AGE OF MAN. 305 



CHAPTER XIX. 



AGE OP MAN. 



414. Boundaries of this Age. In the ages of the far 

 past, as you have already seen, there is no exact line di- 

 viding one age from another. So it is with the present 

 age, and the Post-tertiary that preceded it. It has been 

 the common idea that the advent of man is fixed by the 

 chronology of the Bible at about 6000 years ago, and 

 the researches of geology have been thought to coincide 

 with this ; but recently there have been some researches 

 which seem to put the introduction of man farther back 

 than this. The question is yet undecided, but if the re- 

 sult indicated should be arrived at definitely, it would 

 not show that the Bible is false, as some would have it, 

 but merely that the common view of its early chronolo- 

 gy is wrong. As to the conclusion of the present age, 

 geology leaves us entirely in the dark. The Bible does 

 indeed point to a time when the affairs of this world 

 shall be concluded, and the earth cease to be the habita- 

 tion of the human race, a vast change being indicated 

 by the announcement that " the heavens shall pass away 

 with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with a 

 fervent heat; the earth also, and the works that are 

 therein, shall be burned up." But the geologist, though 

 he sees in the operations that are now going on eviden- 

 ces of great future changes in the arrangement of the 

 earth's surface, finds nothing which could enable him to 

 predict any such radical change as the Bible plainly, 

 though in general and indefinite terms, points out. 



415. Earth now and in Former Ages. The contrast 

 between the state of the earth in the present age and in 

 any of the former ages is very great, and the farther we 



