-'•_-;. /SS3, ■ : . ■■■' : ■■ '.■■ ■:■ i: ■■. :■■; ■■ := '. : . , : : ■■ ': --. : -^ ■■■■■■ : ..!! ! . ! !i : s. : .=|- i - l -=: li !'-: : ■= ! .'=M"i!i-..---i :i|i' ! ii!:i: i ==--i-'-- ■ ' ■ " ■ " ■■ ; ^■.^; -:;::;.:;:,;,;!:,;,',, I..-,; '■ :: , v:\ :r'w »-n TESTIMONY OF THE AGES: OR, Confirmations of the Scriptures, FROM Modern Science and Recent Discoveries; Ancient Records and Monuments; The Ruins of Cities and Relics of Tombs; The Greek and Latin Classics ; Assyrian Inscriptions and Egyptian Hieroglyphics; Antique Sculptures, Coins, Gems and Medals; The Ordnance Survey of Sinai; The Late Exploration of Palestine; The Literal Fulfillment of Prophecies, as Attested by the Writings of Hea- then Nations; etc., etc.: EVIDENCES Which the PLAIN READER can understand, which the SCHOLAR will appre- ciate, and which the SKEPTIC cannot refute. by HERBERT W. MORRIS, D.D., Author of "Science and the Bible; or, The Work Days of God," "Present Conflict of Science with the Christian Religion ." etc. The stone shall cry out of the wall, And the beam out of the timber shall answer it." With Numerous Illustrations. PUBLISHED BY J. C. McCURDY & CO., PHILADELPHIA, PA,, Chicago, III. , Cincinnati, O ; St. Louis, Mo. ^ ESTATE OF UJOJJAS EWING ffff OCTO&ER 23, 1947 UK UBRARY OFCONSREIf Copyright, by Herbert W. Morris, D. D., 1880. 0~- Contents. PAGES Introduction - • - - --•«.... 3-12 Testimonies to the Old Testament Scriptures ... 15-644 Testimonies to the New Testament Scriptures ... 645-962 List of the Principal Authorities, Inscriptions, and 'Records, whose Testimonies are given in the Work, with Notes of the Times, Languages, and Countries in which they were WRITTEN •-.-. 963-976 A. General and Complete Index -.---. 977-1002 (S) List of Illustrations. Royal Palace of Sennacherib Frontispiece, Old Testament. Tower of Hippicus, Church of Yacobeia and Anglican Church Frontispiece, New Testament. page page A. M. Aaron's Rod Changed into a Serpent 137 Ancient Altars 817 Ancient Egyptian Threshing-FIoor 254 Ancient Harbor of Caesarea 800 Ancient Port of Sidon 837 Apamaean Medal 64 Arch of Titus 714 Assyrians Torturing their Captives ... 277 B. Baal, or Melkart 305 Babylonian Baked Brick 566 Bethany 778 Bethlehem 648 Body of Archers. 276 Bozrah 485 Bridle in Prisoner's Lips 489 C. Cana 648 Capernaum 652 Cart Drawn by Oxen 257 Christ Raising Lazarus 784 Church of the Holy Sepulchre 739 Coasts of Tyre and Sidon 687 Coin of Vespasian — Judea Capta 770 Colossae 899 Corinth 867 Counting the Hands cut off 240 Cyrus Entering Babylon 473 D. Dagon 256 Daniel Interpreting the Writing on the Wall 569 David Spares the Life of Saul 271 Deborah Giving the Signal 241 Destruction of Sennacherib's Army 331 Doom of the Altar * 301 E. Egyptian Bellows 510 Egyptian Thrones 298 Embalming the Body of Joseph 127 Engraved Rocks 376 Ephesus 887 Esther before Ahasuerus 359 Excavation in the Ruins of Nineveh.. ., g Fighting with Beasts 876 Fractured Chaldean Tablet 67 G. Gaza 612 Gerizim and Ebal 233 Gethsemane— Present Appearance 771 Great Stone in the Quarry 290 Guests at the Table 357 H. Heathen Priests and Victims 804 High Priest at the Altar of Incense 176 J. J Jerusalem in the Saviour's Time 711 Jewish Captives in Babylonia 43 T ob and his three Friends 369 ohn Baptist in Prison 683 udgment Balances 57° K. Kiosk 607 L. Lifting up of Hands 4°<5 Lion 45 x M Moses Viewing the Promised Land 228 Mosque of Hebron 100 Mount of Olives 767 N. Nazareth 643 Nebo 498 Nehemiah Surveying the Ruins 351 Nimrod Strangling a Lion 74 Nisroch 334 Obelisk of On ... 112 Ostrich and Nest 394 P. Peace be with You 787 Personal Ornaments , . 466 Plague of Hail 145 Plaited Hair 937 Priest with Gazelle 555 Putting out the Eyes of Prisoners 336 Q. Queen of Sheba Entering the Court of Solomon.. . 295 Roman War-Horse 397 Rome 851 S. Samaritan Hebrews Bearing Tribute 327 Sennacherib on his Throne 343 Seven Churches in Asia 951 Shishak, King of Egypt 300 Siege of Damascus 326 Singers of the Temple Service 399 Sychar 778 T. v Tabernacle Made in the Wilderness 173 Theatre of Ephesus — its Remains 824 The Capture of Babylon 539 The I mage of Gold 562 The King's Horse 364 The Lost Home . 51 The Moabite Stone 317 The Molten Calf 181 The Ring in the Nose 333 Thessalonica 903 The Swift Dromedary 509 Tiberias, City and Lake 778 Tiglath Pileser in his Chariot 325 Tirhakah 33© Tomb at Petra 487 Tomb of Absalom 283 Tomb of Darius 348 Tombs of Gadara 669 Tombs of the Kings 4 6 ° Tower of Babel 76 Trampling on the Conquered 23? Upright Idols . U. SX4 View of Athens 813 Vision of Paradise 959 W. War Chariots in the Streets 627 Warrior and Armor-Bearer 293 Wild Asses 39 Wiue Vase and Cups 3J U Introduction. HE HOLY SCRIPTURES claim to be God's messages to mankind in all the world, and through all generations ; and testimonies to the truth and validity of this claim have been springing up and multiplying ever since those messages were first delivered to men. Every successive age has produced not only additional proofs, but proofs peculiar to itself, of their Divine Origin. And our own age has been fruitful beyond any that went before both in the development of new testimonies, and in the recovery of old and lost ones. Every branch of modern science, every field of modern research, every pursuit which has been made the subject of modern study, has yielded both numerous and diversified corroborations of the Sacred Record. While the Bible makes everything speak for God, God, in these last days, has made everything speak for the Bible — even " the stone has cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber has answered it," that prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. These widespread testimonies and corroborations, so diversified in their sources, so striking in their character, and many of them so marvelous in their preservation and discovery and interpretation — all these, collected and methodically arranged, cannot but compose a volume of interest and importance unsurpassed in the estimation of every intelligent Christian reader. This will