 
 man is industrious or indolent — whether he is 
 skilled or unskilled, is purely visionary and prac- 
 ticably impossible. There may be grave inequali- 
 ties and serious faults in society as it exists at 
 
I/O THE CREATION. 
 
 present. Merit may not always be adequately re- 
 warded, and impracticable genius may often find 
 itself distanced by persistent mediocrity; but the 
 disorder is not to be remedied by a defiance of 
 the very first principles of justice or a disregard of 
 the rules that govern all intelligent competition. 
 And the best state of society to which we can 
 hope to attain is that in which every man may 
 profit by his own industry, his own intelligence, 
 and his own enterprise as well. 
 
IX. 
 
 Failure of Primeval 
 Society. 
 
" The wickedness of man was great . . . And the earth was 
 filled with violence." 
 
 " Knowest thou not all germs of evil 
 In thy heart await their tim.e ? 
 Not thyself, but God's restraining, 
 Stays their growth of crime." 
 
 — Whittier. 
 
 " One mischief entered, brings another in ; 
 The second pulls a third, the third draws more, 
 And they for all the rest set ope the door ; 
 Till custom takes away the judging sense 
 And to offend scarce seems an offence." 
 
IX. 
 
 FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 
 
 The first experiment of human society ended 
 in disaster. Such is the written testi- 
 mony — such the not unreasonable infer- ^""^^° 
 
 nature. 
 
 ence to be drawn from what we know of 
 human nature, when left comparatively to its own 
 suggestion and direction. Education is a plodding 
 process. Human wisdom is a thing of slow growth, 
 and in the most favorable conditions has but a 
 partial following. 
 
 The boy left to choose his own companions 
 and follow his own inclinations goes to ruin. The 
 patient watchfulness of parents and faithfulness of 
 teachers do not always suffice to secure a differ- 
 ent result. 
 
 The infancy of the race was much the same in 
 many points as that of the individual, and must be 
 accordingly considered. 
 
 Left first to unguided inclination, it showed a 
 facility in evil growth not manifested in its ten- 
 dency toward better things. The sava^^e outran 
 
1/4 THE CREATION. 
 
 the saintly qualities in the earliest development of 
 
 the race ; in the first changes from the 
 
 ^°^\ ° barbarian level upon which, as shown in 
 
 a preceding lecture, society began. Nor 
 
 was this fact an abnormal one in human life. All 
 
 along the line of history it appears that the evil 
 
 in man, if not most potent, has shown itself of 
 
 quickest growth. 
 
 How many of the discoveries and inventions of 
 men were made to serve some evil purpose before 
 they were turned to good account. The discovery 
 of iron, with the method of reducing it, opens per- 
 haps the widest field of useful industry in the 
 whole history of the world. Strike that from the 
 sum of human achievement, and nine tenths of all 
 our machinery and useful implements goes with 
 it. And yet the sword was shapen before the 
 ploughshare, and men learned more deadly ways 
 of fighting before they learned better methods of 
 cultivating the soil, or of appropriating human skill 
 and labor. And even to this day it depends en- 
 tirely upon the use we make of any new discovery, 
 whether it prove a blessing or a curse. 
 
 These reflections are in some sense preparatory 
 to what we shall have to say in this discourse, 
 of the flood, by which primitive society came to 
 its disastrous end. To make our way clear we 
 must consider the condition to which society had 
 
FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1/5 
 
 actually come, at the time of this extraordinary 
 event. 
 
 Bgth poetry and tradition are given to repre- 
 senting the early existence of man as a ^^^^^^^^ 
 golden age of purity and innocence — of of 
 
 1 T-' ^ r -r^j history. 
 
 prosperity and peace. 1 ne story ot bden, 
 as interpreted in the lecture on man, showed him 
 as having a golden day of innocence to begin 
 with, but falling early into disobedience and rap- 
 idly into strife. And, alas, for poetry and imagina- 
 tion — for tradition and romance, the earliest traces 
 we find in fossil, of man upon the earth, are as- 
 sociated with implements of war; as if one of the 
 first things men learned to do was to fall into 
 deadly quarrels, and then fight them out. 
 
 But this need not surprise us when we are told 
 that the second man, whose name comes ^^^^^ 
 down to us, was a fratricide. The story condition of 
 that the fossils tell us give an air of 
 plausibility as well as probability to this account. 
 
 And we might readily conceive without any 
 definite record, to what condition early society 
 would be likely to come, with such a beginning as 
 Adam made, and such a following as Cain ; and if 
 we choose to trace the matter farther, we shall 
 find an indication in the wild song of vengeance 
 and defiance that Lamech addressed to his wives. 
 
 We are not entirely unprepared, after this re- 
 
1 7^ THE CREATION. 
 
 view, for the statement that " the wickedness of 
 man was great, and the earth was filled with vio- 
 lence." Humanity seems to have started on a 
 downward grade. 
 
 But is human nature, then, constitutionally de- 
 praved to such extent that the evil in- 
 depravity. ^vitably Overbalances the good ? No ; 
 but the evil is of far the quicker growth. 
 Plant a garden, and leave it to itself, or without 
 careful husbandry, and the v/eeds will choke out all 
 the better plants. Recalling an illustration used 
 before, the boy left to himself develops a readier 
 affinity for evil than for good. A man may sink 
 to the level of the savage more easily than he can 
 rise to that of the philosopher or the saint. A 
 youth may make his way to profligacy in far less 
 time than he can fit himself for important and use- 
 ful service in the world. And the same reasoning, 
 we repeat, will apply with equal force to men in 
 the combinations of social life. Society but ex- 
 presses the sum of the influence and tendencies of 
 the individuals composing it. 
 
 On this point we quote the substance of a 
 striking paragraph from Dr. Hedge. The first 
 society, committed to undisciplined instincts and 
 native passion, without education, without experi- 
 ence, without ideals or examples before them, and 
 with no authority but brute force, would almost in 
 
FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. IJJ 
 
 evitably fail for lack of moral resources ; for moral 
 ideas, and therefore moral safeguards and defences, 
 are of slower growth. 
 
 Consider the situation of that primeval society. 
 We may easily conceive, from what we 
 know of human nature, how soon some ""^^J^^ 
 
 society. 
 
 sort of ambition or selfish desire would 
 spring up among men. Ambition would breed jeal- 
 ousy ; jealousy revenge ; revenge violence and war. 
 And this course of development of human passion 
 would be inevitable, till men had learned to think 
 soberly, to reason rightly, and to trace with some 
 sort of logical sequence, their acts to their causes 
 on the one hand, and to their consequences on the 
 other. It seems hardly strange at all, therefore, 
 that man should have found himself literally 
 swamped in the slough of his own misguided pas- 
 sions, and that the first attempt of men to live in 
 some sort of harmony, and with some community 
 of interests, should have proved a signal failure. 
 
 An eloquent author has said : " Let the word 
 ' ought ' be stricken from our language, 
 with all that it implies, and civilization '^^^ ^^^"^ 
 
 otight. 
 
 would be dust in a day." And one chief 
 advantage that society has now, over that of the 
 olden time, is that man has learned to say, " I 
 ought," and to acknowledge and regard his neigh- 
 bor's rights equally with his own. 
 
178 THE CREATION. 
 
 If to-day, all our laws of equity, the growth of 
 centuries, could be stricken out ; all the memories 
 of good exam.ples and heroic sacrifices, the herit- 
 age of crenerations, eradicated; and all our educa- 
 tional, moral, religious, and refining institutions 
 razed to the ground, how soon would men forget 
 their obligations and discard the wisest counsel, 
 and ambition, lust, and rapine reign supreme. 
 
 But the sense of justice and of mutual depend- 
 ence and responsibility had to groiv, and approve 
 themselves in man's own experience. And till he 
 had had experience, both of the evil and the good 
 that are possible to society, he could not certainly 
 distinguish between them, for there was neither 
 history nor example to guide him as there is to 
 guide men to-day. 
 
 And now, since evil in its very nature is not 
 only self-destructive but carries destruc- 
 
 Nature of 1 -i i 1 
 
 evil. tion in its train, and as evil had come 
 to prevail in the society of that early 
 time, in agreement with what seem the recorded 
 facts of history, we have characterized the first at- 
 tempt at human society as a failure. 
 
 " And God saw that the wickedness of man 
 was great in the earth, and that every imagination 
 of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continu- 
 ally. . . And God said I will destroy man." 
 
 We shall find the Hebrew idea of God and 
 
FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 79 
 
 the method of his government woven into the 
 
 narrative, as we find it in all the writ- 
 
 inc^s of that ancient people. The theory ^^^ Hebrew 
 
 "" _ ^ ^ ^ theology. 
 
 is that disaster, calamity, and affliction ; 
 that everything in nature or experience out of the 
 normal course ; that earthquakes and epidemics, 
 floods and fevers, are expressions of the divine dis- 
 pleasure. We have learned to regard these things 
 otherwise. But such was their understanding and 
 interpretation. And in the wickedness of the peo- 
 ple, therefore, which was very great, was found 
 sufficient occasion for the flood, in which the earth 
 was cleansed of its corruption and violence by the 
 destruction of the life upon it. 
 
 The story of the flood is briefly this : that the 
 fountains of the deep were broken up 
 and the clouds poured out their rain, till ^j^^ Deiu<^e 
 the earth was covered and the waters 
 prevailed above the mountain tops, destroying the 
 life that was on the land, except Noah and his 
 family, with the animals gathered by them in the 
 ark, built for their preservation. 
 
 The ark, as appears, was not a boat in any 
 proper sense, but a huge box, well proportioned for 
 floating safely on the water, but unprovided, so far 
 as we are informed, with oar. sail, or rudder; left 
 to drift whithersoever it might. 
 
 According to the record it was about five hun- 
 
l8o THE CREATION. 
 
 dred feet long ; less than one hundred feet wide, 
 and about thirty feet high ; having a capacity it is 
 computed, about equal to that of the steamship 
 Great Eastern. A man in Holland some years ago 
 constructed a vessel on the model of the ark, and 
 found it well adapted to sustain a very great 
 weight. 
 
 Sundry questions inevitably spring up at men- 
 tion of the ark, such as, how was it possible for 
 Noah and his family to collect specimens of all 
 the animals — one pair of the unclean and least 
 useful, and seven of the clean and more serviceable 
 ones? And whether it was possible for the ark 
 to contain so many animals with food sufficient 
 for such a time. But let us not anticipate. The 
 problem is not so difficult as may at first appear. 
 
 Having learned the story, let us now, according 
 to our custom, make some inquiries in other di- 
 rections. 
 
 Is there any evidence, aside from the written 
 account, that there ever was a flood ? 
 
 Evidence 
 
 of Yes. Evidence that neither the bold- 
 
 est scepticism can gainsay or the sharp- 
 est criticism undermine. 
 
 The testimony is of various kinds. 
 
 I. There are traditions of a flood among many 
 races and nations, some of which know nothing of 
 our Bible or perhaps have never heard of it ; tradi- 
 
FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 151 
 
 tions dating back to the early history of man. 
 The Chaldees, the Phoenicians, the Persians, the 
 Hindoos, even the American Indians, but espe- 
 cially the races that trace their origin to the in- 
 terior of Asia, have such traditions. And though 
 their accounts vary somewhat, they agree in the 
 important points, that the flood was destructive of 
 human life in general, but that a few, accounted 
 righteous persons, were saved in some sort of boat. 
 
 And though tradition is but perpetuated rumor, 
 and not to be depended on as decisive evidence 
 in the absence of anything beside, it is hardly pos- 
 sible that a tradition so general could exist, and 
 especially with essential points so far corresponding, 
 unless there was some good foundation for it. 
 
 2. There is evidence in many a highland dis- 
 trict, on many a mountain side, and even on 
 mountain tops, that at no distant period they 
 were under the sea ; in other words, that " the 
 waters prevailed above them." 
 
 If you will go to Montreal and climb the 
 mountain back of that city, where workmen are 
 ^^iggi^ig in the park, you may find there the shells 
 of such animals as live in the sea to-day, and 
 that at an elevation of four hundred feet above 
 the present level of the St. Lawrence river. There 
 is but one way of accounting for the existence of 
 modern marine remains at such a height, and that 
 
1 82 THE CREATION. 
 
 is, that within comparatively modern times, all that 
 region has been covered by the sea ; the waters 
 prevailed above. 
 
 And what appears so plainly in that locality 
 can be traced with equal certainty in various re- 
 gions of the earth. There is no possible doubt of 
 the fact. 
 
 If, then, we inquire into the cause of the flood, 
 it may have been due to either of two 
 floods causes ; an unusual fall of rain, or the 
 sinking of the land in the flooded district, 
 and a filling in of waters from the sea. Either 
 would be effectual in accomplishing the result. 
 The question may be asked, is there anything an- 
 alogous in modern times, to such a mode of cover- 
 incr the land with the sea? 
 
 Yes, though on a comparatively moderate scale. 
 About sixty years ago a tract of land, half the 
 size of Connecticut, at the mouth of the 
 exa^mp^ies. ^^^^^ Indus, Suddenly sank to such ex- 
 tent, the sea covered part of it, and the 
 other, from high, dry land, was reduced to swamp. 
 Still more recently a portion of the coast of 
 Chili sank several feet, so that the waters pre- 
 vailed where, in all recorded time before, had 
 been dry land ; and at another time, a sudden up- 
 heaval of a portion of that coast made dry land 
 of a tract that had long been covered by the sea. 
 
FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 83 
 
 And sudden changes in the level of the surface of 
 the earth are almost always attended by long and 
 copious rains. The clouds and the sea seem to 
 combine to work destruction upon the earth. In 
 the expressive language of the sacred word, '* The 
 windows of heaven are opened " on the one hand, 
 " and the fountains of the great deep are broken 
 up" upon the other. 
 
 It is certain, then, that floods may occur, by the 
 operation of causes that are well understood. They 
 have occurred, and, on a small scale, still occur. 
 
 Next comes the very important question ; was 
 the Noachian delup;e universal? No. 
 
 ^ The deluge 
 
 1. There is not water enough in the not 
 earth, the air, and clouds together to 
 
 cover the whole surface of the earth, to such ex- 
 tent it would prevail above the mountain tops. 
 
 2. Such a flood, in such a length of time, would 
 have destroyed every plant, if not every seed upon 
 the earth ; and there is no record of any attempt to 
 preserve the plants from the flood ; and all plant 
 life must have begun anew, presumably by a new 
 creation, when the deluge had subsided. Moreover, 
 the flocks that were preserved during the preva- 
 lence of the waters, after they came from the ark, 
 must have perished for want of pastures, while 
 waiting on the barren hills for the plants to grow 
 asrain. 
 
I $4 THE CREATION. 
 
 Further, all fishes and other animals that live 
 in fresh water, and all corals and other animals 
 that grow in shallow water, must inevitably have 
 perished, for the water was both salt and deep. 
 And no mention is made of marine animals as 
 among those for whose preservation any provision 
 was made. 
 
 If we seem to be taking somewhat bold ground 
 
 when we say the Noachian deluge was 
 
 Criticisms, not universal, we have only to answer 
 
 in reply, that we know of no scholarly 
 
 critic, whatever his religious opinions or scientific 
 
 training-, who believes that the earth has been 
 
 completely covered by a flood at any time since 
 
 the creation of man ; or that the time has ever 
 
 been, since the mountains were reared and the 
 
 beds of the sea were hollowed out, that the whole 
 
 earth was under water. 
 
