180 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



more accurate information respecting peoples who 

 lived four and five thousand years ago, than we have 

 in regard to the inhabitants of many of the most 

 powerful nations of Europe during periods which 

 carry us back but a few hundred years. Rolls of 

 papyrus and mummy cases, tablets and cylinders, 

 which were once but so many meaningless objects for 

 the curious, have been converted into trustworthy 

 records regarding an almost forgotten past. Seti and 

 Rameses, Sennacherib and Assurbanipal live again, 

 and in all their salient features they come before us 

 with fully as much distinctness as do the historic 

 and romantic figures of Charlemagne and Coeur de 

 Lion. 



Thus, likewise, is it in respect of paleontology. 

 Thanks to the discoveries and labors of Cuvier, Smith, 

 Sedgwick, Hugh Miller, Murchison, Hall, Barrande, 

 Gaudry, Marsh, and a host of other successful students 

 of nature, who have consecrated their lives to the 

 work of collecting and coordinating the testimony of 

 the rocks, we have now light where before all was 

 darkness ; we have knowledge where all was mystery. 

 And though paleontology, like Egyptology and As- 

 syriology, is still in its infancy, it has, nevertheless, 

 already achieved marvels. From a few scattered 

 fragments, the disjecta membra of organisms long 

 since extinct, it has constructed for us a history which 

 embraces periods of such duration, that in compari- 

 son with them the long dynasties of the Pharaohs 

 sink into positive insignificance. It tells us the story 

 of life from its humblest beginnings till the advent 

 of man, the paragon of God's visible universe. It 