be evident from the following statements. The Natural Sciences have supplied numerous and remarkable con- firmations of many of the fundamental truths taught in the Bible, such as these : that there is a God ; that there is but one God ; that the world was created, and had a beginning; that its formation was a progressive work carried on through so many days or stages ; that the order in which it was fashioned and planted and peopled was that indicated in the first chapter of Genesis ; that all nations of men have been made of one blood ; that the Deluge of Noah was but one of many similar cataclysms that had occurred before ; that all mankind were once of one speech or language ; that they (5) 6 INTRODUCTION. scattered to cover the whole earth from one common centre. Science, while it offers demonstrative evidence of all this, also bears clear testimony to the truth and correctness of the Bible statements and allusions in regard to a multitude of other natural facts in the sea, on the land, and in the heavens. Another wide and fruitful field of corroborative evidence we have in the Ancient Literature which has come down to us. This embraces not only the voluminous productions of the early Christian Fathers, but also the Greek and Roman Classics — the History, Poetry and Philosophy of men who were the contemporaries of the Inspired Authors ; of Seneca and Lucan, who occupied distinguished positions at Rome at the very time when Paul was detained there a prisoner in chains ; of Pliny and Statius and Martial, who were witnesses of the persecutions which ban-? ished John to Patmos, and gave Ignatius to be devoured by lions ; of Cicero, Terrence and Plautus, who flourished during the first and second century b. c; of Plato and Xenophon, who were coeval with Nehemiah and Malachi : of Thucidydes, Herodotus and Euripides, who travelled and studied and wrote still earlier ; of Sophocles and ^Eschylus and Pindar, who composed their works within the same half century that Haggai and Zechariah delivered their prophecies ; of Pythagoras, Phocylides, Theognis and Anacreon, who were the contemporaries of Ezra, Esther and Daniel ; of Sappho and Alceus, who lived in the days of Jeremiah and Ezekiel ; of Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, Callinus and Hesiod, who flourished in the period embraced in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles ; of Homer, who composed his Odyssey and Iliad when Solomon sat upon the throne of his father David ; of Linus, Musaeus and Orphaeus, who lived in times still anterior. The writings of these and of others who lived in ages equally remote, furnish a great number and variety of corroborations of scenes, events, characters, laws, practices, wars, commerce, famines, captivities, pestilences, idolatries, crimes, etc., which are related or described in the Bible. And not a few of these ancient authors are eminently interesting and important to us, as, in following the thread of their discourses and narratives, they unconsciously relate the minute and complete fulfilment of numerous prophecies concerning cities and kingdoms, nations and individuals. As these writers must have been in total ignorance that any such predictions had ever been uttered, their testimony to their accomplishment is placed beyond all doubt and all suspicion. The mystic Records of Egypt, likewise, present a rich mine of Scrip- ture evidences. These have been preserved to us in the Hieroglyphics graven on her temples, tombs and obelisks, some of which date back as INTRODUCTION. 7 far as the days of Abraham ; and in her Papyri, as old as the Hebrew exodus. Both these, after having faded out of the knowledge and memory of the world, and remained sealed for thousands of years, have of late been successfully studied and translated into the speech of living men, and have thus revealed to us ages of history running parallel with that of the Sacred Volume, and bearing many notable testimonies to its truth. Egypt has also been found rich in Relics of greatest antiquity and most interesting nature ; among these have been recognized various articles named or described in the early chapters of Scripture history. Besides all this, in that ancient Land, there have been bequeathed and handed down to us, from times equally remote, great numbers of graphic Pictures, clear in their outlines and fresh in their colors, exhibiting Egyptian life in all its grades and phases and occupa- tions, and which both illustrate and confirm the Scripture narratives of Abraham's visit there, of Joseph's rule, of the Hebrews' bondage, of their deliverance by Moses and Aaron, and of numerous other events of later dates. As on the banks of the Nile, so along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, corroborative evidences of highest antiquity and importance have been brought to light still more recently in Assyrian Sculptures and Inscriptions. On the eastern bank of the latter river a cluster of irregular hillocks had been known from time immemorial. These were covered with grass and weeds and bushes such as prevailed over the surrounding regions. On their summits villages had been built, and on their slopes vineyards had been planted, and fields of barley sown and harvested for centuries. They appeared like natural elevations, and by the natives were regarded as old as creation. But something now more than thirty years ago the idea dawned upon the mind of one or two intelligent Europeans of making an examination and a search into these hillocks. Accordingly, shafts were sunk and tunnels were drilled into them at various points ; and lo ! what had been deemed natural hills were dis- covered to be through and through vast mounds of ruins — here was the site of " Nineveh, that great city " — here were entombed in their ashes her palaces, and temples, and monuments, once the pride of kings and the glory of the East. After protracted toil the pavements of streets and the walls of edifices were traced and cleared ; and a Botta, a Layard, a Raw- linson, walked through the halls, rested in