 How, then, are we to interpret the emphatic 
 lancruao;e of the record, that " the waters 
 
 Interpretation ^ ^ 
 
 of prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, 
 
 and all the high hills under the whole 
 heaven were covered ? " We are to follow the 
 same rule of interpretation precisely as in other 
 passages, with like sweeping or general phrases. A 
 few examples will place the matter in a clear and 
 definite light. It is said at the time of famine 
 that sent Jacob's sons to Egypt, that " the whole 
 
i 
 
 FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 85 
 
 world came to Egypt to buy corn." Strictly speak- 
 ing, but a small fraction of the world had any 
 knowledge of such a land as Egypt. And yet the 
 language is not misleading. It is said of David 
 the king that he " was feared by every nation 
 under heaven;" when probably half the nations, 
 at the very least, were unconscious of the exist- 
 ence of any such man as David. 
 
 Luke says that " Caesar gave command that all 
 the world should be taxed," meaning of course 
 the Roman world or empire. Paul says to the 
 Colossians that the gospel had been preached " to 
 every creature under heaven;" while as yet the 
 disciples were few and the preachers but a meagre 
 company. It seems hardly possible for the intelli- 
 gent reader to mistake the meaning of these ex- 
 pressions. They imply a very wide, but by no 
 means universal extent. 
 
 Similar expressions are in daily use in our com- 
 mon speech. We say "the whole town" was at 
 the meeting, meaning only that the meeting was 
 large and enlisted general interest. We say '' the 
 whole city was excited," when much the larger 
 portion of the people had no knowledge of the 
 exciting cause, and no feeling or interest in it. 
 And yet no one is misled or deceived by such 
 language. It expresses a general fact, but is by 
 no means specific as to numbers or extent. 
 
1 86 THE CREATION. 
 
 A possible interpretation is that the whole 
 world then known was but a fraction of what is 
 known to-day, and the language had a specific 
 application to the part that was known. But we 
 are shut up to no such exceptional interpretation. 
 The meaning is clear enough if we but consider 
 the common use of terms. 
 
 What, then, is the plain and reasonable interpre- 
 tation of the story of the flood ? 
 
 It is, that there was a flood of unusual ex- 
 tent ; that it was destructive both to 
 The plain ^^^ ^^^ bcasts ; that a few persons with 
 
 meaning. 
 
 certain kinds of animals in the flooded 
 district were preserved ; and that, in accordance 
 with the Hebrew idea of the divine character and 
 government, the flood being a great disaster, was 
 attributed to the divine displeasure at the wicked- 
 ness of men ; and that the rescued ones became 
 the types of purity, since on the same theory, the 
 divine favor was manifestly upon them. 
 
 There is nothing, therefore, that need tax our 
 credulity, much less defy our reason, in the idea 
 that there was a flood, that it wrought great de- 
 struction, and that a few escaped its ravages. 
 
 If the Noachian deluge was not uni- 
 
 Location 
 
 of versal, in what part of the world did it 
 
 the flood. Q^^^^.p j^ jg j^Qt difficult to find an an- 
 swer to this question. Most of the races that have 
 
FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 87 
 
 any record or tradition of a flood, trace their ori- 
 gin to interior or Western Asia. It is regarded 
 now as quite certain that it Avas in that section of 
 the world that man originated, and that the race 
 scattered thence to the different quarters of the 
 globe. 
 
 It is every way reasonable, therefore, to suppose 
 that here is where the flood occurred. Indeed, 
 there is ample evidence that that region has suf- 
 fered seriously both by fire and flood, by earth- 
 quake and deluge, since it was first occupied by 
 man. 
 
 Moreover, it would require but little subsi- 
 dence of the land to repeat that disaster 
 
 ^ Possibility- 
 
 to-day, bringing in the waters of the of 
 
 Caspian Sea upon the north, and the 
 Indian Ocean upon the south in such way as to 
 flood the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, the 
 Indus and the Ganges, with all their feeding 
 streams, involving a wide continental area in de- 
 struction. Not only is this region exposed to the 
 sea both on the north and on the south, but 
 some portions of the interior, as the Dead Sea, 
 lie far below the sea level now, and are only pro- 
 tected from inundation by the highland rims about 
 the borders. 
 
 One thought incidental is suggested as we pass. 
 Whether the district covered by the flood compre- 
 
1 88 THE CREATION. 
 
 hended all the earth that was then inhabited, we dc 
 not know. It is by no means improba- 
 of ble that the race had spread beyond its 
 
 limits. And the fact that the Egyptians 
 have no tradition of the deluge, suggests the pos- 
 sibility that Egypt did not share the disaster that 
 came upon Western Asia. And the same may cer- 
 tainly be said of remoter portions of the world. 
 This would make the rapid peopling of the world 
 subsequently, more easily accounted for, and is, all 
 things considered, the most reasonable solution of 
 that problem. 
 
 In the facts of human history, then, we find the 
 
 origin of the story of the flood. In re- 
 
 ^. ^^°7 cordincr an affair of such tremendous 
 
 rational. ^ 
 
 moment, it could hardly be otherwise 
 than that the account should come to be in- 
 vested somewhat with the character of romance. 
 For in this as in many other sacred stories, the 
 facts recorded are of less importance than the les- 
 son taught ; a deeper meaning is implied than the 
 words immediately express. 
 
 That men should have grown wicked when left 
 without wisdom, example, or restraint is in no 
 sense strange ; and that they should have brought 
 destruction on themselves, in consequence of vice 
 and crime, is something we are not troubled now 
 to understand. Only justice and truth, equity and 
 
FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY. 1 89 
 
 honor can guarantee the existence of society. 
 Abolish these and society disintegrates ; no man 
 trusts his neighbor, and the whole social fabric 
 goes to rapid ruin. 
 
 But the tragedy of the flood, in different forms, 
 has been re-enacted many times, and is 
 
 The tragedy 
 
 passing on the stage again to-day. A oft 
 nation perishes; but here and there a ''^P^^*^'^- 
 devoted teacher, a heroic leader, with some virtue 
 to commend him to posterity, stands out above his 
 nation and his age. While the nation dies he 
 lives; and though the nation ma^y be buried in the 
 flood of subsequent events, he is accorded a place 
 in the living heart of a grateful world. And here 
 we find the moral of the lesson of the flood. 
 
 If the time shall ever come when this nation 
 perishes, when the very memory thereof shall have 
 almost passed away, there are a few names, per- 
 haps not half so many as in Noah's family, shall 
 live ; for their virtues, their courage, their fortitude 
 and faithfulness forbid that they be forgot. 
 
 We stand upon the ruins of the Athenian 
 Acropolis to-day. The history of the glo- 
 rious times that were, seem now but the Reflections, 
 dissolving fabric of a dream. But the 
 ghosts of such as Socrates and Plato seem still to 
 haunt those ancient streets, and are more real to 
 us than anything beside in the whole history of 
 
190 THE CREATION. 
 
 Greece. The nation was buried long ago, swept 
 away as by a flood, but the best things in it were 
 preserved. 
 
 And finally, if we go to Palestine and climb the 
 dreary hills about Jerusalem, traverse the desolate 
 Judean plains, and think of the wonders of that 
 ancient world — of the wilderness and Sinai, of the 
 temple and the throne — there is one figure that 
 towers over all the rest ; one life that rises above, 
 and makes even poor and wretched Bethlehem and 
 dilapidated Nazareth most holy ground ; for there 
 went out thence a more potent force, to shape the 
 lives and quicken the hearts of men, than the world 
 has ever known beside. 
 
X, 
 
 Diversity of Tongues 
 
"And the whole earth was of one language and of one 
 speech." 
 
 "The formation of language supposes two conditions: i. A 
 consciousness in man of his power to produce articulate sounds. 
 2. A perception of the possibility of those sounds becoming the 
 signs of his ideas." — Locke's Esiiy. 
 
 "Th' invention all admired, and each how he 
 To be th' inventor missed ; so easy 't seemed 
 Once found, which yet unfound, most would have thought 
 Impossible." 
 
 " — Paradise Lost, 
 
X. 
 
 DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 
 
 Whatever may have been the origin of human 
 lancruao-e — whether the first created were ^ . . 
 
 ^ ^ Origin 
 
 endowed with the gift of speech, or, as of 
 
 1 • 4.U language. 
 
 seems more probable, language is the 
 slow growth of centuries — there must have been a 
 time when the human family was of one language 
 and one speech. We know no argument in favor 
 of the first theory. It is a mere assumption based 
 on the fact that man is gifted above other animals 
 and that he has need of speech. The other theory, 
 namely, that language is a growth, is capable in 
 good degree of demonstration. 
 
 Place a group of animals together, and they 
 soon come to understand each other in a sort of 
 rude yet decisive way. Much more, two human 
 beings, though they be of different races and differ- 
 ent tongues, will soon communicate their sentiments 
 and ideas to each other by articulate sounds.* 
 
 * Peschel states that young children of some South African tribes, 
 left much to themselves during the long absence of parents in collect- 
 ing their winter's food, develop a sort of language of their own. 
 
194 THE CREATIOy. 
 
 The process is a very simple one. If we go 
 
 back to the history of the infant race, 
 Growth -' ' 
 
 of we may suppose the first attempt to 
 
 anguage. j^g^^^ been nothing more than a vocal im- 
 pulse, having no intelligent design or intelligible 
 meaning, but growing out of the desire for expres- 
 sion. Nevertheless, when found to answer a pur- 
 pose, or procure some satisfactory response, it 
 would be repeated and so grow into a habit, which 
 would widen and extend till it comprehended a 
 variety of sounds, each of which would have some 
 special meaning. The same process would go on 
 in different individuals at the same time. Each 
 would learn to accept or imitate the other's utter- 
 ances, as expressing certain ideas ; and each con- 
 tributing a share to the common stock, a single lan- 
 guage would grow up and be mutually adopted.* 
 Thus a community of people, living in the same 
 
 _ place and in like conditions, would have 
 
 One ^ 
 
 language one language and one speech. And so 
 long as they continued one community, 
 with no great variety of interests and no great di- 
 versity of aims, they would continue in the same 
 habits of life, thought, and speech. We see this 
 
 * The theory that language is a human invention need not dis- 
 turb the equanimity of the most reverent believer in the Scriptures ; 
 for it is distinctly stated (Genesis ii. 19, 20) that man gave names 
 to the animals. They had no names till he invented and applied 
 them 
 
DIVERSITY OF TONGUES, 1 95 
 
 well illustrated in the unenterprising lands of the 
 Orient, where customs of life and habit, and fash- 
 ions in dress even, remain almost the same as 
 they were thousands of years ago, though the in- 
 flux and mingling of foreign elements have some- 
 what corrupted and changed their speech. So long 
 as society undergoes no great changes, so long the 
 language will undergo no important modifications. 
 But when the first begins to change the other will 
 soon follow, and from causes in no wise difficult to 
 trace. 
 
 So long as a community is small and devoted 
 largely to a common pursuit, so long 
 there is little occasion or opportunity of 
 
 - , _, - . , . diversity. 
 
 for change. But history and experience 
 alike go to prove, that as a community enlarges, 
 as its numbers increase and its business interests 
 multiply, and especially as men of courage and 
 ambition strike out from the old home, emigrate 
 and lead out colonies to form new communities, 
 as Abraham started out from Ur of the Chaldees, 
 and Lot separated from his kinsman at the Jordan, 
 different habits grow up and differences of speech 
 will soon appear. 
 
 Althousfh facilities of travel and com- ... ^ . 
 
 ^ Illustrations. 
 
 munication make these things less appar- 
 ent now, it is but a {qsm years since this fact was 
 well illustrated in our own country. We are an 
 
196 THE CREATION. 
 
 English-speaking nation. And yet, a generation 
 since, a person bred in New England found it diffi- 
 cult to understand a Southerner, on first acquaint- 
 ance, and they of the West were quite perplexed 
 over some peculiarities of speech of newly arrived 
 New England neighbors. 
 
 Not only does remoteness of locality and infre- 
 quency of communication contribute to this result, 
 but it is inevitable, as a community extends and 
 trades and occupations increase in variety, that these 
 differences should arise. Locality, kinds of business 
 and habits of life must all be taken into the ac- 
 count. And these differences will multiply in 
 number and widen in extent, till after a few years, 
 people who started in life together but have been 
 separated, will sometimes be at a loss to under- 
 stand each other. In the gold mines of California 
 a dialect grew up quite incomprehensible to one 
 who had no knowledge of their modes of life. It is 
 related that when Chatham, on one occasion, visited 
 the mines of Yorkshire, he was surprised to find 
 he could not understand at all the coal digger's 
 speech ; and, on the other hand, the statesman's 
 polished rhetoric was but idle words in the ears of 
 these men of brawny arm but narrow opportunities. 
 
 A consideration of much importance in this 
 connection is that language in remote ages was 
 unwritten, and so took no more permanent form 
 
DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 1 97 
 
 than tliat which was given it in passing from lip 
 to Hp. A missionary on revisiting a tribe Rapid 
 of Indians after an absence of ten years, unwritten 
 found their language so changed in that ianguag:e. 
 brief period, he had to learn it almost anew. And 
 a traveller in Brazil relates that his guides, from 
 different portions of the same tribe, had marked 
 differences of accent and inflection. 
 
 The pen and printing press now give to words 
 some legible and lasting form, and therefore changes 
 must be less rapid than in the early history of the 
 race.* But in dealing with the origin of language, 
 and its earliest development, we must take into 
 account the conditions of human life in its. earliest 
 period. 
 
 Now, on the theory that the human race had 
 a common origin, or if not that we deal with the 
 historic portion, it is plain that at first and for a 
 considerable period, they must have been of one 
 language and speech. So much is clearly deduci- 
 ble from what we know of human society, and 
 from the similarities that can be traced between 
 all or most of the leading languages of the earth. 
 For unity or affinity of language is conceded to 
 imply unity of origin, near or remote. 
 
 * Mr. Kenry Welsford, in his " Mithridates Minor: an Essay on 
 Language" (London, 1848), assumes that unwritten languages change 
 least ; but recent observations do not bear out the statement. 
 
198 THE CREATION. 
 
 But though there was only one language at the 
 first, it was not possible, in the nature 
 
 Different ^ 
 
 tongues of things, that this should long continue. 
 
 inevitable. ^. . . , j 1 • • ^ j 
 
 Changes m society and business introduce 
 new words and new forms of expression, and these 
 lead, soon or late, to new types of speech. That 
 men came to speak different languages is a fact 
 plainly stated in sacred history ; but a fact not 
 dependent on that statement merely for proof. 
 We have proof in all the history of the world, and 
 in our common observation of the world. The 
 tongues have been confounded to such extent that 
 it requires long study and training for persons 
 come together from remote parts of the earth, to 
 learn to express themselves clearly and fluently in 
 each other's language. Even cognate languages, or 
 those having a common root and origin, and each 
 but a single remove from the original, will be 
 found to possess essential differences in accent or 
 inflection, and not unfrequently in words. Nor is 
 anything extraordinary necessary to produce this 
 result. It must inevitably come about, soon or 
 late, in the very circumstances of the case. 
 
 To make the matter with which we have to do 
 as plain as may be, let us go back somewhat in 
 the history of the infant race. 
 
