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tory, whatever view we may take of his origin and primitive 
state, no one who has given the least attention to the intrica- 
cies of the problem, or to the volumes that have been written 
upon it, by the ancients and moderns alike, can have any 
doubt. I can only hope to be able to bring forward a few of 
the most important considerations and salient points which 
affect the question, in order to elicit truth and to show what 
theory, if any, is free from difficulties which are insuperable. 
In the mean time there is one thing more to be noticed as 
regards the religious theory, in which it is in marked opposi- 
tion to all the others. When we take the Scriptural view of 
man's creation, we can at once comprehend and read aright 
all those evidences afforded by the remains of antiquity and of 
profane history of his wonderful original capacity and early 
civilization. We thus get over all difficulties we might other- 
wise feel as regards the time in which he would arrive at this 
artificially cultivated condition, and accomplish these stupen- 
dous monuments of his genius and pristine glory. We can 
then understand our old chronology, which makes the world 
to be but some six or eight thousand years old ; and so also 
perceive the value of the conclusion arrived at by the most 
critical of our modern authors, the late Sir George Cornewall 
Lewis, who in his last work, The Astronomy of the Ancients , 
considers that we have little ground for believing in any chro- 
nology of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, beyond 
about 3,000 or 4,000 years prior to the Christian era. 
I cannot, of course, enter here upon any discussion of the 
long antiquity claimed for the world upon geological grounds. 
In my opinion these long leaps into the past make few of the 
difficult problems of nature a whit more easy. But I will say 
this, that those who ask for millions or tens of millions of 
years, in order to get over the difficulties of their own invented 
theories,— -whether they start the world with a nebulous fire, 
or man with an ape, — are really moderate in their demands 
for time, compared with what they ask of our faith. They 
^ might multiply their millions of years by millions more, and 
yet not have time enough to develop this real world we know 
full of teeming life and intelligence — out of fire-mists, 
monads, and monkeys ! 
# The religious theory, on the contrary, throws light upon 
history and experience. Supposing mankind to be highly en- 
dowed, with the highest intellectual capacity, at the time of 
the confusion of their language and dispersion in the East, 
it also presumes they would carry with them, in greater or 
less degree, the primitive traditions and the acquired know- 
ledge which would be retained by individuals in each family 