the courts, and wandered through the galleries, once occupied by Sargon, and Sennacherib, and Esarhadon. In these they found a vast number and variety of relics, tablets and statuary of greatest interest. On the marble-paneled walls were Sculptured Pictures of objects and 8 INTRODUCTION. scenes pertaining to public and private life — battles, sieges, engines of war, chariots of pleasure, hunting expeditions, smoking altars, kings upon their thrones, captives in their chains, officers at their posts, and crafts- men at their toil. Not a few of these have furnished proofs of Scripture statements that had been disputed, and flashed unexpected light upon passages that had ever been regarded as doubtful or obscure. But the most precious and important of all the discoveries made have been the Cuneiform Inscriptions, which have put us in possession of a large part of the early literature of Chaldea. From the ruins of Nineveh, and also from those of Babylon, Ur, Accad and Erech, there have been exhumed a very great number and variety of Tablets, Cylinders and Obelisks, all crowded with these inscriptions, often cut in characters clear and compact as those upon the printed page. In one instance, the remains of an extensive library, supposed to have originally contained no less than 10,000 inscribed tablets, were discovered lying together in a fragmentary condition, embracing (as afterwards appeared) the collected records of many preceding centuries. At first discovery these strange writings were sealed and silent mysteries ; none could read them, none divine their significance. But at length, though written in languages and in characters that long ages since had passed out of the knowledge and memory of all the living world, by insight and perseverance beyond example in human history, they were deciphered and translated into the languages of the present day. Some of them have been found to record histories that run back to the age of the earliest Patriarchs ; others embody the account handed down to that age of the Creation, the Deluge, and the Tower of Babel ; others relate the movements of armies that invaded the Land of Israel, and the amount of spoil and number of Cap- tives they carried away from Samaria and Jerusalem ; and others still record the laws, the political precepts, the science, the philosophy and the religion of the time. Altogether these Assyrian Sculptures and Inscrip- tions furnish a number and variety of testimonies to the truth of the Scriptures that are equally marvelous and convincing. Having lain buried for full twenty-five centuries, they are as so many witnesses risen from the dead, whose testimony can neither be gainsayed nor resisted. The systematic Survey and Exploration of Bible Lands, which have been made within a few years, have supplied another important con- tribution to the sum of Scripture evidences. These were undertaken at the expense and under the direction of Christian Associations, and con- ducted by companies of learned men and professional engineers, selected for their skill and experience, and equipped with the most perfect and costly instruments, as well as all other conveniences necessary for their EXCAVATION IN THE RUINS OF NINEVEH. m 10 INTRODUCTION. work. The survey was carried on upon the same method of exact obser- vation and triangulation as that adopted in surveying the coast and country in England. The whole " wilderness of Sinai " was thus accu- rately measured and mapped. The course of the Israelites through it was traced out ; and many of their successive stations and halting-places, including the Wells of Elim, the waters of Marah, and the mount of the Law, were identified. Palestine also has been surveyed and mapped in like manner : the extent of its plains, the height of its mountains, the course of its streams, the indentations of its coast, and the depth of its lakes, have been carefully determined ; its rocks and soil, its vegetation and living tenants have been patiently studied ; the return and tempera- ture of the seasons, the fall of rain, and even the directions of the wind have been registered. From all this there have been gathered scores and hundreds of happy evidences to the uniform correctness of Scripture state- ments and allusions respecting localities, distances, scenery, productions, climate, etc., of the Bible Lands. Much also has of late been accomplished for the confirmation of Scripture by Individual Enterprise. Men of intelligence and ample means — men versed in ancient languages and literature — men of science and observation — animated by Christian benevolence, or commercial enterprise, or love of learning and discovery, have made their way into every region and province on which the light of Revelation originally shone. They have stood where either prophet, priest, or king ever stood ; their eyes have rested on the same natural phenomena ; their ears have taken in the same sounds from wind and flood ; and their nostrils have inhaled the odors of the same fields. They have gazed on the Oriental heavens ; they have contemplated Oriental scenery ; they have studied Oriental life. Some have tarried and devoted themselves to deter- mine the sites and to delve into the ruins of cities whose names and his- tories have come down to us in the Sacred Volume ; or, to search out the caves and explore the dark recesses that served for refuge to holy men of old; or, to scale perilous heights in order to read and copy rock- inscriptions that have survived the storms of fifty, sixty, and even seventy generations. Others have gone forth with the nomad tribes of the desert, followed their flocks, travelled with their caravans, eaten in their tents, drank from their wells, lodged in their khans, and in the heat of day rested beneath the shade of their vines and fig trees. Others still have directed their chief attention to their social spirit and religious rites, their marriage songs and funeral waitings, their maxims and daily proverbs, their imagery of speech, and their idiomatic forms of expression. All these have