MAN COMES UPON THE EARTH 



So to the world that had grown beautiful and 

 useful under God's love and thought, human beings 

 came. ' 



Just how they came or just when, no one knows; 

 but that they were living here when the thick ice 

 sheet was melting away, we are quite sure. For, 

 buried in the masses of sand and gravel that the 

 rushing waters spread around, have been found some 

 of the stone weapons that those early men had used. 



The animals have left shells and footprints, and 

 many of their forms preserved in nature's book; the 

 plants have also left their forms and shapes; but men 

 have left the things that they have made and the 

 record of what they have done. Tools, weapons, 

 pottery and sculpture, buildings, drawings and writ- 

 ings, these are the things that tell us about mankind, 

 where men have lived, how they have lived, and often, 

 too, what kind of people they were. 



The very first men did not know how to make any 

 of these things. They came upon the world like the 

 animals, and for a while they must have lived some- 

 what as the animals did. But it was not for that sort 

 of a life that God had sent them upon the world. He 

 had given mankind gifts that the animals have never 

 possessed: an upright figure with swinging arms; 

 hands with five, flexible fingers; a thinking, reason- 



251 