 Spreading out as they must have done from 
 early Eden ; some to seek warmer climates per- 
 
DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 199 
 
 haps toward the south, and others daring the more 
 rigorous atmosphere toward the north ; „. , 
 
 ^ ^ History ot 
 
 some moving toward the mountains and the 
 
 1 11 11 early race. 
 
 others toward the valleys — the hunters 
 that they might find game and the herdsmen that 
 they might find pasturage — and still others, given 
 to tilling fruitful fields, that they might find pro- 
 ductive soil, it is easy to conceive how soon so- 
 ciety must have taken on something of the tribal 
 character. There were hunter tribes and shepherd 
 clans, and other classes or divisions, according to 
 the occupations of the people. Each tribe soon 
 formed a dialect of its own, growing in part out 
 of the prevalent mode of life, and in this differed 
 from all the neighboring tribes. 
 
 The fact that facilities of travel were meagre, 
 and families or tribes living but few miles apart 
 may have met but rarely, would give these differ- 
 ences the more opportunity to grow and become 
 distinctly marked. Moreover, men in that day 
 were in disposition, doubtless, very much as they 
 are in this; and as families, communities, and tribes 
 grew jealous of one another's strength, they would 
 be the more inclined to live apart, and each dwell 
 by itself: all of which would tend to make their 
 languages more distinct. 
 
 But there were other causes tending to separate 
 communities and build up new types of speech. 
 
200 THE CREATION. 
 
 Society makes no great advances till men start 
 up here and there, full of enterprise or 
 
 Other causes: ■'■ 
 
 ambitious full of ambition, and set themselves to at- 
 leaders. ^^.^ place and power above their fellows. 
 They conceive the plan of uniting several families 
 in a tribe, or several communities in a state, over 
 which they may rule ; or, gathering a great number 
 of tribes into one vast empire, as did Rurik in 
 Northern Europe a thousand years ago. 
 
 First among the men of this type, of whom we 
 have any record, was Nimrod, who " be- 
 
 Nimrod. gan to be a mighty one in the earth." 
 "A mighty hunter before the Lord" he 
 is styled. A mighty conqueror he was, for that 
 day it seems, as well. The account given of this 
 man in the tenth of Genesis is very brief, but full 
 of grave significance. He seems to have conceived 
 the idea of uniting all the tribes in a single king- 
 dom, of which, very naturally, he aspired to be 
 king. He saw how men were scattered abroad to 
 the east and to the west, to the north and to the 
 south. He saw the broad and fruitful valley of 
 the Euphrates, and it seems to have occurred to 
 him that this was the place for the seat of a great 
 empire. Accordingly he went to work, with such 
 means as were at his command. Every tribe sub- 
 dued or won to his standard increased his strength 
 and added to his fame, and in process of time he 
 
DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 20I 
 
 succeeded in good measure in his scheme. Like 
 all great rulers, he sought to centralize his power 
 and so combine these communities in one, that 
 they should forget they had ever been separate 
 peoples. 
 
 He built his capital with all the magnificence 
 he could command. And when the val- 
 ley of the Tigris was added to his realm ^^,^^^°" ^"^ 
 
 ^ ^ Nineveh. 
 
 he founded other great cities, and Baby- 
 lon and Nineveh, both most wonderful cities of 
 their time, are accounted among the fruits of his 
 enterprise, skill, and power. 
 
 One daring device, attributed to him or to his 
 people, was to rear an immense tower in 
 the midst of the valley of the Euphrates, '^^^ ^^^^^ 
 which should overtop any other structure 
 ever reared by man ; a tower of so great height it 
 should serve as a beacon to all the tribes, not only 
 in the valley but far away upon the mountains, 
 and would tend to convince men in all time to 
 come, that here was the mightiest power in all the 
 earth, rivalling even the power upon the throne of 
 heaven itself. This structure was designed not 
 only as a monument of greatness, but as a centre 
 about which the national pride might gather, and 
 the national memories cluster ; a sort of magnet, 
 to draw the people together and kindle in them a 
 popular sentiment of unity, so that there should 
 
202 THE CREATION. 
 
 be no more desire to separate from this greatest of 
 kingdoms ; no more an inclination to be scattered 
 abroad on the face of the earth. It was to be a 
 sort of shrine, as Jerusalem was to the Hebrews of 
 a later day, as Mecca is to the Mussulmen to-day. 
 
 With this bold and far-reaching design they set 
 to work. Whether the scheme commanded at 
 once the approval and willing aid of all concerned 
 in it, or was carried on as the work of a master 
 mind to which all others were in subordination, we 
 have no certain means of knowing, nor is it im- 
 portant for our present purpose. But the work 
 began. They made bricks and they used asphalt 
 for mortar; the use of lime for such purpose then 
 being probably unknown. The best skill of the 
 times was doubtless brought into requisition, for 
 the structure was designed to have something 
 more than a transient interest and importance. 
 
 The whole affair is briefly set forth in the 
 
 story of the Tower of Babel. And fortu- 
 The ^ 
 
 Tower of nately, where the Bible record fails us, by 
 reason of its brevity, other history comes 
 in to give us some detail. Ancient writers vie 
 with one another in describing the wonders and 
 magnificence of the tower. As nearly as can now 
 be determined it was about five hundred feet 
 square at the base and eight stories high, each 
 story being of great height and the whole over 
 
DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 203 
 
 topping any other building ever reared by human 
 hands. The tower was solid throughout, except 
 the upper story, which was fitted up in royal style, 
 for the pagan god that was supposed sometimes 
 to come down from heaven and perch upon the 
 high places of the earth. This is a description in 
 brief, of the tower as it was designed to be. 
 Whether it was completed we do not definitely 
 know, though we are well assured it was begun 
 and raised to a considerable height, for what are 
 presumed to be the remains are still to be seen 
 to-day. 
 
 As the traveller approaches the Euphrates from 
 the west, a little south of Babylon, a 
 
 , . . , 1 , . , Ruins of 
 
 huge rum rises m the plam, and serves t^e tower, 
 as a landmark for those both far and 
 near. The base is of irregular and indefinite ex- 
 tent, as any structure would be that had fallen to 
 decay, but the height is about two hundred feet. 
 The people thereabout call it Nimrod's Mountain ; 
 but it is made of brick laid in asphalt, and known 
 thence to be not a natural but an artificial struc- 
 ture. And everything about it — the name, the lo- 
 cation, the method of construction, and its very 
 ancient date — so ancient no man pretends to fix 
 it — combine to identify it with the tower that the 
 people builded so long ago, under Nimrod's rule, 
 as a testimony to all the nations of the earth. 
 
204 THE CREATION. 
 
 This tower, according to traditional account and 
 such historic record as we have, was never com- 
 pleted. 
 
 For the failure to carry out so magnificent a 
 design, various causes may be assicrned in 
 
 Possible ^ ' / t> 
 
 causes of the ordinary passage of events. 
 
 I. Nimrod was a tyrant. There can 
 be little doubt of that ; for none but a tyrant can 
 hold crude peoples together and compel them to 
 any toilsome enterprise. Tyrants may have their 
 way for a time, but human nature too sorely tried 
 will revolt, and any wide-spread revolution would 
 stop the work. 
 
 2. The attempt to mould together in a com- 
 mon band, tribes of so many different tendencies 
 and ways of life, without some underlying senti- 
 ment of unity, would be hazardous in any case, 
 and especially so where mutual jealousies of tribes 
 tended to make them continually suspicious of one 
 another. It is found practically impossible to bring 
 our Indian tribes together in a single government. 
 
 3. Kings do not always live — even if we suppose, 
 as some do, that Nimrod represented a dynasty 
 instead of an individual, the case is not changed 
 in this respect. And when the place of a powerful 
 potentate is left vacant and must be supplied, all 
 the petty aspirants, with their several factions, come 
 into conflict, and a degree of violence ensues that 
 
DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 20$ 
 
 scatters the kingdom more widely than before the 
 attempt at unity was made. The kingdom is broken 
 up. And the cause of rupture continues to breed 
 animosities between the different sections, which 
 destroy what little harmony had grown up among 
 them, and build partition walls between them. 
 
 These are some of the causes that, in the or- 
 dinary course of human events, would tend to 
 destroy the kingdom and scatter the people abroad 
 again. And thus each family, tribe, or clan would 
 be left to itself, to find its own territory, devise 
 its own mode of life, and, as we have seen, to form 
 a dialect and eventually a language of its own. 
 
 Let us observe before going farther the basis of 
 fact and reasonable inference, on which 
 our theory rests, in the particular case Conditions 
 
 •> ' ^ of the case. 
 
 we have been tracing. 
 
 1. There were the people scattered over an ex- 
 tent of territory, in the immediate vicinity of the 
 very cradle of the human i-ace. It could hardly 
 have been otherwise, at that early day, than that 
 the tribes and families should have clustered in 
 that section of the world. 
 
 2. There was Nimrod, a mighty conqueror and 
 first among the great kings and tyrants of the 
 earth. If no name were given, we know from all 
 human history, that such men do now and then 
 arise and impress themselves upon their age. 
 
206 THE CREATION. 
 
 3. There was the tower in the same locality, of 
 whose size and structure there is no chance for 
 doubt, since the ruin still remains to tell the story 
 for itself. On these facts and plain inferences, our 
 theory of the great dispersion is based. 
 
 The account in Genesis gives a somewhat dif- 
 ferent version of the immediate cause of 
 ^'^\^^Z' the dispersion at the Tower of Babel. 
 And yet the essential facts of that nar- 
 rative are involved and accounted for, in the 
 theory above developed, as we think, will readily 
 appear as we proceed. The record is of un- 
 doubted Hebrew origin, and reflects the Hebrew 
 idea of the divine character and procedure. 
 
 The facts on which the account was based 
 were these : 
 
 1. Here were these people living in close prox- 
 
 imity, but unable to understand each 
 ^^lto°/^^^ other's speech. It seemed a divine judg- 
 ment upon them for some offence. 
 
 2. There stood the tower. The people of the 
 region explained that the attempt had been made 
 to build it up to heaven. It was accounted an 
 impious as well as daring scheme. And the ready 
 interpretation was that the consequence appeared 
 in the curse of confusion that had come upon 
 these scattered tribes. The Hebrew idea of the 
 ways of God with men, supplies the only element 
 
DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 20; 
 
 necessary to make the two accounts, in all essen- 
 tial points, the same. 
 
 Now, we return to the proposition stated in the 
 beginning, that while there was but one language 
 at the first, as men increased in numbers and 
 varied in locality and occupations, their forms of 
 speech became more and more diverse, and the re- 
 sult was different languages. 
 
 The multiplication of tongues had probably 
 begun before the events of Babel. But j)j^gj.5j^jg3 
 the confusion became more decided and before 
 
 Babel. 
 
 the differences more pronounced, by rea- 
 son of the rupture of the great kingdom, and the 
 ambitions, hates, jealousies, and bitter tyrannies re- 
 sulting, which served to drive the tribes more 
 widely asunder than they had ever been before. 
 
 But the Babel-builders were not the only rep- 
 resentatives of their race. We touch a principle 
 here that reaches far and wide, and the story has 
 been repeated many times in human history. 
 
 Nimrod is not the only conqueror who has 
 conceived the daring scheme of uniting all the 
 nations of the earth in one; nor the only con- 
 queror in whom ambition has quite o'erleaped itself. 
 
 Alexander and Napoleon are names 
 
 ,- .,. -T-1 • 1 The story 
 
 more familiar to us. Their schemes were repeated. 
 no less audacious and scarcely less disas- 
 trous in their results. A daring game has been 
 
208 THE CREATION. 
 
 played on the stage of Europe in very recent years. 
 The hungry northern bear has had his giant paws 
 almost on the prize along the Hellespont he has 
 coveted so long. The British lion, somewhat dis- 
 comfited, showed signs of war, but was appeased for 
 the time, by a liberal share of the incidental spoils. 
 While the master spirit of the continent looked 
 on, from the safe distance of the German court, 
 marking out the map of Europe as he intended it 
 should be. Never were planned more daring 
 schemes, and never was ambition more ambitious. 
 But all history proves that ambition has its 
 limits and its checks. And that there is 
 Lesson of ^ Po^yer above the world that is more 
 
 the ages. 
 
 than any power in the world, ought to 
 be sufficiently apparent, in the fact that the abor- 
 tive schemes of designing men are somehow turned 
 to good account, in the progress of the human 
 race. "All new languages," says Bunsen, quoted 
 by Dr. Hedge, "have arisen from the breaking up 
 of some great political bond which imposed one 
 speech on its constituents." 
 
 The breaking up of the Latin empire gave 
 birth to no less than five of the languages, that 
 are spoken in Southern Europe now. 
 
 And this is only one of the many facts to be 
 considered in the contemplation of this subject 
 The youth who would accomplish anything must 
 
DIVERSITY OF TONGUES. 209 
 
 not remain in leading-strings, but strike out for 
 himself. The same is true of nations as 
 of individuals. The nations that spread Conclusion, 
 out into all the earth, after the great 
 dispersion, accomplished more in the way of dis- 
 covery and invention, of enterprise and progress, 
 than would have been possible had they remained 
 grouped together, in any single section of the 
 world. When Caesar sat upon the throne, Rome 
 was accounted mistress of the world. Discord and 
 confusion entered in and her imperial dignity was 
 sacrificed. But all Europe since, is peopled with 
 nations that vie with one another, in industry and 
 enterprise such as Rome never knew ; and so the 
 defeated schemes, of here and there a single man, 
 promote the happiness and progress of the human 
 race. 
 
XI. 
 
 Antiquity of Man 
 
" What is man ? . . . 
 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of 
 Thy hand. 
 Thou hast put all things under his feet." 
 
 — The Psalmist. 
 
 '■'■ Chronologists are agreed that about 2,000 years B.C. 
 Abraham migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and, that at 
 this time, Egypt at least was old in civilization. Beyond this, we 
 have no positive scale of time." — Pattison. 
 
 . . . ''Tongues, that syllable man's name. 
 On sands and shores, and desert wilderness." 
 
 —Milton. 
 
XL 
 
 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 
 
 Man is a recent comer upon the earth; the 
 last, indeed, of which we have any rec- ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ 
 ord. But in saying his coming is recent of the 
 
 , , , . 1 . Creation. 
 
 we use the word only m a relative sense. 
 A period of time may be absolutely long, yet rel- 
 atively short — short as compared with the whole 
 lapse of time from the beginning until now. 
 
 The past half century has witnessed very im- 
 portant changes in our chronological tables. 
 
 Archbishop Usher, of the English Church, some 
 two and a half centuries since, taking the 
 Bible narrative as his guide, made the chronoio^. 
 period of man's occupancy of the earth, 
 somewhere from four thousand and four to four 
 thousand one hundred and seventy-four (4004 to 
 4174) years before Christ, or say, in round num- 
 bers, six thousand years to the present date. It 
 is evident, however, to any careful reader in this 
 day, that there are wide intervals of time in that 
 narrative, for which no allowance is made in the 
 
214 THE CREATION. 
 
 good bishop's calculation. A descendant of David 
 of the tenth generation, was a " son of David " as 
 much as one of the first ; and persons of small im- 
 portance were doubtless omitted from the record 
 entirely. 
 
 The vagueness and uncertainty of such calcula- 
 tions may be illustrated in this wise. If in some 
 far future age, all knowledge of this country shall 
 have faded into dim tradition, and the attempt 
 shall be made to re-write its history, it is con- 
 ceivable that the names of Washington and Lin- 
 coln may alone survive, in the list of our chief 
 rulers. And if on that account, the reader shall 
 conclude that the administration of the latter 
 matched on to that of the former, and that at its 
 close the government came to an end, it is evi- 
 dent he will get but a meagre idea of the times 
 so full of interest to us. So the Old Testament 
 record must be regarded not as a consecutive his- 
 tory, but a series of fragments, with wide lapses 
 often between events there narrated in close and 
 continuous order. 
 