returned laden with the rich results of their respective industry INTRODUCTION. H — results that have served either to confirm or to illustrate the sacred Scriptures at a thousand different points. Such is the " cloud of witnesses," such the numerous and diversified testimonies we have to the truth of the inspired writings. In short, it may now be safely affirmed that the materials are at hand — in other words, that evidences enough have already been actually discovered for the satisfactory confirmation of nearly every narrative, passage, fact, and event of essential importance in the whole Bible. But these testimonies and confirmations are widely scattered through a multitude of books — books treating of different subjects, written for different ends, and com- posed in different languages — and are, therefore, to a large extent out of the reach of the general reader. The great desideratum in this field has been, and still is, to have these multitudinous and diversified evidences collected and conveniently arranged. By this means only can a great part of them be made generally accessible; and in this way only can they be rendered available in their full and fair force to establish the credibility of the sacred volume as a whole. This is the task which the writer has undertaken in the present Work, namely, To gather from all the foregoing sources, and from others, all known testimonies, of whatever nature, that serve to confirm the Inspired Book; and to arrange them in a convenient order for readers in general. Here are pre- sented all the most important and direct evidences in support of the Bible which have been developed by the historian, the classical scholar, the astronomer, the geologist, the geographer, the archaeologist, the ethnogra- pher, the philologist, the chemist, the zoologist, the botanist — in a word, by the student of nearly every branch of modern science and research. This mass and variety of proofs and confirmations, it will be no presumption to say, have been reached and brought together by a course of reading and investigation far more extended than the circumstances of multitudes of Bible readers will permit them to hope to pursue for them- selves. To this class, such a volume as the present, it is believed, cannot but prove both interesting and profitable. The plan of the work is simple, and needs but little explanation. The passages of Scripture which receive confirmation are taken and produced in the book in the order in which they stand in the Bible throughout. Immediately under each of these passages are placed the testimonies to its truth or correctness. Each testimony is given in the exact words of its author or source, and followed by a full reference to the chapter or page of the work where it may be found, so that the reader can readily verify the evidence for himself. At the close of the Volume is placed a complete Index of the subjects 12 INTRODUCTION. mentioned in it, and also a list of the principal authorities, inscriptions and documents whose testimonies are adduced in it. The names of modern writers are followed by the Titles of their works which are quoted. To the names of the ancient authors is annexed, as nearly as # can be ascertained, the date or period at which they flourished, as upon this, in many instances, the value of their testimony must depend. Of the need and importance of a work of this character the writer entertains no doubt. To the Christian, whatever contributes to illustrate or confirm the teachings of God's Word is always welcomed, always interesting. And with them who are not Christians, no class of evi- dences will have greater weight than such as are presented in this book. Here are placed upon the stand Witnesses whom they can neither charge with prejudice, nor suspect of partiality. Here are produced evidences that none can refute, and none deny, unless they deny the testimony of their senses. In the hope, therefore, that the light of facts accumulated through so many ages, and scattered over so many lands, thus concen- trated into one focus, will serve to dissipate the doubts of the unbelieving, and to confirm the faith of the Christian, this Work, the product of years of toil, is now respectfully commended to the prayerful and candid consideration of both. H. W. M. " How long will man vex Heaven with unjust complaints ? Will he never open his eyes to the light, and his heart to the insinuations of Truth and Reason ? This Truth everywhere presents itself in radiant brightness, and he does not see it ! The voice of Reason strikes his ear, and he does not hear it ! Unjust man ! if you can for a moment suspend the delusion which fascinates your senses ; if your heart be capable of comprehending the language of argu- mentation, interrogate these ruins ! read the lessons which they present to you ! And yon sacred temples ! venerable tombs ! walls once glorious ! the witnesses of twenty different ages appear in the cause of Truth herself! . . . O names, forever glorious ! celebrated fields ! famous countries ! how replete is your aspect with sublime instruction ! How many profound truths are written on the surface of this earth ! Ye places that have witnessed the life of man in so many different ages, unveil the causes of his misfortunes, teach him true wisdom, and let the experi- ence of past ages become a mirror of instruction, and a germ of happiness to present and future generations." — Volney's Ruins of Empires. " The Shasters of the Hindoos contain false astronomy, as well as false physiology ; and the Koran of Mohammed distinctly avows the Ptolemaic system of the heavenly bodies; and so interwoven are these scientific errors with the religions of these sacred books that when you have proved the former you have disproved the latter. But The Bible, stating only facts, and adopting no system of human philosophy, has ever stood, and ever shall stand, in sublime simplicity and undecaying strength ; while the winds and the waves of conflicting human opinions roar and dash harmlessly around, and the wrecks of a thousand false systems of philosophy and religion are strewed along its base." — Prof. Edward Hitchcock's Highest Use of Learning. (13) HINDOO REPRESENTATIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. '"'■ "'■■' ■iiiii.ii-i- .