CLOSE OP POST- PLIOCENE — ADVENT OP MAN. 311 



entered on with caution and reverence, rather than in 

 the bold and dashing spirit of many modern attempts. 

 The Christian, on his part, may feel satisfied that the 

 scattered monumental relics of the caves and gravels 

 will tell no story very different from that which he has 

 long believed on other evidence, nor anything incon- 

 sistent with those views of man's heavenly origin 

 and destiny which have been the most precious inheri- 

 tance of the greatest and best minds of every age, 

 from that early pre-historic period when men, *' palaeo- 

 lithic '' men, no doubt, began to " invoke the name of 

 Jehovah,'^ the coming Saviour, down to those times 

 when life and immortality are brought to light, for all 

 who will see, by the Saviour already come. 



In completing this series of pictures, I wish 

 emphatically to insist on the imperfection of the 

 sketches which I have been able to present, and which 

 are less, in comparison with the grand march of the 

 creative work, even as now imperfectly known to 

 science, than the roughest pencilling of a child 

 when compared with a finished picture. If they 

 have any popular value, it will be in presenting 

 such a broad general view of a great subject as may 

 induce further study to fill up the details. If they 

 have any scientific value, it will be in removing the 

 minds of British students for a little from the too ex- 

 clusive study of their own limited marginal area, which 

 has been to them too much the ^' celestial empire '* 

 around which all other countries must be arranged, 

 and in divesting the subject of the special colour- 