 Still, men feeling a sort of security in definite 
 dates, and little given perhaps to speculation, ac- 
 cepted Usher's chronology, with little question, 
 for many years. But facts, long unconsidered or 
 held to be of small importance, have forced a re- 
 vision of opinion on the subject. Some of these 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 21$ 
 
 facts it is our purpose to consider in this dis- 
 course. 
 
 Written history does not carry us back more 
 than four thousand years. The Egyptian ^^^^ 
 monuments — accounted the oldest struc- limits of 
 
 r 1 • 1 • • ^ history. 
 
 tures of their class m existence — may 
 carry us three thousand years farther. The earliest 
 records, therefore, of such character do not go back 
 more than seven thousand years. The best au- 
 thorities, as Lepsius and Bunsen, make the period 
 something less, while ChampoUion and Mariette 
 somewhat extend it. 
 
 But whatever date may be assigned to the early 
 Egyptian temples, obelisks, and inscriptions, beyond 
 these we have no written history and no monu- 
 mental records, excepting such as pertain to habita- 
 tions, implements, and modes of life of a people of 
 whose existence we have not even a tradition pre- 
 served among recent inhabitants of the world. 
 
 No existing race traces its lineage to the Cave- 
 dwellers of Bel£[ium, the " Kitchen-midden " _ ,. . 
 
 •^ Indications 
 
 men of Denmark, to the Mound-builders beyond tradi- 
 of America, or even to the Lake-dwellers 
 of Switzerland. There is doubtless a connection 
 between those ancient races and the men that live 
 to-day, but the line is lost in a period of blank 
 obscurity between. 
 
 And suppose we go back to Egypt seven thou- 
 
2l6 THE CREATION. 
 
 sand years ago, we do not find the human race 
 there in its infancy. They had a language, not 
 merely of signs but of vocal utterances — a written 
 language, not of mystic hieroglyphs only, but of 
 characters that may still be read ; they had exten- 
 sive knowledge of many useful arts, and they had 
 a well-established form of government. Men do 
 not leap at a bound to such condition. It took 
 the Hebrews a thousand years, from the departure 
 of Abraham from his early home to develop a sys- 
 tematic and stable government. And if it be said 
 their captivity in Egypt hindered their progress, it 
 is quite as reasonable to suppose that their contact 
 with Egyptian institutions and their knowledge of 
 Egyptian government, also helped their progress. 
 If the process was impeded in one direction it was 
 facilitated in another. Besides, these people had 
 already reached the tribal condition, with a patri- 
 archial head, before their migration began, which 
 implies a considerable history or experience still 
 back of that point. 
 
 If, then, we suppose the Egyptians to have 
 lived under an established monarchy, and 
 
 Remote 
 
 infancy of to have built and inscribed monuments 
 the race. ^^^^^ thousand years ago, it is evident 
 the infancy of the race, and even of that particu- 
 lar people, must have dated far back of that 
 There had been time to invent, construct, and sys- 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 21/ 
 
 tematize language ; to invent, discover, apply, and 
 improve some of the arts ; to try various rude ex- 
 periments of government in family, clan, and tribe, 
 and to pass from dependence on the chase to the 
 care of flocks, and from the nomad's tent to the 
 fixed habitation. 
 
 In any attempt to trace this remote condition 
 of mankind the ordinary means of inves- 
 
 ^ Failure 
 
 tigation fail us utterly. There is neither of common 
 document nor monumental record, and 
 even the dim light of tradition is wanting. 
 
 Our dependence must be upon the manifest 
 changes in the condition of the human race, know- 
 ing those changes to be wrought by slow degrees, 
 or upon changes in the earth, as to climate, sur- 
 face deposits, and forms of life, since man's earliest 
 appearance. If, for instance we find the remains 
 of man — either skeleton or handicraft — in cave- 
 deposit, shell-heap or peat-growth, associated with 
 the bones of animals long since extinct, we are 
 justified in assigning a remote antiquity to such 
 remains. If clear indications of man are found in 
 rock or undisturbed gravel, at a given depth be- 
 low the surface, and we find means to determine 
 the rate of deposit of such formation, and the 
 length of time since the deposit ceased, we may 
 calculate with moderate certainty the length of 
 time since such men lived. 
 
2l8 THE CREATION. 
 
 We must use caution, however, not to attach a 
 
 definite value or measurement to pro- 
 Necessity 
 
 of cesses or agencies which by their very 
 
 caution. nature are variable, and therefore indefi- 
 nite. The rate of river erosions, for instance, on 
 which much reliance is sometimes placed, varies 
 according to the quantity of water and rapidity of 
 the current ; and these may change from year to 
 year, still more from one century to another. 
 Likewise, the growth of peat and accumulation of 
 stalagmitic crusts, vary between wide limits in dif- 
 ferent localities, and from time to time in the same 
 place. Again, great changes of climate, and entire 
 change of the types of vegetable and animal life, 
 may be regarded as indicating extended periods of 
 time, but we do not sufficiently understand the 
 causes of these changes to make them the basis 
 of definite calculations. Indeed, it is quite evident 
 that such changes are far from uniform in their 
 rates of progress. 
 
 There are certain indications, however, that may 
 be studied with more confidence. These 
 dependence, ^rc found chiefly in peat-bogs, cave- 
 deposits, shell-heaps, and in remains of 
 ancient habitations in Switzerland known as lake- 
 dwellings. 
 
 But to facilitate our study let us lay out our 
 work more definitely ; considering first the geologi- 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 219 
 
 cal divisions of the Quaternary Age, and then the 
 periods into which the era of man's existence is 
 usually divided. 
 
 The geologist commonly divides the Quaternary 
 Age of the earth's history into three 
 
 ^ _ •' Periods of 
 
 periods, the Glacial, Champlain, and Ter- the Quater- 
 race. For convenience in our discussion "^'^^ ^^' 
 we have added a fourth, the Present period cor- 
 responding to what Prof. B. F. Mudge, of Kansas, 
 has styled the Delta period, in allusion to the de- 
 posits now forming at the mouths of great rivers, 
 as the Mississippi, the Nile, and the Ganges.* 
 
 In the first, or glacial period, all or the greater 
 part of this continent, as far south as 
 the Ohio River and the southern line of period 
 Pennsylvania, was covered with a great 
 depth of ice, as shown by glacial scratches, and by 
 erratic boulders scattered here and there over the 
 country, at a wide distance from the beds in which 
 they originated. And in Europe the ice prevailed 
 as far south as Northern Italy. This was, of 
 course, a period of extreme cold. There could 
 have been little, if any life, either animal or vege- 
 table, in the higher latitudes, and man could have 
 lived only along the skirts of the glacier, or after 
 it had retreated. 
 
 * The reader is here referred to the upper section of the Chart af- 
 fixed to the Sixth Lecture. Page 123. 
 
220 THE CREATION. 
 
 The animal kingdom was represented by the 
 Mammoth and Rhinoceros, which had survived 
 from an earHer period, the Cave-bear and Hyena, 
 and somewhat later by the Reindeer; all of which 
 have been long extinct, save the Reindeer, which 
 has migrated to a northern clime, following close, 
 as would seem, upon the receding ice. 
 
 Succeeding the Glacial, or " Great Ice " period, 
 came the Champiain, marked by a lower 
 
 ^erkxd^^ general level of land, a consequent wider 
 extent of sea and warmer climate. 
 
 In this period the glaciers melted in the re- 
 gions now covered by the temperate zones, re- 
 treated northward or toward mountain tops, leav- 
 ing their vast accumulations of rocks, gravel, clay, 
 sand, and the like, to which the geologist applies 
 the general name of Diluvium or Drift. The ani- 
 mals of this period differed in a marked degree 
 from those of the preceding, as the changed cli- 
 mate would lead us to expect, and included the 
 huge sloth-like Megatherium, with a considerable 
 number that still survive, as the lion, tiger, wild 
 boar, ox, horse, and deer. There were monkies 
 also in Asia and marsupials in Australia. 
 
 Following the Champiain came the 
 
 '^^IJkS Terrace period, during which the land 
 
 gradually rose again, the sea withdrew 
 
 to its present limits, and the successive levels called 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 221 
 
 Terraces were formed along the rivers by the grad- 
 ual withdrawal of the streams to narrow and deeper 
 channels. Some fine examples of the terraces ot 
 this period may be observed at Walpole and Han- 
 over, N. H., and elsewhere along the valley of the 
 Connecticut. The climate again had undergone a 
 change ; was colder than that of the Champlain, 
 but milder than that of the Glacial epoch. The 
 animals were similar to those that live to-day, and 
 need not therefore be described or named. 
 
 Now, as to the bearing of these facts upon the 
 subject we have in hand. There is no doubt of 
 the existence of man from the earlier Champlain 
 through the whole of the Terrace period, to the 
 present. There is little question but that man 
 lived in southerly latitudes in the latter part of 
 the Glacial period. Beyond that we must proceed 
 with extreme caution. But let us not anticipate. 
 
 Having noted particularly the different geologi- 
 cal periods into which the Quaternary Age of the 
 earth is divided, let us mark next the periods 
 into which it is customary to divide the era of 
 man's existence ; observing that the two series are 
 entirely independent of each other. 
 
 Archaeologists distinguish four differ- The Era of 
 ent periods in the existence of the hu- 
 man race, according to the degree of advancement 
 in art, namely : 
 
222 THE CREATION. 
 
 1. The Paleolithic, or Rough Stone Age. 
 
 2. The Neolithic, or Polished Stone Age. 
 
 3. The Bronze Age, and 
 
 4. The Iron 'Age. 
 
 Some authorities recognize still other distinc- 
 tions and mark other divisions. But the above is 
 very simple and sufficiently exact for our purpose. 
 The Rough Stone Age marks the rudest stage 
 _, of man's existence ; when arrows, knives 
 
 The 
 
 Paleolithic and Other implements of the chase and 
 
 ^^' for domestic use, were roughly shapen 
 
 from hard stone, chiefly flint and argillite. 
 
 The Polished Stone Age marks a period of 
 
 some advancement upon the condition of 
 The ^ 
 
 Neolithic the former, when men had learned to 
 ^^' smooth and polish their implements ; and 
 they employed a greater variety of hard stones, in- 
 cluding porphyry, greenstone, and occasionally ob 
 sidian and jasper. 
 
 The Bronze Age marks the early use of metals 
 in the arts — not the earliest, certainly, for 
 
 The 
 
 Bronze men must have used copper before they 
 ^^' learned to mix it with tin, producing the 
 alloy known as bronze. But where metal was used 
 in the same way as stone, that is, without fusing 
 and moulding, the people must be regarded as still 
 in the Stone Age. 
 
 The Iron Age marks the higher civilization, 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 22^ 
 
 when men, having learned mining and smelting, 
 
 began to produce that most useful of 
 
 all the metals. Wherever the history of ^^ '^^^ 
 
 ^ Age. 
 
 man has been definitely traced, he seems 
 to have passed through these several stages, or to 
 be passing through them now. Where iron is in 
 use at present, metals more easily obtained were 
 once employed, and before that, stone served the 
 purpose, either rudely fashioned or smoothly and 
 neatly shapen, according to the knowledge and skill 
 of the workmen. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that the " Stone 
 Acre" does not indicate any particular 
 
 ^_ / r u Stone Age" 
 
 period of the earth's history, but a cer- not a geoiogi- 
 
 ^ . 1 c • -y ,• 1 - cal distinction. 
 
 tarn grade of civilization or degree of 
 advancement among men. The Stone Age in 
 France and that in Denmark may have been con- 
 temporaneous, or they may have been wide apart. 
 And while we speak of the Stone Age in Europe 
 as very remote, the American Indians were in the 
 Stone Age less than three centuries ago, and some 
 of the South Sea Islanders are passing through 
 that period now. 
 
 In some sections of the world the advance has 
 been much more rapid than in others ; and there 
 have been cases, no doubt, of relapse from the 
 higher conditions of society to the rude and bar- 
 barous state. But this does not effect the fact that 
 
224 THE CREATION. 
 
 the general tendency and direction has been from 
 the lower toward the higher levels, in skill and 
 knowledge and in the use of the arts. 
 
 And now, what aid will these considerations ren- 
 der us in tracing man's antiquity? Let us see. 
 If, in a country long inhabited by a highly 
 civilized people we find relics of the 
 A gradual stone As^e, we are compelled to assisrn 
 
 advancement. *^ i o 
 
 to them a remote antiquity; for the rea- 
 son that men do not pass rapidly, or in any brief 
 period from one age and condition to another, 
 much less through the several grades from the 
 lowest to the highest. 
 
 The people of the Paleolithic Age must have 
 learned by slow degrees to smooth and perfect 
 their spears and hatchets, and it was only when 
 the rude implements had given way to the better 
 workmanship, that the people were fairly in the 
 Neolithic or age of polished stone. The periods 
 thus overlap each other. And a like gradual ad- 
 vance no doubt marked the changes to the ages of 
 Bronze and Iron. 
 
 Again, when with buried implements we find 
 
 the remains of animals known to have 
 
 Remains 
 
 of extinct ani- been long extinct, we have further evi- 
 dence of the remoteness of the period in 
 which such implements were made ; for neither the 
 plants nor the animals of the world change sud- 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 225 
 
 denly, except in case of some abrupt and violent 
 change in the climate or other physical condition 
 of the earth ; and geology does not discover any 
 such convulsive change within the period of man's 
 existence. 
 
 The fact that plants and animals adapted to a 
 tropical clime once occupied the middle latitudes, 
 and again that the reindeer, now found in Arctic 
 regions, once wandered to the south of France, in- 
 dicate remarkable changes of climate, and we may 
 suppose, equally great changes of animal and vege- 
 table life. But we have no reason to suppose these 
 changes to have been cataclysmal ; rather, that they 
 were gradually wrought, and therefore covered a 
 vast period of time. 
 
 But let us note a few facts bearing directly 
 upon the subject. 
 
 The first marked and conclusive evidence of 
 the great antiquity of man — we mean 
 greater than that of Usher's chronologi- g-j-^vei beds 
 cal reckoning — was found in the ancient 
 gravel beds along the valley of the river Somme, 
 in northern France. Here Boucher de Perthes 
 began his researches, and here Lyell and other 
 English scientists followed. In the gravel, which 
 still lay undisturbed, were found flint implements, 
 evidently the work of human hands ; and as the 
 river had slowly carved out its channel to the 
 
226 THE CREATION. 
 
 depth of sixty feet since those deposits were made, 
 it was evident the implements represented a re- 
 mote period of time. They were the work of the 
 " Stone Folk" — in other words, belonged to the 
 Stone Age. 
 
 In caves of France, Belgium, and England have 
 ^^ ^ been found human remains, either bones 
 
 The Cave- 
 dwellers or implements, under accumulations of 
 
 (Troglodytes). . , , . , . , . 
 
 cave-earth and stalagmite, that mdicate a 
 great lapse of time. They are usually associated 
 with remains of the cave-bear, hyena, mammoth, 
 and other animals, most of which are now, and 
 have been for a long period extinct. These caves 
 were places of refuge and probably habitations of 
 primitive man. Thither they carried game for 
 food, and animals sought the refuse they left be- 
 hind. And now the remains of man and beast lie 
 confusedly together. 
 