■■.■ii..i.. J .n.n..intm ■J ■■■■,""V'!'-H"-",1,LII.I-'Jm'-I EGYPTIAN SYMBOLS OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH. (14) GENESIS; OR, The Generations of the Heavens and of the Earth. Reginald Stuart Poole, M. R, S. L., etc. — The Biblical Cosmogony stands alone, as of all ancient accounts of the origin of things the only one which is not, on the very face, irreconcilable with the truths of natural science. The cosmogonies of the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Greeks are utterly irreconcilable with natural truth ; yet more, are hopelessly opposed to it ; whereas that of the Hebrew Scriptures has not been proved to this day to contain an insurmountable difficulty. — The Genesis of Earth and Man, p. 8, n. William Fraser, LL. D. — As a historical record, the first chapter of Genesis is without a compeer. It is unapproached. Its first announcements distinguish the Bible from all other books. Its simplicity, its directness of statement, its boldness of conception, its subdued grandeur, are throughout conspicuous. Vast in its outline, it is yet so scrupulously strict in its minuter details, that it may be read without dubiety, not only in the midst of the exactest records of antiquity, but in the light of those modern discoveries in physical science which bear most directly on its statements. In reliableness and in consistency it stands alone. In the very first verse we have an announcement which distances all that natural science can reach or reveal. — Blending Lights, p. 1.5, 20, 22. THE BEGINNING. Genesis i: 1.— In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. t Sir William Thomson, F. R. S., etc.— The earth is filled with evidence that it has not been going on forever in the present state. — Geological Time, p. 16. Sir Charles Lyell, F..R. S., etc. — There is not an existing stratum in the body of the earth which Geology has laid bare, which cannot be traced back to a time when it was not ; and there is not an existing species of plants or animals which cannot be referred to a time when it had no place in the world. Their beginnings are discoverable in succeeding cycles of time. It can be demonstrated that man, also, had a beginning, and all the species contemporary with him; (i5) 16 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. and that, therefore, the present state of the organized world has not been sus- tained from eternity. — In Blending Lights, p. 26. Prof. William Whewell, D. D. — The existence of a resisting medium in space leads us towards a point which the Nebular Hypothesis assumes — a be- ginning of the present order of things. There must have been a commencement of the motions now going on in the solar system. Since these motions, when once begun, would be deranged and destroyed in a period which, however large, is yet finite, it is obvious we cannot carry their origin indefinitely back- wards in the range of past duration. The argument is, indeed, forced upon our minds, whatever view we take of the past history of the world. The doc- trine of a resisting medium once established, renders the idea of the earth's eternity untenable ; and compels us to go back to the origin, not only of the present course of the world, not only of the earth, but of the solar system itself; and thus sets us forth upon that path of research into the series of past causation, where we obtain no answer of which the meaning corresponds to out questions, till we rest in the conclusion of a most provident and most powerful Creating Intelligence. — Bridgeivater Treatise, American Ed., p. 112, 113. Prof. Pritchard, Oxford. — As to the idea of all things being potentially contained in atoms — our knowledge of these atomic forces, so far as it at pres- ent extends, does not leave us in serious doubt as to their origin; for there is a very strong presumptive evidence drawn from the results of the most modern scientific investigation that they are neither eternal nor the products of evo- lution. No philosopher of recent times was better acquainted than Sir John Herschel with the interior mechanism of nature. From his contemplation of the remarkably constant, definite, and restricted, yet various and powerful interactions of these elementary molecules, he was forced to the conviction that they possessed all the characteristics of manufactured articles. The ex- pression is memorable, accurate, and graphic ; it may become one of the ever- lasting possessions of mankind. Prof. Maxwell, a man whose mind has been trained by the mental discipline of the same noble university, arrives at the same conclusion ; but, as his knowledge has exceeded that of Herschel on this point, so he goes further in the same direction of thought. "No theory of evolution," he says, "can be formed to account for the similarity of the molecules throughout all time, and throughout the whole region of the stellar universe, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction. None of the processes of nature, since the time when nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent. We have reached the utmost limits of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that, because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent, it must have been created. These molecules continue this day as they were created, perfect in number and measure and weight, and from the ineffaceable characters impressed on them we may learn that those aspirations after truth in statement, and justice in action, which we reckon GENESIS I. 17 among our noblest attributes as men, are ours because they are the essential constituents of the image of Him, who in the beginning created not only the heaven and the earth but the materials of which heaven and earth consist." And this, my friends, this is the true outcome of the deepest, the most exact, and the most recent