35 



strongly realized. At a certain period of time, in tlie be- 

 ginning of this development, the snbtler known elements, 

 of matter — hydrogen and nitrogen — eUiding in part the 

 great law of gravitation, or solidification, began to gain in 

 quantity on the other grosser elements of gaseous and 

 liquid matter — the carbon and oxygen that were helping 

 so ceaselessly to build up the adamantine crust; these 

 mysterious, chemical, vital, and nervous forces, performing 

 the more exquisite work of operating with ever increasing- 

 vigor or intensity upon the nervous centres of the advanc- 

 ing animal creation, culminating in intellectual powei*. 

 Xervous, and ultimately mental, development must have 

 progressed under changed physical conditions, just as 

 physical development had gone on — the various elements 

 doing their appointed work in one case as in. the other. 



If the now arid wilds of Aral)ia.or Ethiopia, was the 

 seat of the earliest civilization of the earth, the apparently 

 rapid change in phj^sical conditions there, must liave^ tended 

 to its speedy culmination and subsequent untitness for 

 further development, and the same stimulus of change, 

 may have produced the development of civilization of the 

 neighboring, and ultimately of the Western nations. 



Whatever the descent of man has been, every change 

 has transpired — through all the past — in perfect accordance 

 with the laws of God, as revealed to man. The liabita- 

 tions and races of man changed perhaps in the earliest 

 human epoch, somewhat as the habitations and species ol 

 other genera of organic beings changed. His increased 

 knowledge gives more and more power to overcome the 

 diversities of changing climates, and all other external dis- 

 advantages of place and surroundings. 



Races and nations that do not develop and improve, and 

 thus adapt themselves to changing physical, political and 

 social conditions, doubtless becoming weaker, and perhaps 

 extinct; while those that are brought to a more perfect 

 state, their mental and spiritual faculties being constantly 