 Sometimes the caves were used as burial-places, 
 and charred wood, the remains of fire used in pre- 
 paring the funeral feasts, or possibly for purposes 
 of cremation, are found near the entrance. Skele- 
 tons are rarely obtained in sufficient state of pres- 
 ervation to admit of exact investigation. Two or 
 three skulls, however, have attracted so much at- 
 tention as to demand some special mention. 
 
 The " Neanderthal Skull," discovered in 1857, 
 beneath a depth of four or five feet of earth or 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 22; 
 
 loam, in a cave near Diisseldorf, was regarded as 
 of a low type bearing some resemblance to that 
 of an ape. Some ardent and incautious evolution- 
 ists sought to identify it with the " Missing Link." 
 But Mr. Darwin, after a careful examination, pro- 
 nounces it " very well developed and capacious," 
 indeed, not far below the average European skull. 
 Virchow considers it of very moderate dimensions, 
 but unquestionably a human skull. And Huxley 
 bears his testimony to the same effect. It belonged, 
 doubtless, to a rude savage — probably a representa- 
 tive of the Rough Stone Age. 
 
 At Cro-Magnon, in the south of France, in 
 1858, in a "rock-shelter" formed by a broad, over- 
 hanging ledge of limestone in a ravine, were dis- 
 covered the skeletons of three men, a woman, and 
 a child, all in a moderate state of preservation. 
 One of these men, now familiarly designated as 
 •' the old man of Cro-Magnon," was about six feet 
 in height, superior to the Neanderthal man in 
 cranial development, but bearing such close re- 
 semblance to him as to warrant the conclusion 
 that they belonged to the same race. 
 
 With these remains were found spears and 
 arrow-heads of flint, that betray some advance- 
 ment in art, being well shapen and comparatively 
 smooth, and also less massive than those belong- 
 ing to the crudest age. There were also a few 
 
228 THE CREATION. 
 
 ornaments or trinkets of shells and ivory. These 
 people must be regarded as belonging to the latter 
 part of the Paleolithic, or possibly the opening of 
 the Neolithic Age. 
 
 Other noted caves or rock-shelters are found at 
 Aurignac and Mentone, France; at Enghis, Belgium, 
 and at Torquay and Brixham, England. But their 
 revelations are much the same. They represent 
 man as living in a rude condition, and fighting his 
 way in the world, against wild beasts, including the 
 mammoth and hyena, with weapons fashioned usu- 
 ally with little skill, from flint and other refractory 
 stones 
 
 Other evidences of the antiquity of man are 
 
 found in shell-heaps, the refuse of feasts. 
 The ^ 
 
 •'Kitchen- Thcsc have been more carefully studied 
 in Denmark than elsewhere, and are 
 there known as " Kitchen-Middens." Primitive man 
 seems to have gathered in great numbers on the 
 sea-shore, to feast on the oyster, mussel, and peri- 
 winkle, together with a few aquatic birds and such 
 fishes as might be taken in shallow water, and to 
 have left behind these indications of his presence. 
 
 Some of these heaps are of prodigious size, 
 considering their origin, and must have been cen- 
 turies in accumulating. Steenstrup describes them 
 as a thousand feet long and ten feet high. 
 
 The fact that the Kitchen-Middens are not 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 22g 
 
 found on the western coast of Denmark, where the 
 ocean is slowly eating away the land, and that 
 they are found sometimes seven or eight miles 
 back from the shore, on the eastern side, where 
 the water is comparatively quiet, and the land is 
 slowly building out, affords some indication of the 
 length of time since they were made. 
 
 And the additional fact that the oyster has 
 almost disappeared from the Baltic Sea, and that 
 the cockle and periwinkle, which remain, are much 
 smaller than those whose shells are heaped upon 
 the shore, implies a great change in the water of 
 that part of the sea. It is less salt than formerly ; 
 That is to say, the adjoining land is higher and 
 the influx of fresh water greater. And still there 
 has been no sudden change in the land level of 
 that portion of the earth in recent ages. The 
 change was slow, and hence must have covered 
 an extended period. 
 
 Again, in the Kite hen- Middens are found flint 
 knives, arrow-heads, and the like, both rough and 
 polished, but nothing of metallic nature. They are 
 of the Stone Age. 
 
 In the same country are the famous Skov7noses, 
 or Peat-beds, which afford perhaps the 
 most indisputable of all evidence of the „ '^^^ 
 
 Peat-Mosses. 
 
 great antiquity of man. These beds of 
 
 moss and other plants which have changed to 
 
230 THE CREATION. 
 
 peat, occupy depressions in the general level some- 
 times known as boulder-pits, and have a depth in 
 some instances of thirty feet. The age of the peat- 
 beds has been estimated at four to five thousand 
 years, but competent authorities add that it may 
 be four times as great. The growth of peat is usu- 
 ally very slow, but it sometimes accumulates with 
 considerable rapidity. We cannot safely judge, 
 therefore, of the age of a bed by its depth or ex- 
 tent. 
 
 We have, however, in the Danish peat-beds, one 
 indication not usually met with in such formations. 
 
 In the peat, at various depths below the sur- 
 ^ ., , face, are prostrate trunks of trees, that 
 
 Fossil trees ' ^ ' 
 
 have evidently grown upon the borders 
 of the bog and fallen in. In the lower 
 beds, two to five feet from the bottom, is the 
 Scotch fir, a tree not now found indigenous in Den- 
 mark, and that does not flourish when transplanted 
 there. Some of the trunks are two to three feet 
 in diameter, and their number indicates that they 
 were at one time the prevailing forest tree. 
 
 Above these, and still at a considerable depth 
 below the surface, are trunks of oak, of still greater 
 size, that in like manner must have grown upon 
 the banks and fallen into the bog. This tree is 
 scarcely known in Denmark now. 
 
 At a still higher level is found the beech which 
 
 m 
 the peat. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 23 I 
 
 is the common forest tree of the country to-day. 
 Changes of vegetation imply changes of climate. 
 
 Here, now, are three classes or species of pre- 
 vailing forest trees, implying so many changes of 
 climate or other physical conditions. Moreover, it 
 is scarcely conceivable that such a change could 
 have been effected in a single generation. There 
 were probably several generations of each kind of 
 trees. Some idea, then, may be formed of the lapse 
 of time since the peat-beds began to accumulate. 
 There was a growth of Scotch fir, supplanted at 
 length by the oak, and that in turn by the beech. 
 And the beech not only occupied the ground at 
 the time of the Roman invasion, almost two thou- 
 sand years ago, but is the tree of Danish tradition. 
 In other words, we have no trace either in history 
 or tradition of the period of the earlier growths. 
 
 But what bearing have these facts on human 
 history? Just this. In the lower beds ^ . 
 
 Fossil imple- 
 
 of peat are found implements of man's mems 
 workmanship — flint arrows — under the ''^ ^^ pea . 
 trunks of fir, in such position as they could not 
 have reached by simply working their way down- 
 ward through the moss, as pointed implements 
 may sometimes do. These arrows were lost in the 
 bog while the Scotch fir was growing on the bank. 
 Man must, therefore, have inhabited the country at 
 the time. In higher layers of the peat are found 
 
232 THE CREATION. 
 
 Other implements, both bronze and iron, which 
 mark the different periods into which the age of 
 man is divided. 
 
 Quatrefages states that the Scotch fir in the 
 peat-beds may be regarded as corresponding to the 
 Stone Age, the oak to the Bronze, and the beech 
 to the Iron. But this statement must be taken 
 wdth some allowance. 
 
 Once more in the same line of evidence. The 
 
 fishermen of Neuchatel and other parts of 
 The ^ 
 
 Swiss Lake- Switzerland had long been annoyed by a 
 ings. jyjysterious entangling and breaking of 
 their nets by obstructions, at the bottom of the 
 lakes, that could not be discerned. 
 
 The draining of a portion of one of the lakes, 
 in the winter of 1854, brought to light a number 
 of piles or posts driven into the mud, which had 
 evidently been shapen for the purpose and placed 
 there by human hands. About these timbers, at 
 various depths below the surface, were found stone 
 implements, both rough and polished, together with 
 pieces of rude pottery shaped by hand, but without 
 the aid of the wheel, and known thence to antedate 
 the Roman period. 
 
 Further examination revealed the fact that these 
 piles had sometime served the purpose of founda- 
 tions for human habitations, built out over the 
 lake, and connected with the shore in some cases, 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 233 
 
 by a sort of causeway. This discovery stimulatec 
 exploration, and it now appears that such dwell- 
 ings were once common in Switzerland. And the 
 farther discovery of the bones of animals, both ex- 
 tinct and recent, wild and domesticated, also of 
 canoes and fishing tackle, and* in western Switzer- 
 land of bronze as well as stone implements, indi- 
 cates that the existence of the lake-dwellers cov- 
 ered an extended period of time, and that from first 
 to last, considerable advances were made in the 
 arts of civilization. They built their houses in 
 these novel positions for safety against the incur- 
 sions of savage neighbors. Oftener than otherwise 
 there seems to have been no direct communica- 
 tion with the shore, except by boat, or possibly 
 by drawbridge, of which no traces now remain. 
 
 Herodotus describes such dwellings in Thrace 
 twenty-five hundred years ago. Remains of such 
 have been found in some of the boggy lakes of 
 Ireland ; and similar buildings are found to-day in 
 some of the islands of the South Pacific. The 
 earlier lake dwellings of Switzerland must be as- 
 signed to the Stone Age, and the later to the Age 
 of Bronze. 
 
 These evidences, the lake -dwellings, Value of the 
 
 evidence. 
 
 the kitchen-middens, peat-bogs, and cave- 
 deposits tell one story — that man existed on the 
 earth far back of the historic period. But, it will 
 
234 THE CREATION. 
 
 be observed, we have not in any of them the data 
 for definite calculations in years. 
 
 Suppose we admit that they fully justify the 
 usual division of the human period into the sev- 
 eral ages designated as Stone, Bronze, and Iron, 
 we have no clue, in this fact, to the length of time 
 required for man to pass through any one of them. 
 Suppose we find, in the middle layers of peat, 
 trunks of oak trees three hundred or five hundred 
 years old ; we do not know whether the period of 
 the oak covered one generation or many. 
 
 What, then, is gained by the examination of 
 such evidence ? 
 
 Just this. It serves to establish the fact of 
 man's remote origin ; not to measure the period of 
 man's occupancy of the earth in years, or even in 
 centuries, but only to show it to be far beyond 
 that formerly assigned. 
 
 We have means, however, for an approximate 
 estimate. 
 
 Let us now compare the periods of the human 
 era, or the Age of Man, with the periods 
 
 Quaternary 
 
 and human of the Quaternary formation in geological 
 periods. i^jg^Qj.y. bearing it in mind, as before 
 stated, that there is no necessary correspondence 
 between them. The two relate to different sub- 
 jects ; nevertheless they are intimately related to 
 each other. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 235 
 
 If the remains of man and those of particular 
 animals are found together in any considerable 
 quantities, and especially in several different locali- 
 ties, it is reasonable to presume that such men 
 and animals inhabited the earth at the same time. 
 There may be an exceptional case, now and then, 
 where remains from widely different periods have 
 become accidentally mingled ; but such cases must 
 be rare. 
 
 We have found, with the earliest relics of man's 
 
 workmanship, the remains of the mam- 
 Man and 
 moth, and one or two other animals lone the 
 
 since extinct. We have also found the ^^^"'■^°^^- 
 
 mammoth and its brute companions to have lived 
 
 in the Glacial period. But because man and the 
 
 mammoth were at one time together upon the 
 
 earth, it does not of necessity follow that their 
 
 advent was contemporaneous. The appearance of 
 
 the mammoth may have long preceded that of 
 
 man, as man has certainly long survived the 
 
 mammoth. 
 
 Fossils of this huge animal clearly indicate that 
 some species lived before and during the Glacial 
 period; but it was only after it had passed its 
 meridian that man appears to have disputed its 
 sovereignty of the earth. 
 
 A careful examination of the whole subject 
 leads us to the conclusion, that man appeared in 
 
236 THE CREATION. 
 
 Europe during the latter part of tJie Glacial pe- 
 riod ; or certainly not earlier than that 
 
 Man . ^ . . 
 
 post-glacial, period of partial recession of the ice, 
 sometimes designated as the Interglacial 
 epoch. 
 
 It is possible that explorations in the tropics 
 may yet set the mark farther back, but there is 
 no evidence in Europe or America that warrants a 
 remoter date. 
 
 Such are the conclusions — so far, at least, as 
 Europe is concerned — of the Anthropological Soci- 
 ety of London, according to the Report for 1878. 
 And Prof. Huxley, in his address before the Brit- 
 ish Association, at Dublin, in the same year, 
 reaches substantially the same conclusion. 
 
 We are well aware that some archaeologists 
 claim a higrher antiquity for the race, but 
 
 Claims ^ . 
 
 of higher an- on grounds that seem to us inconclusive; 
 ^^^^ ^* such as the occurrence of bones consid- 
 ered human in Tertiary deposits ; marks of sharp 
 instruments upon the bones of animals used for 
 food, with the presence of sharp flints and charred 
 wood in the same deposits. 
 
 With reference to these it must be said : 
 I. Bones found in the Ohio valley, in the early 
 part of the present century, and confidently pro- 
 nounced human, were, on examination by compe- 
 tent authority, found to belong to the frame of one 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 237 
 
 of the large quadrupeds. And several such mis- 
 takes have been made, even by men of science, in 
 the past two hundred years. 
 
 2. Markings on bones, resembling those made 
 by sharp instruments, may have been produced by 
 the teeth of animals that fed upon the remains. 
 
 3. Many sharp fragments of flint, hastily pro- 
 nounced the result of human workmanship, have 
 been found to be natural fragments, and may be 
 matched along the chalk beaches of England and 
 elsewhere where flint abounds. 
 
 4. Human bones and flint implements have, in 
 some cases, been accidentally and confusedly min- 
 gled with deposits of an earlier date. 
 
 5. The presence of charred wood is not always 
 a positive evidence of the presence of man. No 
 other animal uses fire, but lightning played its 
 hazardous freaks long before man existed on the 
 earth, and spontaneous combustion was a possi- 
 bility of former as it is of recent times. 
 
 A skull is reported to have been found in 
 volcanic breccia of the Tertiary Aa;e 
 
 •' ^ The 
 
 (Pliocene period), in Calaveras County, California 
 California, associated with gold-bearing 
 gravel. But it is now deemed quite probable that 
 the auriferous gravels, or gold-drift, of California, 
 belong wholly to the Quaternary Age. And Prof. 
 LeConte regards the later lava deposits also as 
 
238 THE CREATION. 
 
 Quaternary, perhaps as late as the Champlain 
 period. 
 
 Moreover, that Calaveras discovery has a secret 
 history not inaptly travestied in Bret Harte's " So- 
 ciety upon the Stanislaus." The skull was not 
 seen in situ by any scientist, and any theory 
 based upon that as a "pliocene skull" must be 
 taken at great hazard. 
 
