138 



KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[March 1, 1886. 



mine the time to wliicli their origin must be assigned. 

 For customs ivhich had at first no religious significance 

 became developed in the course of time into religious 

 observances ; and religious observances, interpreted in a 

 particular way at one time in the history of a race, obtain 

 an entirely different interpretation at another time, and 

 often pass through many changes of meaning before they 

 l^ass out of use, — if they ever entirely disappear. 



Thus -we cannot suppose that the Egyptians or ancient 

 Babylonians, had their religion begun with sun worship, 

 would have offered sacrifices to their god, seeing that the 

 idea of offering flesh or meal to the sun, as to a being 

 which could take pleasure in such offerings, would be 

 scarcely less absurd than the idea of offering the flesh of 

 lambs and goats to the Infinite Energy from which all 

 things proceed. But if offerings of food had been made 

 to animal.s in earlier times, first with very jiractical ideas 

 as to the utility of such sacrifices andUater as propitiatory 

 offerings to animals regarded as deities, it is certain that 

 when sun moon and stars came to be worshipped instead 

 of nearer and less dignified bodies, offerings of flesh meat, 

 of corn, of oil, and so forth, would be made to these new 

 and higher gods, des])ite their ajiparent inability to avail 

 themselves of such offerings. If thej- could not eat the 

 fle.sh of a burnt offering, the smoke of it, rising to the 

 skies, their home, might reasonably be thought to savour 

 sweetly to them. And so might offerings of meal and 

 oil be pleasant to the gods in the heavens though the 

 substance remained uuconsumed — till at least it pas.sed 

 into the possession of the priests who enjoined these 

 sacrifices. 



That sacrifices were offered to the sun while as yet he 

 was only regarded as lord of the day, is rendered probable 

 by the continuance of the morning and evening sacrifices 

 among the Jews, even when sun-worship had long since 

 been rejected as an offence — as Job puts it — against the 

 God who is above the sun and moon. It is curious 

 indeed to find Jewish law-givers apparently retaining 

 the very words of the old ordinances, long after these 

 words had wholly ceased to be applicable — so hardly do 

 religious observances die even when the religion to which 

 they belonged has long been wholly dead. 



Thus only, as it seems to me, can we explain the strangely 

 archaic wording of the injunctions in Numbers regarding 

 the morning and evening sacrifices, doubtless remnants of 

 the very oldest observances of sun-worship : — " The Lord 

 spake unto Moses, saying. Command the children of 

 Israel, and say unto them. My oblation, my food for my 

 offerings made by fire, of a sweet savour unto me, shall yc 

 observe to offer unto me in their due season. And thou 

 shalt say unto them, This is the offering made by fire 

 which ye shall offer unto the Lord ; he-lambs of the first 

 year without blemish, two day by day for continual burnt 

 offering. The one lamb shalt thou offer in the morning, 

 and the other lamb shalt thou offer at even : and the 

 tenth part of an ephah of fine flour for a meal offering, 

 mingled with the fourth part of anhin of beaten oil. It 

 is a continual burnt offering, which was ordained in 

 Mount Sinia (!) for a sweet savour, an offering made by 

 tire unto the Lord. And the drink offering thereof shall 

 be the fourth part of an hin for the one lamb; in the holy 

 place shalt thou pour out a drink offering of strong drink 

 unto the Lord. And the other lamb shalt thou offer at 

 even : as the meal offering of the morning, and as the 

 drink offering thereof, thou shalt offer it, an offering 

 made by fire, of a sweet savour unto the Lord." 



How long these offerings continued, and how vain they 

 were thought by the more advanced minds, we can judge 

 by the impassioned language of Isaiah, " Hear the word 



of the Lord; to what purpose is the multitude of your 

 sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord. I am full of the 

 burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts ; and I 

 delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he 

 goats." But such teaching was of no avail among the 

 unreasoning many in his day, any more than it would 

 have been in the days of sun-worship, or indeed than it 

 would be now. Doubtless he was regarded as an enemy 

 of religion in his own time, however he came to be 

 reverenced when the opportunity for following his pre- 

 cepts had passed away. His rejection of what nearly 

 every one in his time accepted, was no doubt looked on 

 as implying agnostic if not atheistic ideas. 



THE STORY OF CREATION, 



a plain account of evolution. 



Bt Edwakd Clodd. 



v.— THE PAST LIFE-HISTORY OF THE EARTH {Contimicd). 



• jjjij im tmi^ 'p -^ H E Devonian and Old lied Sandstone rocks, 

 while evidencing to frequent redistribu- 

 tion of sea and land, have undergone, as 

 compared with the older systems of the 

 Primary epoch, but slight disturbance 

 from the upheaving and contorting 

 agencies beneath. They are widely dif- 

 fused, extending far north within the Arctic circle, and 

 although their fossil contents are very incomplete, they 

 bring less fragmentary witnesses to that continuity of 

 life which is so markedly broken in more ancient deposits. 

 This is specially apparent in the relative abundance of 

 vegetable remains, by which we may for the first 

 time construct some picture of plant-life on the 

 globe in the Pateozoic epoch. Not only do we find 

 huge tree-like plants of which our club-mosses 

 and ferns are pigmy representatives, but true 

 trees, as proven by the concentric rings of growth 

 in their trunks. Of land animals, the preservation of 

 which is so rare in all deposits, there are no traces ; no 

 reptiles wallow in the lagoons and marshy flats, neither 

 are the verdant yet flowerless forests brightened by the 

 plumage, or their stillness broken by the song, of birds. 

 Some happy chance, like that which envelopes the 

 insects of Tertiary forests in amber — the fossil gtim and 

 resin of their trees — has pireserved the fragile wing of an 

 insect with the drum or stridulating organ attached, as 

 in the grasshopper, ic, wherewith then, as now, mates 

 were attracted or rivals challenged ; perchance " the first 

 music of living things that geology reveals." 



Freshwater fossils abound ; but the dominant types 

 are marine ; large sponges and corals ; " lamp-shell " 

 mollu.sca, which have persisted in varying forms from 

 Cambrian times till the present ; crustaceans huger than 

 any that have lived since, and of which even the spawn- 

 masses are sometimes preserved. More or less special 

 types appear, and then vanish, through inability to adapt 

 themselves to new surroundings and changed climates. 

 But the Devonian is notably the "Age of Fishes,'' and 

 its waters swarmed with the ganoid or armoured type. 



Coal is formed of compressed and chemically-altered 

 plants, and therefore occurs in all water-laid recks, 

 although in very different states and kinds. The climate 

 and soil, dtiring long eras of the Gdrhoniferous system, 

 specially favoured the growth of plants most fitted for 

 its formation. A large part of Europe (and the like 

 conditions apply wherever the true coal-measures abound) 

 was then covered with shallow waters, both salt and 



