July 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



283 



be urged th'it as they never use the exact words of the now 

 accepted gospels, their evidence is rather against than in 

 favour of the belief that these gospels were accepted iu their 

 day. But it may fairly be answered that in those days 

 exact quotation would be the exception rather than the rule. 

 It must, however, be admitted that, even if this would ex- 

 plain their n-n-er quoting exactly, there is simply no evidence 

 in these letters in favour of the accepted four gospels as against 

 ( 1 ) the rejected ones, or i 2) the possible existence of others long 

 since lost, or (3) even the existence of old Hebrew records 

 of moral sayings of much greater antiquity (mistakenly at- 

 tributed to Christ). For in any one of these three cases 

 Clement, Hermas, and the rest would have written as 

 tliey did; wliile,were they actually quoting from the accepted 

 gospels, they might have been expected to have once, at least, 

 quoted correctly. 



Mr. Matthew Arnold has noted one strange class of ex- 

 ceptions to this incorrect quotation, if quotation indeed it was. 

 He observes that quoted propliecies are given iu the very 

 words of the gospels, even when these words difler from 

 those in the Septuagint. It is hardly necessary to insist on 

 the significance of tliis peculiarity combined with the in- 

 correct rendering elsewhere. We see that the ancient 

 letter-writers actually quoted, and as clearly that they could 

 not have been quoting from the gospels we have, but that in 

 these gospels certain prophecies were quoted from some more 

 ancient record. 



With regard to the Epistles and the Book of Revelation, 

 similar difficulties exist. The doubts which long prevailed 

 as to the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Epistle of Jude, the 

 second Epistle of Peter, and the second and third Epistles of 

 John, show that something like the same difficulties which 

 liad limited the development of the Old Testament limited 

 also the growth of the New. But with the progress of time, 

 objections clearly recognised by the ciitics of the second and 

 tliird centuries di&ippeared, and when Jerome wrote his 

 Latin version of the Bible — the Vulgate — the doubts which 

 he himself recognised had so far lost their efficacy that the 

 Xew Testament in his hands assumed practically its present 

 form . 



We may hereafter give a sketch of the interesting history 

 of Bible Revisions, and of the somewhat amusing but sug- 

 gestively instructive opposition which they successively 

 encountered. 



A DEAD WORLD. 



By Richard A. Proctor. 



(Coidinucd from p. 212.) 



IIAT the stages of the moon's life would be 

 very much shorter than those of our earth's 

 life, follows, as we have seen, from the con- 

 sideration of her smaller mass. But the 

 stajres of her life would not only be shorter 

 than those of the earth, they would be 

 diflerent in character, because of the diderent 

 amount of air and water, and also because the lunar atmos- 

 phere before it became air such as we have (only rarer) 

 must have been very diflferent in quality from our air in its 

 old unbreathable state. 



It has been shown by geologists that the various salts 

 found in the sea must have belonged to it from the begin- 

 ning. The familiar exjjlanation that they were washed 

 into the sea by rivers is no explanation at all : as a matter 

 of fiict the substances thus washed down by rivers came to 

 be present in the solid crust by the drying up of former 

 seas. We can form from the constitution of sea-water 



some idea of the horrible kind of atmosphere which our 

 earth originally possessed. So also can we from many of 

 the substances which we find in the earth's crust. There 

 was sulphurous acid, and sulphuretted hydrogen (savouring 

 of rotten eggs, though it could not have suggested their 

 presence in days before as yet any chickens had appeared), 

 carbonic acid, hydrochloric acid, and other highly disagreeable 

 vapours. We have only to imagine what would happen if 

 our earth were warmed up again, to see what must have 

 been her state before she cooled. Nay, as .'^he is kind 

 enough to warm herself up locally at times, in sufficient 

 degree to emit the very vapours which must of yore have 

 been permanently outside her crust, we can tell by actual 

 observation what they were. As the temperature beneatli 

 the earth's crust rises, the following gases and vapours 

 are successively poured forth : carbonic acid gas (whicii 

 chemists now call carbon dioxide), sulphurous acid, sul- 

 phuretted hydrogen, boracic acid, and hydrochloric acid. 

 How jileasant an abode our earth would have been in 

 her youth (independently of her high temperature) for 

 breatliing animals, may be inferred from the state of 

 things formerly existing in the Avernian Lake, across which 

 no bird could tiy with life. The showers falling from the 

 hot air of those days would be by no means showers of pure 

 water. Boracic acid in the liquid state may not sound very 



terrible, but boracic acid has played the very a very 



important part, we would say — in modifying rock substances 

 in volcanic districts, and when it fell in showers must have 

 greatly altered the character of the earth's hot crust. Sul- 

 phurous acid might be as innocent as rose water for anything 

 that its name may perhaps imply to many ; but when we speak 

 of fiery hot vitriol, ever3'one begins to recognise a substance 

 that would probably have jjroduced somewliat more marked 

 changes on the hot crust of the earth than would a drizzle 

 of ordinary rain on the fields and plains of the earth to- 

 day. Ammoniaand various compounds of carbon, nitiogen, 

 and hydrogen, must have been present in the old atmosphere 

 of the earth, and in various degrees of dilution with water 

 must have been very effective as denuding agents. 



Now it is easily seen that the various stages of the earth's 

 vidcanian histoiy must not only have been very diflerent 

 from those of the moon's, but that the records left in the crust 

 must have been very differently treated. For example, the 

 formation and the active existence of great volcanic craters 

 on the earth probably preceded the formation of great moun- 

 tain ranges. (I am not here inferring to the various stei)s 

 in the formation of a mountain range, but to the era of 

 mountain forming as distinguished from the era of great 

 crater formation.) On the moon there seems to have been 

 no great era of range forming, and such mountain ranges as 

 were formed probablv began and ended their careers while 

 the great craters were still active. But not only do we thus 

 find a very difl'erent relation existing between mountain 

 ranges and great craters on the moon and on the earth re- 

 spectively, but we find that the records of the two forms of 

 crust disturbance are in a very ditferent state. On the earth 

 all the original great craters have been so worn down and 

 denuded that nothing but their basal wrecks remain ; on 

 the moon the great craters show their va.st dimensions as 

 originally formed, or where we see signs of important 

 changes, the changes are those produced by subterranean 

 not by subaerial action. 



All this is readily explained as soon as we note the 

 natural results of — 1st, the relative shortness of the stages 

 of the moon's life ; 2ndly, the smaller relative quantity of 

 water ; and Srdly, the smaller relative quantity of air. 



The earlier forms of volcanic disturbance on the moon 

 would resemble closely enough, in all probability, those 

 which took place in the corresponding parts of the earth's 