science of our age. A grander utterance has not come from the mind of a philosopher since the days when Newton concluded his "Principia," by his immortal scholium on the majestic personality of the Creator and Lord of the universe. — Address before the Church Congress, at Brighton, England. Principal J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S. — That the universe must have had a beginning no one now needs to be told. If any philosophical speculator ever truly held that there has been an eternal succession of phenomena, science has now completely negatived the idea by showing us the beginning of all things that we know in the present universe, and by establishing the strongest probabilities that even its ultimate atoms could not have been eternal. — Origin of the World, p. 88. William Fraser, LL. D. — By this positive exclusion of eternity from the existence of the universe, and by repelling the idea of accidental creation, the fact of a "beginning" is raised in the Bible not only above all the entangling speculations of recent philosophy, but above the boldest reasonings of modern scepticism. — Blending Lights, p. 23. PRIMEVAL CHAOS. Gen. i : 2. — And the earth was without form and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Principal J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S., F. G. S.— The material of our globe is held by many of the scientific to have existed at first in the form of an extended vaporous mass or cloud, spread out over a space nearly two thousand times greater in diameter than that which it now occupies. Within this mass, slowly and silently, the force of gravitation is compressing the particles in its giant hand and gathering the denser toward the centre, while heat is given forth on all sides from the condensing mass into the voids of space without. Little by little the denser and less volatile matters collect in the centre as a fluid molten globe, the nucleus of the future planet ; and in this nucleus the elements, obeying their chemical affinities hitherto latent, are arranging them- selves in compounds which are to constitute the future rocks. And now the atmosphere, still vast in bulk, and dark and misty in texture, contains only the water, chlorine, carbonic acid, sulphuric acid, and other more volatile sub- stances ; and as these gather in dense clouds at the outer surface, and pour in fierce corrosive rains upon the heated nucleus, combining with its materials, or •flashing again into vapor, " darkness," dense and gross, settles upon the vaporous deep. In the meantime, radiation, and the heat abstracted from the liquid nucleus by the showers of condensing material from the atmosphere, have so far cooled its surface that a crust of slag or cinder forms upon it. Broken again and again by the heavings of the ocean of fire, it at length sets 18 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. permanently, and receives upon its bare and blistered surface the ever-increasing aqueous and acid rain thrown down from the atmosphere, at first sending it all hissing and steaming back, but at length allowing it to remain. Then began the reign of "the waters" — a shoreless sea — filled with earthy and saline materials, thick and turbid, until these were permitted to settle to the bottom and form the first sediments and first stratified rocks. Perhaps no word-picture of this period of the first phase of mundane history can* ever equal the two neg- ative touches of the inspired penman — " without form and void " — a world des- titute of all its present order, and destitute of all that gives it life and anima- tion. — The Siory of the Earth and Man, p. 2-12. Hugh Miller. — During the Azoic period, ere life appears to have begun on our planet, the temperature of the earth's crust seems to have been so high that the strata, at first deposited apparently in water, passed into a semi-fluid state, became strangely waved and contorted, and assumed in its composition a highly crystalline character. A continuous stratum of steam, then, that attained to the height of even our present atmosphere, would wrap up the earth in a "dark- ness," gross and palpable as that of Egypt of old, a darkness through which even a single ray of light would fail to penetrate. And beneath this thick canopy, the unseen deep would literally boil as. a pot, wildly tempested from below ; while from time to time more deeply seated convulsions would upheave sudden to the surface vast tracts of semi-molten rock, soon again to disappear, and from which waves of bulk enormous would roll outwards to meet in wild conflict with the giant waves of other convulsions, or return to hiss and sputter against the intensely heated and fast foundering mass, whose violent upheaval had first elevated and sent them abroad. Such would be the probable state of things during the times of the earlier gneiss and mica schist deposits — times buried deep in that chaotic night which must have continued to exist for mayhap many ages after that beginning of things in which God created the heavens and the earth, and which preceded the first day. — The Testimony of the Rocks, p. 196, 197. FIRST DAY. Gen. i : 3. — And God said, Let there be light : and there was light. J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F..R. S., F. G. S.