252, 
of the geologist in his study of the rocks, trace the very causes of the decay 
we see around us, from our knowledge of man as he is, just as we know how 
the ‘‘ glacier-mills” at Lucerne were formed, from what we have seen ina 
modern river-bed. And this is more especially noticeable when we look at 
the externals of religious worship. Thus, in studying the sacrificial systems 
of the Hindus, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and other nations, - 
we cannot but be struck with the multiplicity of detail : and when each 
detail is examined it is found, almost without exception, to be either a more 
or less perfect, or a manifestly-degraded representative of some detail, the 
analogue of which we know in the divinely-given Mosaic Dispensation. So 
that, in fact, there are but few features in the sacrificial system of Moses 
that are not discernible, more or less complete, inthe ancient sacrificial systems 
of the heathen world. I know no way of accounting for this but by 
supposing a truly elaborate system of sacrificial worship in the far past, of 
' which these many details are the remains. Elaborate it must have been, 
or such varied detail could not be found in what we may call its fossil. 
Divinely given too it must, I think, have been, or its remains could not 
indicate an original, analogous in so great a degree to the sacrificial system 
described in the Old Testament. 
