262 
Bible in reference to the chosen race ? Were these afterwards 
deified persons among the heathen ? and was the sweetest of all 
melodies — the dirge over the murdered Linus — a lament of this 
sister over the handsome youth (Hyacinth us, Narcissus) who 
ventured on a musical contest with the god of melody, and was 
slain by Apollo — giving his name to fair and fleeting flowers, and 
to the tragic ailinos of the poets ( at A hi). 
56. We know not, because the narrative is so abrupt, but it is 
surely connected with more traditional knowledge which has now 
perished. Lamech, according to the Jewish tradition, slew his own 
son ; and it is remarkable how many eastern traditions connect them- 
selves with the early history of mankind. Several different features 
of civilization are marked out in these early traditions, but there is 
nothing of worship connected with them. All seems, however fair, 
to be essentially worldly in its character. It is most significant that 
the Scripture drops the unfinished story, and turns at once to the 
line of the Messiah in Seth, — leaving Cain and all his descendants. 
Seth, the substitutional one, appears on the scene, and it is from 
Seth that St. Luke deduces the genealogy of the Messiah. But 
the current of affairs thus pre-intimated goes on to the end. 
Throughout the Scriptures the highest civilization is found asso- 
ciated with evil tendencies in Egypt, in Canaan, in Tyre, in 
Babylon, in Assyria, and in Home. It is evident that civilization 
dissociated from religion rests on an insecure foundation. An 
atheistic community always contains within itself the elements of 
its own destruction. 
57. It is worthy of remark that copper and iron are the metals 
first worked by mankind. This accords with all that w r e know of 
antiquity, and with what we can easily suppose to have been d 
priori probable. Copper, from the comparative ease with which 
its ores might be reduced, being: even found at times in a state 
scarcely needing the art of the metallurgist ; and iron, which it is 
almost certain, would first be wrought out from its meteoric state 
into instruments for the use of man. It is, however, to be noticed 
that Livingstone found the survival of the ancient processes in 
South Africa, where the smith reduces his iron from the easily 
worked haematite ore, and then forges his instruments from the 
elaborated material. This is all strikingly presented to the eye in 
a sketch in the “ Last Journals ” of this lamented traveller.* 
58. The inhabitants of Africa seem never to have known the 
use of bronze, and there is no evidence of their having passed through 
an age of stone. They reduced iron by simple mctallurgic pro- 
cesses known to themselves. The Egyptians appear, according to 
M. Chabas, to have been always acquainted with the use of iron, 
* Kindly lent to the Institute by Mr. Murray. 