— With this fiat the actual work of reducing old chaos to order and life begins, and begins with scientific appropriateness. The Hebrew word used here for light includes the allied forces of heat and electricity. It represents that incomprehensible ether which vibrates, and whose vibrations are so regulated as to give light with its pris- matic colors, and heat with all its vast powers, and the .still more strange and wonderful actinic power which puts in motion all the vital machinery of plants, and so is the material source of life. If science can anywhere find evidence of design in the revelations of physical agencies, if it can anywhere find a stepping-stone to lift it from the grossness of atomic matter, surely it is here. It is a remarkable fact that Moses can distinguish light from luminaries, and that he attaches so great importance to the introduction of that marvelous GENESIS I. 19 etherial vibration (or luminiferous ether) to which we owe all the great vivi- fying powers of nature ; and that thus without any actual scientific teaching or committing himself to any theory, he falls into harmony with all that we know up to this time of Light, Heat and Electricity, all of which are included under the word he uses. — Nature and the Bible, p. 92, 94. William Fraser, LL. D. — The sublimity of the description in the Bible of the origin of Light has often been lost amid the sneers of the infidel and the atheist. " How could there be light before the sun?" was one of the triumphant ques- tions which Voltaire and his followers rarely failed to press upon the Bible student. But the mystery has been receding as discovery has advanced. That there may be light without the visible sun is now admitted ; and it is not going further than the facts warrant to suppose that light of old did thus exist. When it was said, " Let there be light," there was not so much a new creation as the evolution of a new fact, or rather the presentation of a new condition of things in the already created heaven and earth. This view is sustained by recent inferences to which observation of the sun has led. — Ble7iding Lights, p. Baron Humboldt. — Light is developed not only through the influence of the sun upon the planets, but also through an independent agency belonging to the planets themselves. The phenomenon of Northern Light derives most of its im- portance from the fact that the earth becomes self-luminous, and that in the capacity of a planet, besides the light which it receives from the central body, the sun, it shows itself capable, in itself, of developi?ig light. The intensity of the terrestrial light exceeds somewhat, in cases of the brightest colored radiation toward the zenith, the light of the moon in its first quarter. Occasionally printed characters have been read by this light, without difficulty. This almost uninterrupted terrestrial development of light in the polar regions of the earth, leads us to th^ interesting phenomenon presented by Venus. The portion of this planet which is not illumined by the sun, often shines with a phosphorescent light of its own. It is not improbable that the Moon, Jupiter, and the Comets shine with a light of their own, in addition to reflected solar light, noticeable as such through the polariscope. Without speaking of the problematical but very common species of cloud-lightning, in which a heavy lowering cloud may be seen to shine with an uninterrupted flickering light for many minutes together, we still meet with other instances of terrestrial development of light in our atmosphere. — Cosmos, Vol. L, p. 207. Prof. Elias Loomis, LL. D. — Auroras exhibit an infinite variety of appear- ances, and their duration is very variable. Some last only an hour or two ; others last all night, and occasionally they appear on two successive nights under circumstances which lead us to believe that, were it not for the light of the sun, an aurora might be seen almost uninterruptedly every clear night. In the neigh- borhood of Hudson's Bay, the aurora is seen for months almost without cessa- tion. Auroras are sometimes observed simultaneously over large portions of the globe. The aurora of August 28th, 1859, was seen over more than 140 degrees 20 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. of longitude, from California to Eastern Europe, and from Jamaica on the south, to an unknown distance in British America on the north. The aurora of September 2d, 1859, was seen at the Sandwich Islands; it was seen through- out the whole of North America and Europe ; and the magnetic disturbances indicated its presence throughout all Northern Asia, although the sky was over- cast, so that at many places it could not be seen. An aurora was seen at the same time in South America and New Holland. — Treatise on Meteoi'ology, p. 177. G. H. von Schubert. — May not that polar light, which is called an aurora of the north, be the last glimmering light of a departed age of the world, in which the whole earth was enclosed in an expanse of aerial fluid, from which, through the agency of the electro-magnetic forces, streamed forth an incomparably greater degree of light, accompanied at the same time with animating warmth, almost in a similar mode to what still occurs in the luminous atmosphere of our sun? — Wettgeb.,p. 218. Prof. John Henry Kurtz, D. D. — Let us not be understood to assert that that light which, according to the Mosaic account, was created before the sun, was a northern light, or a phenomenon related to it ; we desire only to show (from facts such as the above) that even yet, since the establishment of the rela- tion which now exists between the sun and the earth, the latter still possesses in itself a capacity of developing light; and that there is nothing to prevent us from ascribing to it prior to that point of time, the same capacity in a degree much greater and vastly more magnificent and effective. — The Bible and Astronomy, p. 431. SECOND BAY. Gen. i: 6. — And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Principal J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S., etc. — The statements in Gene- sis respecting the expanse, or " firmament," suppose a previous condition of the earth, in which it was encompassed with a cloudy, vaporous mantle, stretching continuously upward from the ocean, and not divided by the film of-clear trans- parent air, which in all but a few exceptional cases now separates the clouds above from the sea below. Such a condition probably antedates geological time ; yet it is not unknown to scientific theory. If, as seems probable, the earth was once in an intensely heated state, a time would come, in the process of cooling, when a heated ocean would send up abundant vapors, producing a perpetual mist or fog to be constantly condensed by the cold of space without into con- tinual