Bibliographical Notice. 459 



that these strata, too, have been pared down by the slow action of 

 sea-waves, or of the weather, rain, and glaciers — and, besides, are 

 full of the remains of successive groups of animals and plants, for 

 any one of which successions our history seems too short a term. 

 Nor docs geology fully confirm the bold generalization that the 

 higher kinds of animals did not exist in early times ; for though 

 the evidence is strong in that direction, it is not so powerful 

 as it was some years ago. And yet the good old sage's teaching, 

 that the earth is God's, and is not self-existent, that man is God's, 

 and is not to worship earth nor seek wholly his pleasure in himself 

 and in the present, is not weakened — -it is enforced ; for every added 

 fact of the earth's great history supplies a link for us in the great 

 chain of orderly succession, connecting the beginning, when God 

 created the heaven and the earth, with the beauty and progressive 

 order of to-day. 



But anthropology does no less, and philology, with clear-headed 

 antiquarian research ; all help to take the history of man out of the 

 domain of tradition and the region of legendary myths, — finding the 

 lost places of habitation by the broken column of the city or by the 

 shell-heap and stone knife of the cave-dweller, piecing the broken 

 languages of sculptured rock and tablet — finding the real meaning 

 of names, and tracing the nursery-tale, through legend and myth, to 

 its simple germ among the child-nations, giving simple utterance to 

 their thoughts of nature and their gods, of their people, their wan- 

 derings, their conflicts, and their prowess — and, lastly, comparing 

 man with man, in his many forms and in his widely separate abodes, 

 undreamt of by the sages of antiquity. And when man shall have 

 been known in all his present and past modifications, far exceeding 

 already the limited ethnology of the genealogist of Canaan, JudaBa, 

 and Syria, his religious teaching will still be based on the grand and 

 true enunciation of Moses, that his Creator is an eternal, omnipotent, 

 omniscient, and loving Father. 



As information is collected year by year, the old notions concern- 

 ing the history of the earth and man are broken one by one ; 

 but few of those most concerned in finding and proving new facts 

 can do more than follow their own line of research, and give their 

 knowledge to their fellows and the world. There are, however, 

 many intelligent readers of scientific books and memoirs who, 

 without original research of their own, appreciate the labours of 

 others, and strive, with good intentions, to lay before the public 

 their best digested views of how things are now to be understood, 

 boldly setting aside some of the old notions — leaving others, reduced 

 in importance, to survive awhile for those with whom they are 

 sacred beliefs, — turning the oft-translated word of forgotten alliance 

 in a new direction, and shaping the obsolete phrase to a new mean- 

 ing, — finding undreamt-of analogies and curious coincidences in a 

 simple statement of hoar antiquity, — matching the known prehis- 

 toric remains of man with mythical nations, — and once again, 

 like previous compilers of half-mastered statements, expounding, 

 sorting, and patching the ill -understood researches of geologist and 