 Then, as to the testimony of cave-deposits, peat- 
 beds, and the like, of which we have 
 
 Summing 
 
 "pthe already spoken in some detail. 
 
 evidence. , , , r 1 • c 
 
 The gravel beds of the river Somms 
 have been marked as of very ancient date. But 
 the fact that the Somme has cut its way through 
 the glacial drift into the chalk or Cretaceous rocks, 
 and that these ancient gravels lie on the slopes of 
 the chalk, proves conclusively that the cutting has 
 been done since the drift was deposited, and, there- 
 fore, since the close of the Glacial period. The 
 shell-heaps certainly cannot be assigned an earlier 
 date, for had they existed before, they would have 
 been inevitably crushed and swept away by the 
 movement of the ice. 
 
 And whatever age may be assigned to the 
 Danish peat-beds, they occupy cavities or depres- 
 sions in the surface, believed to have been scooped 
 out by the action of the glaciers, and must hence 
 have accumulated since the glaciers passed away. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 239 
 
 The Swiss lake-dwellings are variously esti- 
 mated at from thirty-three hundred to six thou- 
 sand years old ; and few authorities would venture 
 to assign to the glaciers a date so recent. 
 
 In certain caves human remains have been 
 found beneath stalagmitic crusts three to five feet 
 in aggregate depth ; and in one case that has been 
 carefully observed, the rate of accumulation is said 
 not to exceed one sixteenth of an inch in a cen- 
 tury. At this rate a deposit of five feet would re- 
 quire the enormous period of ninety-six thousand 
 years. But there is no evidence that the rate of 
 accumulation has been uniform. And the fact that 
 in a cave at Gibraltar, eighteen inches of stalag- 
 mite has been shown to have accumulated in less 
 than six hundred years, and that according to Prof. 
 Winchell, stalactites sometimes grow in the lead 
 caves of the West, at the rate of one foot in a sin- 
 gle year, shows the utterly unreliable character of 
 all estimates based on the rate of progress of such 
 formations. And yet on some such precarious 
 evidences are all the arguments for the pre-glacial 
 existence of man based. We submit, that they are 
 not reliable, satisfactory, or conclusive. 
 
 The question, then, as to the date of man's 
 advent turns upon the date of the disappearance 
 of the glaciers from the middle and lower lati- 
 tudes. 
 
240 THE CREATION. 
 
 As the glaciers that once overspread Europe as 
 ,^ , , . far south as the Pyrenees and ItaHan 
 
 Man s relation -^ 
 
 to Alps, withdrew toward the north, by 
 
 the glaciers, _ , r • 1 • r 1 
 
 reason of the softening climate, man fol- 
 lowed ; perhaps not close upon their brink, but not 
 far behind. His companions were the cave-bear 
 and the mammoth, and later the reindeer and the 
 dog. The mammoth and his brute companions 
 have long since disappeared ; not a single specimen 
 having lived, so far as we have any evidence, with- 
 in the historic period. We know of them only by 
 their fossil remains. The reindeer is not extinct, 
 but has migrated from the middle latitudes, fol- 
 lowing close upon the retreating glacier, and is 
 found now only in Arctic regions. 
 
 Arrived at this conclusion the question changes 
 form. 
 
 Hozv long since tJie Glacial period? 
 
 Some attempt has been made to esti- 
 of Glacial mate the time by the rate of river ero- 
 sions, which we have already found to be 
 variable, and not, therefore, wholly reliable. 
 
 For instance, it is evident that the Niagara 
 River has cut its present channel since the close 
 of the Glacial period, for the old channel, filled 
 with glacial drift, may still be discerned, leading 
 from near the whirlpool, to a point on the lake 
 several miles west of the present river-mouth. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 24 1 
 
 The rate of recession of the falls has been vari- 
 ously estimated at from one inch to one 
 
 Recession 
 
 foot per annum. By the latter estimate of Niagara 
 the channel, now six miles long, would 
 be carved out in thirty-one thousand years. Ac- 
 cording to the former, it would require three hun- 
 dred and eighty thousand. This gives a wide range 
 for differences of opinion. 
 
 Other estimates have been based upon the ac- 
 cumulation of deposits in some of the Swiss lakes 
 and erosion of river beds, since the disappearance 
 of the glaciers from the lowlands of Switzerland. 
 But the figures range from eight thousand to one 
 hundred thousand years. And M. Quatrefages, 
 who quotes these estimates, blandly suggests that 
 the truth doubtless lies between these two ex- 
 tremes. We reach no safe conclusions from such 
 data. They may indicate more or less. 
 
 We shall find the most satisfactory estimates to 
 be based upon astronomical science. The 
 
 Evidence 
 
 relations of the earth and sun undergo from 
 periodic changes, due to the precession ^^^'■°''°"^>'- 
 of the equinoxes and variations in the eccentricity 
 of the earth's orbit. 
 
 According to Prof Croll, of Scotland, there was, 
 about eighty thousand years ago, a period of in- 
 tense cold, when a great part of the northern 
 hemisphere was shrouded in ice. This was the era 
 
242 THE CREATION. 
 
 known in Geology as the Glacial period.* And 
 this gives us the most definite clue to the an- 
 tiquity of man. If we suppose the glaciers to 
 have been at their height eighty thousand years 
 ago, the date of their disappearance must have 
 been some thousands of years later, for great 
 depths of ice do not fade away in a night, nor, if 
 we may trust recent observation, in many centuries. 
 
 But we are content to leave the matter here. 
 
 Man may have been upon the earth, if the as- 
 sumed data of the glaciers is correct, 
 ^oTman.^ sixty or seventy thousand years. But 
 there is no sufficient evidence that he 
 lived before the ice cap had receded from the 
 region in which his earliest remains are found. 
 
 ■^ We have purposely avoided all reference to any other than 
 the one ice period. There may have been many in the course of 
 the earth's history ; but it is with the last only that we have to do. 
 
XII 
 
 Remains of Ancient 
 
 Civilization. 
 
'' Behold ! what works were these in times of old ? " 
 
 " A nation departing, leaves this trace behind. 
 
 '' I wandered by a goodly town 
 Beset with many a garden fair, 
 And asked of one who gathered down 
 Large fruits, how long the town was there. * 
 
 He spoke, nor chose his hand to stay ; 
 ' The town has stood for many a day, 
 And will be here forever and aye.' " 
 
 " Some thousand years went by, and then 
 I saw the self-same place again. 
 And lo ! a country wild and rude ; 
 And, axe in hand, beside a tree, 
 The hermit of that solitude, 
 I asked how old the wood might be. 
 He said, ' I count not time at all ; 
 A tree may rise, a tree may fall, 
 The forest overlives us all.' " 
 
 — Arabian Tales. 
 
XII. 
 
 REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION IN 
 NORTH AMERICA. 
 
 When, on an October morning in 1492, an 
 adventurous mariner looked out from his ^. 
 
 Discovery 
 
 gallant little ship, upon the shores of of 
 this western world, he supposed it to be 
 none other than the eastern border of the older 
 continent. And the people he called Indians, be- 
 cause he supposed them to be one with the in- 
 habitants with which Europe had been long famil- 
 iar in Southern Asia. But when, nineteen years 
 later, Balboa, looking from the heights of the 
 Isthmus of Darien, discovered a vast ocean ex- 
 tending far to the north and the south and the 
 west, it first became apparent that America was a 
 separate continent. And the people, on further in- 
 vestigation, were pronounced a distinct race or di- 
 vision of the human family. 
 
 This at once raised the question whence they 
 came? 
 
246 THE CREATION. 
 
 The generally received opinion that the human 
 family descended from a single pair, found a new 
 complication in this people, so far separated by 
 wide reaches of ocean from the home of the in- 
 fant race. 
 
 Of the various theories advanced, that their 
 wh progenitors had crossed Behring's Straits 
 
 came the from the dreary regions of Siberia, in 
 
 Indian ? - _ . , , . , , 
 
 search of a more genial chme ; that they 
 had drifted unwittingly in Chinese junks upon this 
 fair land; that they were degenerate offspring of 
 the Norsemen, who, centuries before, peopled the 
 shores of Greenland, none were entirely satisfac- 
 tory, for neither of them was capable of proof. 
 Moreover, it afterward appeared that the Indian in 
 different sections of America corresponded to the 
 real or fancied types of nearly all the races, so 
 that all the theories practically failed. 
 
 It is not our purpose now to inquire which of 
 these theories is most plausible, nor to attempt to 
 settle the question as to how long a time the 
 Indian occupied the soil of America before the 
 voyage of the valiant Genoese in 1492. 
 
 For while perplexed with this problem we en- 
 counter another still more mysterious and remote, 
 and having in it, therefore, more of curious interest, 
 if not the promise of more satisfactory results. 
 
 It concerns a race that perished here when the 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATICN. 247 
 
 Indian came, or possibly long before. A race 
 whose mysterious footprints are not hard 
 to trace or difficult of interpretation. ^^^^^ 
 And yet a race that long baffled con- 
 jecture and almost defied investigation. But we 
 have one or two clues with which to begin. 
 
 The favorite method of preserving the memory 
 of great men and great events, in all 
 
 ,. 1 1 , r. , Monumental 
 
 times, has been by means 01 monuments. records 
 And the mightiest structures of the 
 world are those erected in memory of the dead, or 
 of events in which human lives were given as the 
 price of conquest or victory. Homer recognizes 
 this general truth, when in his stately verse he 
 makes the valiant Trojan say of his heroic enemy, 
 
 " The long-haired Greek 
 To him upon the shores of Hellespont, 
 A mound shall heap ! that those in after times 
 Who sail along the darksome sea shall say, 
 This is the monument of one long since 
 Borne to his grave, by mighty Hector slain." 
 
 The pyramids of Egypt were long considered 
 but kingly monuments ; and if, as now appears, 
 they were built for other uses also, we can only 
 say they served a double purpose, whereof the 
 former was not the least. The practice of building 
 monuments obtained among the early peoples of 
 America no less than with those who built the 
 
248 THE CREATION. 
 
 pyramids, and the custom survives in various 
 forms to-day. 
 
 Then, aside from mere memorial structures, the 
 more lasting and distinctive works of every people 
 and every age become in a sense monumental, 
 preserving as they do whatever is peculiar in the 
 life and customs of the times they represent. He- 
 rodotus assumes a new significance in the light of 
 Clark's explorations of the tumuli of Scythia. 
 And the romance of Egyptian history becomes 
 reality as we thread the corridors of the labyrinth 
 and explore the recesses of the pyramids. 
 
 And in Great Britain, within the historic 
 period, the early diffusion of Celts and Saxons, 
 the intrusions of the Danes, the incursions of the 
 Romans, and the visits of Phoenician traders, are 
 each and all indicated to the educated eye, by 
 walls and roads and heaps of stones, which to the 
 unlettered vision may have no significance. 
 
 So, in America, the histories of the earlier ages 
 are, alas, unwritten, save as they may be deci- 
 phered in fragments of roads and gardens, in 
 crumbling walls and mounds, and decaying ruins 
 of more elaborate architecture. 
 
 Long before the Indians of the present day, 
 there lived, in the interior of North America, a race 
 of men who disappeared centuries ago, leaving no 
 trace of history or even a name behind. From the 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 249 
 
 western slope of the Alleghanies, through the Ohio 
 valley, and even beyond the Mississippi, in rarer in- 
 stances, are found the footprints of this mysterious 
 race. 
 
 Their monuments — for so, for convenience, we 
 shall call the relics of their life — take gen- 
 erally the form of mounds. There is no American 
 
 •^ antiquities. 
 
 such thincT as shaft or obelisk amono; 
 them. It may be these people had not the skill 
 "to hew the shaft or lay the architrave;" but it is 
 probable, also, that these forms would not have 
 served their intended purposes. 
 
 Careful observation enables us to divide these 
 structures into three creneral classes, each 
 
 ^ ' Classes 
 
 having reference to some specific use : of 
 
 the first for war or defence, the second ^^o^-s. 
 for sacrifice or worship, and the third for the burial 
 of the dead. 
 
 We present a few examples of the first class. 
 
 On the bank of a small stream near Chillicothe, 
 Ohio, the summit of a hi^h hill is occu- _ , . 
 
 Defensive 
 
 pied by an irregular work of earth and works 
 
 , r -^^11 IT in Ohio. 
 
 stone 01 great extent, closely resemblmg 
 the breastworks used in modern warfare. Its con- 
 struction indicates that it was intended for defence, 
 while its situation on the brow or summit of a hill, 
 flanked by a running stream, peculiarly adapted it for 
 such purpose. It is not a wall in the strict sense 
 
250 THE CREATION. 
 
 of the term, but a line of stones heaped some- 
 what indiscriminately together, extending around 
 the hill a little below the brow, and rising above 
 the general level at the more exposed points. It 
 shows forecast and calculation much beyond the 
 habit of the modern Indian, and, moreover, indi- 
 cates an incredible amount of toilsome labor, to 
 which our Indians are specially averse. 
 
 It is unreasonable to suppose this work was un- 
 dertaken for other purposes than warfare or defence ; 
 first, because of the position chosen, inconvenient 
 for any other use ; and second, because of its im- 
 mense strength as originally constructed, and the 
 evident intention in making most secure the parts 
 most liable to attack and most difficult to defend. 
 
 That this line of fortifications has lost its shape, 
 on the more abrupt side of the hill, is a natural 
 result of the encroachments of time; and that other 
 parts are so lost in debris as to be passed over 
 without observation, is by no means strange when 
 we consider the probable lapse of time since it was 
 constructed. But within a very few years, the en- 
 tire line could be almost as distinctly traced by a 
 little patient examination of the field, as the lines 
 that engirt the cities of Richmond and Petersburg 
 to-day. This particular enclosure covers an area of 
 more than a hundred acres, and may hence have 
 served as the refuge or rendezvous of a large tribe. 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVIIIZATION. 25 I 
 
 It is even conjectured that they cultivated iields for 
 sustenance within the enclosure, but that could not 
 long have yielded support for any considerable 
 number. 
 
 A similar enclosure at Marietta is described as 
 having the additional convenience of a covered way 
 or passage between parallel walls, leading to the 
 Muskingum River near by, that the inmates, in 
 case of siege, might supply themselves with water. 
 There are other enclosures in Ohio covering a much 
 larger extent, and one on the Missouri River, of not 
 less than five hundred acres, which was also pro- 
 vided with a passage-way leading to the river. 
 
 On the Miami River, near Hamilton, Ohio, is 
 one of these works — evidently a fortification — more 
 perfect in outline and complete in form, but of less 
 size than that described near Chillicothe. It has 
 four discernible entrances or gateways, the princi- 
 pal one of which is protected by a short curved 
 parapet of similar construction. The chief entrance 
 to one of these enclosures, in Butler County, is de- 
 fended by a series of curved parapets, both within 
 and without. These structures are simple earth- 
 works, save where stone was abundant, where irreg- 
 ular blocks and boulders were heaped somewhat 
 rudely together without mortar, and were therefore 
 easily displaced. 
 
 In a few instances, toward the Gulf of Mexico, 
 
252 THE CREATION. 
 
 they had sometimes a facing of sun-dried brick 
 (adobe), on which the print of human fingers may 
 still be traced. And to the defensive works so con- 
 structed was often added a foss or ditch, sometimes 
 without, but oftener within, the wall. Many of these 
 works are built with considerable mathematical pre- 
 cision ; the usual form being the square, the circle, 
 or the ellipse. Occasionally, as in Pike County, 
 Ohio, there is a square within a circle, though it is 
 by no means certain that these were intended for 
 purposes of defence. When a tribe or nation is 
 driven to the adoption of expedients against an 
 actual or prospective foe, immediate utility counts 
 for more than precision in form or minuteness ox 
 detail. Still, the general character of the works is 
 the same as those before described. 
 
 Another class of structures closely associated 
 with the foreo-oinc^ and belona-ins: essen- 
 
 Mounds t> JD' t> & 
 
 of tially with the defensive works, are called 
 
 " Mounds of Observation," or .alarm posts. 
 They are small at the base and higher in propor- 
 tion, and are found especially in open or level coun- 
 tries, or on elevated points adjoining towns or for- 
 tified positions. They may have been rendered 
 necessary by the inimical relations which always 
 subsist between different tribes, even when partially 
 civilized, or may have served as a means of safety 
 against a common foe. They were used probably 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 253 
 
 both to give notice of approaching danger, and for 
 conveying tidings rapidly to remote points by 
 means of signals. 
 
 Similar methods are now employed by the In- 
 dians to convey tidings from point to 
 point, though they avail themselves either ^^^^^"^ 
 
 signals. 
 
 ol the open plain, or of slight natural 
 elevations, instead of erecting mounds at great cost 
 of labor. 
 
 Once when travelling at night in Western Utah, 
 we observed, at intervals, fire signals made from vil- 
 lage to village along our line of travel. A bright 
 blaze suddenly started up, and as suddenly disap- 
 peared, like the will o' the wisp, as if some tinder- 
 like material had been kindled and immediately 
 smothered, and could therefore be easily distin- 
 guished from the light of the wigwam or the camp- 
 fire of the emigrant. This signal appearing at one 
 point was repeated at another, and then another, 
 and so on. 
 
 The second general class of these works have 
 been styled Sacred enclosures, from their 
 apparent use. They are regular in shape, '^^"^^'^ 
 
 . enclosures. 
 
 formmg almost a circle, with an opening 
 at one side, or sometimes very like a horseshoe, 
 with a small mound in the centre, which may have 
 served for sacrificial purposes. Unlike the former 
 class in situation, they are found on a plain, some- 
 
254 THE CREATION. 
 
 times in a valley, quite indefensible, and therefore 
 utterly unfit for the uses of war. These have been 
 thought to resemble the ''ring forts" of the Dru- 
 ids, or ancient Celtic priests, which Caesar found in 
 Briton, and which w^ere their places of augury and 
 sacrifice. 
 
 Indeed, it is claimed that the resemblance of 
 all these works, sacred and defensive, to 
 
 Compared 
 
 to some of the fortifications of Europe in 
 
 uiopean. ^.^^^^1-^ ages, and the sacrificial enclosures 
 of the ancient Celts, is so close as to indicate that 
 they are the work of the same people. But this 
 resemblance is probably purely accidental, or due to 
 the fact that they served like uses in the two cases. 
 Especially in the case of defensive works, similar po- 
 sitions would naturally be selected. A valley with 
 surrounding hills would not be chosen for a forti- 
 fication, because of the difficulty of defending it ; 
 nor a high hill far from running streams, because 
 of the difficulty of supplying it with water. And 
 these simple facts would suggest themselves to any 
 intelligent people, whether in one age and country 
 or another. These considerations, therefore, aflford 
 no evidence that the people of Europe and those 
 of ancient America had any knowledge of or re- 
 lation to one another. 
 
 This explanation of the general form of their 
 sacred enclosures has been suggested : that the 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 255 
 
 people were worshippers of the sun, and there may 
 have been some supposed virtue in con- 
 
 , 1-111 -1 J. Sun-worship- 
 
 forming their holy places, in shape, to p^^s. 
 
 that of the great luminary whence they 
 supposed all life to flow. But this is almost 
 purely conjectural. They may have been sun-wor- 
 shippers. The other inference does not necessarily 
 follow. 
 
 Little as these works are known to Americans 
 generally, they are as extensive, at one or two 
 points — as at Newark, Ohio, — as those of Stone- 
 henge or Carnac, which are among the most mys- 
 terious wonders of England and France to-day. 
 Built generally of earth, however, they have been 
 almost obliterated by the ravages of time, or buried 
 beneath the accretions of overlying soils ; great 
 forests, the growth of centuries in many cases, 
 covering the ground they occupied. 
 
 Before completing the description of the works, 
 intended for religious uses, we turn to notice an- 
 other class, between which and the sacred works 
 it is not always easy to distinguish. 
 
 These are the SepidcJiral mounds, in some re- 
 spects the most important of all these 
 Sepulchral ancient structures, and the ones from 
 
 mounds. 
 
 which the *' mound-builder" really takes 
 his name ; though the enclosures give us more of 
 an insight into his mode of life. 
 
256 THE CREATION. 
 
 And here we shall find it necessary to make 
 a careful distinction between the '' mound-builders" 
 and the race that came after; a distinction too 
 often disregarded in discussing this subject. 
 
 On the borders of Ossipee Lake, New Hamp- 
 shire, near St. Regis on the St. Lawrence 
 
 mounds. ^^^^^' ^^"^ ^^^ isl^"^ of Tonawanda in 
 Niagara River, and at various points in 
 the middle and sea-board States, are heaps of earth 
 a few feet in height and a few rods in extent, 
 small conical or truncated hillocks which are popu- 
 larly known as " Indian mounds." They are arti- 
 ficial structures, though at a little distance easily 
 mistaken for natural formations ; and on examina- 
 tion are found to contain human remains, whence 
 they are known to have been burial-places of the 
 Indians. Sometimes there is an enclosure of earth- 
 work containing several places of sepulture. One 
 of these, a few miles east of Buffalo, is said to con- 
 tain the remains of Red Jacket, the renowned chief 
 of the Iroquois a century ago. 
 
 These, however, are all of comparatively recent 
 date, and not the work of the "mound-builders" 
 proper. 
 
 According to the elaborate " annals " of the 
 French Jesuits, it was the custom among the Hu- 
 rons and Iroquois, and perhaps some other tribes, 
 to have at stated intervals — once in seven to ten 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 257 
 
 years — a " festival of the dead," when the remains 
 of such as had died within the period were col- 
 lected and given a common burial, and a sort of 
 mound erected over them. Such are the works 
 just enumerated. But these are the work of the 
 Indian race that now inhabits, in roving tribes, ouf 
 western territories, and not of the people with 
 whom we have especially to deal. 
 
 These works bear but a crude resemblance to 
 those of the " mound-builders," and may _. 
 
 •' Distribution 
 
 generally be distinguished by their geo- of 
 
 graphical distribution. The lesser works 
 lie chiefly, if not entirely, to the eastward of the 
 great lakes and the Alleghany Mountains ; those 
 of the " mound-builders," w^ith very rare exceptions, 
 lie to the westward of the Alleghanies. 
 
 We now return to a consideration of the sepul- 
 chral mounds. 
 
 At Grave Creek, West Virginia, is one of the 
 most remarkable of this class. It is sev- 
 enty feet in hei^-ht, and not less than .^ 
 
 J •=> ' mound 
 
 nine hundred feet in circumference at the 
 base. About forty years ago this mound was 
 opened and explored. K drift or tunnel was made 
 at the base toward the centre, and a shaft sunk 
 from the top to intercept it. About forty feet 
 from the summit the workmen came upon a vault 
 about eight by twelve feet, and seven feet in 
 
258 THE CREATIOX. 
 
 height, formed by supporting timbers at the sides 
 and overhead. And at the base of the mound 
 was another chamber reached both by the shaft 
 from above and the drift from without ; somewhat 
 larger than the first, but of similar construction. 
 In each of these vaults was found the skeleton of 
 a human being, surrounded with such a wealth of 
 ornaments, especially the beads and shells prized 
 by primitive people for decoration, as to leave 
 little doubt that they were the skeletons of chiefs or 
 kings. In the lower vault was found also another 
 skeleton near the first but without ornament, suggest- 
 ing the idea that it may have been an attendant to 
 whom it was considered honor enough to be buried 
 with the king. Further examination discovered 
 other remains disposed about the tomb a few feet 
 from the central figure, and with these was mingled 
 charcoal, while the bones showed marks of burning. 
 
 These somewhat startling facts call up vividly 
 the account of the burial of the Scythian kings, 
 as detailed by the old Greek historian. 
 
 When the king was dead, the body was placed 
 in a tomb prepared for the purpose ; one of his 
 concubines was strangled and the body burned in 
 close proximity to the royal personage ; then the 
 cook, cup-bearer, groom, messenger and horse were 
 sacrificed immediately around the tomb and the 
 whole concealed beneath an imposing mound. 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 259 
 
 We may not be warranted as yet, perhaps, in 
 assuming^ that such ghastly funeral rites „ ., 
 
 ^ <-^ / Possible 
 
 prevailed among the ancient peoples of human 
 America, but these revelations seem to 
 point in that direction. 
 
 Prof. O. C. Marsh, of New Haven, describes a 
 mound he explored in 186^, near Newark, ^. 
 
 ^ -^ Discoveries 
 
 Ohio, about ten feet high and eighty of 
 
 r . • • r 1-1 Prof, Marsh. 
 
 leet m circumlerence, which was over- 
 grown with forest trees, some of them more than 
 six feet in diameter. 
 
 The excavation was made from the apex down- 
 ward and revealed several series of skeletons at 
 different depths below the surface. First were the 
 remains of a child with a string of copper beads 
 about the neck. About one foot below were two 
 skeletons, a male and a female, carefully enclosed 
 in layers of bark, above which were charred rem- 
 nants of other skeletons which suggested the pos- 
 sibility that the latter had been sacrificed, made 
 a burnt offering, in honor of the others. At a 
 greater depth were found still other remains, gen- 
 erally much decayed, which seems to indicate that 
 a single structure was made to answer the pur- 
 pose of several successive burials. In this mound 
 were found several hatchets of hematite and green- 
 stone, a flint chisel, needles made from the small 
 bones in a deer's foot, a few bits of pottery and 
 
26o THE CREATIO.Y. 
 
 bones of animals. Other mounds of this class on 
 being opened disclosed similar contents, so that 
 further descriptions of them are unnecessary. 
 
 Some of these mounds have been opened in 
 more recent times, and used as burial- 
 
 Intrusion 
 
 of places by the Indians. It is even con- 
 
 jectured that the Indian cemeteries de- 
 scribed in Western New York were originally the 
 work of the '' mound-builder," afterward appropriated 
 by the Indians. But these intrusions upon the 
 sanctity of the ancient sepulchre are easily de- 
 tected, as the regular strata so carefully laid by 
 the original builders are disturbed and the sym- 
 metry of the structure therefore impaired. 
 
 There is another class of these works, known as 
 Temple mo2inds. They have the form of 
 moundl ^ truncated pyramid, and are supposed 
 to have served as foundations for tem- 
 ples, which being built of wood or other perisha- 
 ble material have utterly disappeared. 
 
 Chief among these is, or was, the great mound 
 at Cahokia, Illinois, ninety feet in height, with a 
 rectangular base five hundred by seven hundred 
 feet. There was a broad terrace reached by a 
 graded way on one side, and the summit of the 
 mound was two hundred by four hundred and fifty 
 feet. Mr. Foster, in his prehistoric races, speaking 
 of this mound, gives his imagination wings as fol 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 261 
 
 lows : " It is probable that upon this platform was 
 reared a capacious temple, within whose walls the 
 high priests gathered from different quarters at 
 stated seasons, celebrating their mystic rites, while 
 the swarming multitude below looked up with 
 mute adoration." The suggestion is taken from 
 the similarity of these mounds to the bases of re- 
 ligious edifices in Mexico and Yucatan. There are 
 
 o 
 
 smaller structures of the same class as the Cahokia 
 mound in various parts of the country, and sup- 
 posed to have served the same purposes. 
 
 There are yet other classes of mounds to which 
 no specific use can be assigned. They 
 
 c ^ ^- -x. Animal 
 
 seem to represent some fantastic conceit, rounds 
 since they take the forms of animals — 
 the fox, the bear, the turtle with tail of extraor- 
 dinary length, or buffaloes in procession. These 
 are especially numerous in Wisconsin ; one on Fox 
 River represents the outlines of a bird ; one near 
 Baraboo takes the form of a man ; one in Mis- 
 sissippi the bust of a woman ; and one elaborate 
 structure in Adams County, Ohio, has the shape 
 of a serpent with a triple coil at the tail. One 
 or two have been described bearing some resem- 
 blance to the elephant or mastodon. Whether 
 these were mere idle conceits ; whether they were 
 regarded only as triumphs of art or invention, 
 or whether they represented the ideal conceptions 
 
262 THE CREATION 
 
 of their religion, as the Gods of the Egyptians 
 took the forms of animals and men, is matter as 
 yet of pure conjecture. 
 
 Of far more interest, however, than the mounds 
 themselves, whatever their form, are the 
 
 Works of art ' 
 
 and contents found in them. These are the 
 
 us ry. ^^^ memorials of the people, since they 
 indicate the degree of civilization they had at- 
 tained, by the knowledge of art which they pos- 
 sessed. 
 
 Wrought copper is found in considerable quan- 
 tities, whence we infer that they understood min- 
 ing and had some knowledge of metallurgy ; marine 
 shells are also found in some of the mounds far 
 in the interior, whence we conclude they had some 
 sort of communication, or commercial intercourse 
 with the sea. 
 
 They had axes and ornaments of the hardest 
 stone, so smoothly and skilfully wrought, we must 
 suppose they had some, knowledge of the more 
 difficult mechanic arts. While their pipes and pot- 
 tery were often wrought with such precision, and 
 such fidelity to nature in the forms they represent, 
 as to entitle them to the name of artists, as well 
 as artizans. They spun thread and made woven 
 fabrics. 
 
 Several tablets, with mystic engravings have 
 been reported from the mounds from time to time ; 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 263 
 
 but their genuineness is doubted. And though the 
 horse was probably unknown in America at that 
 day, there is evidence that they moved from place 
 to place with considerable facility, and so must 
 have had convenient means of transportation. 
 
 Inasmuch as fragments of copper have been 
 found in the glacial drift all over the western 
 States, south of the Lake Superior region, it was 
 long supposed that this may have been the " mound- 
 builders" source of supply. Recent investigations, 
 however, have led to a different conclusion. 
 
 Mr. Knapp, the Superintendent of the Lake 
 Superior mines, in 1848, discovered an 
 
 , , . The "mound- 
 
 old shaft twenty-six feet deep, which was builders" 
 
 filled to the depth of about twenty feet "^""""-^ "^pp""- 
 with mingled clay and mouldering vegetation. At 
 this depth he came upon a mass of copper, of 
 about six tons weight, which had been raised five 
 feet from its original bed and rested on a frame- 
 work of oak timbers. The miners seem to have 
 raised it to this height and then abandoned it. 
 The wood quickly crumbled on exposure to the 
 air, but the earth was so closely packed about the 
 mass as to hold it in position after the under sup- 
 port was gone. About this was found a number 
 of stone hammers, mostly of porphyry, also mauls 
 or sledge-hammers, both of stone and copper, with 
 copper wedges used probably in moving the heavy 
 
264 THE CREATION. 
 
 weight upon the wooden supports. Upon the de- 
 bris of another shaft in the same vicinity was 
 found a tree still growing, which on examination 
 proved to be about four hundred years old, while 
 the crumbling remains of earlier generations lay 
 across the pit. 
 
 Nor were these isolated cases. Wherever the 
 mining regions of Lake Superior have been ex- 
 plored, either on the islands or on the southern 
 shore, are found the traces of this ancient race. 
 And as there are no evidences of permanent 
 abodes, as in the warmer regions toward the south, 
 the inference follows that they visited and worked 
 these mines only in the summer, and therefore 
 must have had means of going to and fro at least 
 with m.oderate speed. 
 
 It has been stated that in the oil regions of 
 Ohio or Pennsylvania, there are wells of 
 
 Did they dig , ^ , . , . 
 
 oil wells? such remote construction as to warrant 
 the belief that they were the work of 
 the " mound-builders." We have never been able 
 to trace a case of the kind with sufficient certainty 
 to warrant an opinion on the subject. If, however, 
 they worked our mines and practised our arts so 
 long before ourselves, it is by no means impossible 
 that they were equally in advance of us in the 
 production and use of oil. 
 
 Having now described, with sufficient detail for 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 265 
 
 our purpose, the different classes of mounds, with 
 the uses they served and the treasures they reveal, 
 we pass to the important inquiry — 
 
 Hozv old are these mounds ? 
 
 It is a difficult question, but we have some 
 data from which to form an opinion. 
 
 The atmosphere of this country is drier and 
 more favorable for the preservation of ^ .^ 
 
 ^ Evidence 
 
 the dead than that of Great Britain. But of 
 
 1 • r ^ ■ y 1 r ^1 • antiquity. 
 
 the remains lound m the mounds oi this 
 country are more decayed than those in the Celtic 
 mounds found by Caesar at the time of his inva- 
 sion of those islands. So the American mounds 
 seem to antedate the Roman conquest of Britain, 
 which took place a half century before the birth 
 of Christ ; that is, the mounds are hardly less, and 
 may be more than two thousand years old. 
 
 This, of course, supposes them to be the work 
 of a race long preceding the Indians. But there 
 are two or three facts independent of the foregoing 
 considerations, that go far to establish this theory : 
 
 1. They were not nomadic tribes. Had they 
 been, instead of building fortifications that were to 
 stand for ages, they would have moved from place 
 to place, as the necessities of the situation required. 
 
 2. They were an agricultural people. For no 
 people living in permanent settlements can long 
 depend for a living on the precarious returns of 
 
266 THE CREATION. 
 
 the chase. And even their sepulchral mounds indi- 
 cate the established character of their habitations, 
 since they must have been long years in building. 
 3. There is indisputable evidence that the works 
 were not only built but abandoned centuries ago. 
 Over the excavated mines of Lake Superior, as 
 already stated, were found trees of more than four 
 hundred years growth. On the mound at Grave 
 Creek were trees nearly seven hundred years old, 
 while on one on the Muskingum River was a tree 
 presum^ed to be not less than eight hundred years 
 of age. These must all have grown after the 
 works were abandoned, to say nothing of the fact 
 that the original forest trees are not the first to 
 reappear, after being once displaced. 
 
 These considerations carry us back not less than 
 a thousand years, and the period may be much 
 greater. No definite date can be fixed. 
 WJio, then, were the ^' mound-builders f 
 Some will answer, a peculiar race of whom the 
 present Indian is the degenerate off- 
 tiTeorks spring. Others will say, a band of Az- 
 tecs from Mexico, who made incursions 
 into these northern latitudes till driven thence by 
 other tribes, or who returned at will to their 
 former country leaving these traces behind ; and 
 others still place them outside the pale of all re- 
 corded history. 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 267 
 
 Neither of these theories seem to be well 
 founded. 
 
 To suppose these mound-builders to have been 
 the progenitors of the Indians is to place them 
 back anywhere from three hundred to five hundred 
 years. But the Indians have no record of them ; 
 nothing more than a faint tradition, and that ap- 
 parently founded on the mounds themselves; to* 
 say nothing of the utter dissimilarity between them 
 in character, government, habits, and modes of life. 
 
 The fact that no mounds are found on the 
 lower river terraces, the last in the series 
 
 No mounds 
 
 of terraces formed after the close of the on river 
 glacial period, has led some to conclude ^^""^^^s- 
 that the mounds were built before the close of the 
 terrace epoch. We see no sufficient reason for 
 such conclusion. The fact itself, however, is of less 
 importance than may at first appear; for even at 
 the present day the lower terraces are subject to 
 overflow, and not, therefore, safe for earthworks of 
 any kind. Besides, for almost every purpose the 
 mounds are supposed to have served, the higher 
 ground was better. 
 
 As to the remaining theory, based on similarity of 
 arts and wares, that the " mound-builders" 
 
 Relation 
 
 were descendants of the Aztecs, or possi- to 
 
 bly of the Toltecs, of Central America; ^'''''• 
 or rather that the mounds were the work of one 
 
268 THE CREATION. 
 
 or the other of these nations out on a sort of holi- 
 day excursion, it is sufficient to say that excursion- 
 ists do not build elaborate fortifications, much less 
 construct defences that will last for centuries, even 
 if the exigencies compel them to throw up hasty 
 breastworks, as a defence against an unexpected foe. 
 Nor does the supposition that they were temporary 
 colonies sent out merely for experiment make the 
 case more probable. 
 
 Besides, no well authenticated record or inscrip- 
 tion of the Toltecs in Nicaragua dates 
 
 Record 
 
 of back beyond the sixth or probably the 
 
 Toltecs. gg^gj^^j^ century, and the Aztecs come 
 some four hundred years later. In other words, 
 trees found still growing on the mounds in Ohio, 
 date back even with the earliest known existence 
 of the Aztecs in Mexico; that is, the mounds 
 were completed and abandoned before the exist- 
 ence of the Aztecs as a nation. 
 
 But if a similarity in art and architecture argues 
 a connection between the '' mound-builder" and 
 these Southern peoples, why not suppose the Az- 
 tecs to have descended from the "mound-builders" 
 instead of the reverse? Certain it is, that so far as 
 we have any data on which to form an opinion, 
 the latter were the older or earlier race. 
 
 A consideration of all the facts bearing upor 
 the subject lead us to the following hypothesis. 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVIIIZATION. 269 
 
 Two thousand years ago, more or less, the in- 
 terior of this continent was occupied by 
 a lar^e population of semi-civilized men , ,, . 
 
 ^ r- jr hypothesis. 
 
 far surpassing the Indian of a later day. 
 Whence they came it is little better than idle, at 
 the present stage of investigation, to inquire. That 
 is a problem that cannot yet be solved, if it ever 
 shall be. After having been long established in 
 permanent abodes, they were driven from their 
 homes by the incursion of powerful northern or 
 eastern tribes, like that of Alaric and his hosts, 
 that came down upon Rome fourteen hundred 
 years ago, leaving behind in these mounds the 
 evidence of their civil condition and modes of life. 
 As they withdrew toward the south-west they 
 made temporary stands, here and there, and erected 
 some of their characteristic works, till, driven thence, 
 they crossed the broad reaches of Texas and found 
 a retreat in Mexico. And there, under more favor- 
 ing circumstances, they developed the type of civ- 
 ilization that culminated in the halls and courts of 
 Montezuma. 
 
 Our reason for supposing the " mound-builders" 
 to so far antedate the Aztecs is, that the latter were 
 at the height of their civilization, or perhaps in its 
 early decline, when Cortez invaded their country 
 in the sixteenth century, while the latest known 
 work of the former carries us well back toward 
 
2/0 THE CREATION. 
 
 the beginning of the Christian Era, or possibl) 
 beyond it. 
 
 One more question remains to be considered, 
 What finally became of tJie " inound-biLilders ? " 
 
 It is unreasonable to suppose such a people 
 could have perished utterly, even after the disas- 
 ters of the Spanish campaign in Mexico, or that 
 they could have be&n so entirely absorbed by 
 other nations as to leave no characteristic traces of 
 themselves. 
 
 From the reports of explorers and surveying 
 parties, we have become somewhat familiar in re- 
 cent years with what are known as the Pueblo 
 Indians of New Mexico and Arizona, and also to 
 a limited extent with the Cliff-dwellers. This re- 
 gion, especially Arizona, is largely a desert country, 
 but with frequent oases of considerable extent and 
 fertility. It is apparent that the country has un 
 dergone important geologic and perhaps climatic 
 changes in the past few centuries, by which its 
 area of fertile lands has been considerably reduced ; 
 and this has tended more and more to isolate its 
 inhabitants from the outside world ; so that for a 
 long period almost nothing was known of them. 
 Recently it has come to light, however, that at va- 
 rious points in this region are towns or communi- 
 ties of people, in many respects unlike both the 
 whites and the Indians. They are mild in disposi- 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 2/1 
 
 tion and have some habits of industry. They have 
 many of the arts of civilized hfe, though evidently 
 degenerated from what they once were. They 
 keep sheep, spin and weave, and clothe themselves, 
 in part, in textile fabrics. And they cultivate fields, 
 though by rude and comparatively inefficient means. 
 Some of them are Pueblo Indians and some 
 of them Cliff-dwellers. The former have 
 
 Pueblo 
 
 great buildings, large enough to accom- Indians, 
 modate a whole community; sometimes of 
 concrete or adobe, and sometimes of stone, where 
 that material can be readily obtained. They are 
 often several stories in height, each story reced- 
 ing from the one next below, giving it much the 
 appearance, as Lieutenant Whipple describes it, of 
 a huge ant-hill ; which appearance is much height- 
 ened by the passing in and out of the busy mul- 
 titude. There are no doors or gateways in the 
 lower story, the only access being by ladders 
 reaching to one of the upper terraces. These 
 buildings are all of ancient date. Most of them 
 are in ruins, but a few are still kept in a moderate 
 state of repair. 
 
 The Cliff-dwellers perch like swallows on sum- 
 mits or in niches of the eroded rocks. 
 They were, by their own account, driven ciiff-dweiiers. 
 to this extremity many years ago, by 
 relentless foes who gave them no rest and allowed 
 
2/2 THE CREATION. 
 
 them no safe retreat. Their houses, even in these 
 precarious positions, are built and furnished with 
 moderate skill and comfort, though the access to 
 them, sometimes from the summit above and some- 
 times from the canyon beneath, is difficult and 
 often hazardous. 
 
 The people most remotely and completely sep- 
 arated from the rest of the world are 
 The Moviuis, known as the Moquis, and there are re- 
 ported six or seven considerable commu- 
 nities of them. There may be more, for the ter- 
 ritory is not yet completely explored. Their ex- 
 treme isolation from the world, by the desert re- 
 gions round about, have shielded them now for 
 centuries past, from the assaults of savage tribes 
 on the one hand, and the encroachments of mod- 
 ern civilization on the other. Of the domestic af- 
 fairs of these people, little is known, as they do 
 not court investigation. 
 
 Prof. Newberry, of Columbia College, paid them 
 a brief visit a {^\n years ago, and gives us some 
 interesting facts concerning them. Approaching 
 one of their towns, he saw first a group of girls oi 
 young women tending a flock of sheep, showing 
 them to be a pastoral people and suggesting patri- 
 archal times. The houses were such as have been 
 described. In the morning it is their habit to go 
 upon the house-top and do obeisance to the rising 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CI VIII ZA TION. 273 
 
 sun, a remnant certainly, if not a form of worship 
 of the sun. After the manner of the ancient 
 Greeks, they recognize deities or guardian spirits as 
 presiding over fountains and the Hke. Coming to 
 a spring on their journeys, they make an offering 
 before they drink. A handful of meal scattered 
 about the fountain may serve the purpose. They 
 suspend something like a piece of candle-wick 
 with one end in the spring, and when the water, 
 following the law of capillary attraction, runs up 
 the wick, they account it evidence that the spirit 
 is drinking, that their offering is accepted and 
 they are at liberty to drink. 
 
 Who, now, are these people, and whence came 
 they? 
 
 Again we answer for ourselves. 
 They are the feeble remnant of the Aztecs— the 
 mighty people, mighty at least in num- 
 
 The " mound- 
 
 bers, who under the Montezumas held builders" and 
 the vast rich fields of Mexico, till they '^^' ^^'^^"^^• 
 fell before the cupidity of the Spanish conqueror. 
 And if the Aztecs were the " mound-builders" and 
 the Moquis were the Aztecs, the deduction is a 
 plain one, that the Moquis of New Mexico to-day, 
 are the remote remnant of the "mound-builders" 
 of the Mississippi valley of two thousand years ago. 
 We shall be met at this point by some enthusi 
 astic archaeologists whose opinion is entitled to re- 
 
2/4 THE CREATION. 
 
 spect, with the assumption that there is no similar- 
 , ity between the lan^ua^es of these two 
 
 Language of -^ ^5 & 
 
 the "mound- races, SO remote from one another. But 
 
 builders." . .,, 111 • • ^ 
 
 they will probably insist on some con- 
 nection between the ''mound-builders" and the 
 Aztecs. 
 
 We reply, that of the language of the "■ mound- 
 builders" we know absolutely nothing. And it is, 
 therefore, as impossible to trace any affinity in lan- 
 guage between the "■ mound-builders" and the Az- 
 tecs, as between the "mound-builders" and the 
 Moquis. But there is a likeness in art and archi- 
 tecture, in apparent religion and modes of life, be- 
 tween the " mound-builders" and the Aztecs, and 
 a still better established likeness between the Az- 
 tecs and the Moquis. 
 
 We have little data on which to trace the 
 ethnic relations of the '' mound-builders." 
 
 In two or three skulls recovered in a sufficient 
 state of preservation to be accurately ex- 
 amined, is the low forehead and prominent ^^^^ 
 
 ^ affinities. 
 
 cheek-bone, that suggest the Mongolian 
 rather than the Caucasian race, and yet it is not 
 established that they belonged to either. Judged by 
 these skulls, they were not given to great virtues 
 or great vices ; nor were they great inventors, though 
 probably clever imitators ; a mild and comparatively 
 inoffensive race; capable of efficient service under 
 
REMAINS OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION. 2/5 
 
 a master mind, but falling an easy prey to a crafty 
 and cruel foe. Such a people might be efficient in 
 building the Chinese wall, or the Egyptian pyra- 
 mids, or the mounds of the great West, but are 
 not likely to achieve great success in life. These 
 qualities were evident characteristics of the "mound- 
 builders." They are historic characteristics of the 
 Aztecs ; and from what we have been able to 
 learn, are the actual and present characteristics of 
 the Moquis. 
 
 This, then, is an epitome of the whole matter. 
 The *' mound-builders" inhabited the val- 
 
 Epitome 
 
 leys of the Mississippi and its tributaries and 
 not less than two thousand years ago. '^°^'^"'^°"- 
 They were a peculiar people, unlike the whites and 
 unlike the Indians of recent times. They possessed 
 a good degree of civilization ; lived in fixed com- 
 munities, cultivated fields, and clothed themselves 
 in fabrics woven by their own hands. They mod- 
 elled images in clay, carved the hardest stone, and 
 erected elaborate defences against a foe. They had 
 a national religion, built temples and altars, and 
 offered sacrifices. They had also a stable govern- 
 ment, in which the masses were subordinate to the 
 ruling power. 
 
 Driven out at length from their established 
 homes, they withdrew toward the south-west, into 
 Mexico, and possibly into Nicaragua, where they 
 
276 THE CREATION. 
 
 practiced the same arts as before, their architec- 
 ture assuming an improved and more lasting form. 
 Finally, overrun and driven again from home, 
 they withdrew toward the North, gradually dwind- 
 ling in numbers and declining in enterprise by rea- 
 son of their multiplied ill-fortunes. And now, in 
 the midst of a comparatively desert region are the 
 remains of the second empire — the power that after 
 the mound-builders held dominion and left traces 
 of civilization in North America. 
 
 THE END 
 
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