rains. The change from this to the present state of the earth would introduce that nice and delicate balancing of evaporation under the influence of the sun, and condensation from the radiation of heat into space and the mix- ture of air at various temperatures, which now gives us the stratum of air in which we live and move, the beauty of the azure sky and its floating clouds, and the regulated supply of fertilizing rain. — Nature and the Bible, p. 51, 52. William Fraser, LL. D. — This harmonises with what is known of the pro- ves of evaporation to which the clouds are subject as they float above us — Jakes GENESIS I. 21 of water in the azure vault. The firmament sustains the waters collected in its scattered clouds, and separates them from those resting on the surface of the earth. — Blending Lights, p. 71. Professor E. Loomis, LL. D. — Rain is but the condensed vapor of the air, and this condensation can only be caused by cooling the air below the temper- ature of the dew-point. And there is no mode in which this ca"» be done so readily as by forcing the air up to an elevation of one or two miles above the earth's surface. The temperature of the air sinks about thirty-five degrees in two miles of elevation ; and if air from the earth's surface should be forced up to this height, a large portion of the vapor which is carried up with the air must be condensed, and fall in rain. The average annual fall of rain in the State of New York is thirty-seven inches (that is, a sufficient quantity to convert the entire State into a lake more than three feet deep). In Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky the average annual fail amounts to forty-eight inches; in Alabama and Louisiana, to fifty-six inches. The average rate increases as we advance toward the south; in latitude 20 , it amounts to seventy inches; in latitude io°, to eighty-five inches; at the Equator to 104 inches. On the island of Guadeloupe, near the summit of a mountain of 5,000 feet elevation, the fall of rain, in 1828, was 292 inches, while near the base it amounted to no less than 127 inches. Along the western coast of Hindostan runs a range of mountains whose summits are deluged with rain, the average amounting to 254 inches. At Vera Cruz, 278 inches of rain have been known to fall in a single year, and the mean annual fall is 185 inches. On the southern slope of the Himalaya Mountains, at a height of 4,500 feet, there have been registered in a single year 610 inches or rain; and of this 147 inches fell in the month of June. In India fifteen inches of rain have fallen in a single day; while at several places in the vicinity of Switzerland thirty inches have been reported to fall in a single day. — Treatise on Meteorology, 110-119. J. W. Dawson, LL. D,, F. R. S., etc. — The quantity of water suspended in the atmosphere is enormous; and the rains, the springs, and rivers which fertilize the earth and sustain its inhabitants, are only the overflowings of this vast aerial reservoir, upheld by the laws established by God. — Nature and the Bible, p. 53. John Kitto, D. D. , F. S. A. — With these facts of nature before us, it is easy to apprehend what is meant by the sacred historian when he tells us that ''the firmament divided the waters that were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament." One portion of the dense watery shroud which had invested the surface of the earth, the lighter particles thereof, was exhaled, rarefied and carried up into the clouds, remaining suspended in the upper regions of ether; the remaining and heavier portion was at the same time forced down, and merged into the waters that covered the earth; and the ex- panse left void by their separation is the expanse or "firmament" which formed the work of the second day. — Daily Bible Illustrations, Vol. J., p. 24. 22 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. THIRD DAY. Gen. i: 9. — And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear : and it was so. J. W*. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S., F. G. S. — Under the primeval ocean were formed the first stratified rocks, from the substances precipitated from its waters, which must have been loaded with solid matter. In the meantime all is not at rest in the interior of the new-formed earth. Under the crust vast oceans of molten rock may still remain, but a solid interior nucleus is being crystalized in the centre, and the whole interior globe is gradually shrinking. At length this process advances so far that the exterior crust, like a sheet of ice from below which the water has subsided, is left unsupported; and with terrible earthquake-throes it sinks downward, wrinkling up into huge folds (or ranges of lifted land), between which are vast sunken areas, into which the waters sub- side. So arose the first dry land. — The Story of the. Earth and Man, p. 12. Prof. Edward Hitchcock, D. D., LL. D. — The present continents of the globe (except, perhaps, some high mountains) have been for long periods be- neath the ocean, and have been subsequently elevated. Proof 1. Two-thirds at least of these continents are covered with rocks, often several thousand feet thick, abounding in marine organic remains; which must have been quietly deposited, along with the sand, mud, and calcareous or ferruginous matter in which they are enveloped, and which could have accumulated but slowly. 2. Some very high mountains contain marine fossils at or near their summits. For example, there are marine shells of cretaceous age upon the tops of the Pyrenees; cretaceous and tertiary fossils upon the summits of the Rocky Moun- tains, and foraminifera of cretaceous age high up on the flanks of Mt. Lebanon. — Elementary Geology, p. 370. G. Chaplin Child, M. D. — Mountains exhibit wonderful proofs of the force displayed in the arrangement of the surface of the earth. Geology tells us that many of them, like the lofty peaks of the Andes, or Ailsa Craig, or Teneriffe, have been cast forth as liquid lava from the interior of the earth by the force of fire. Others, again, though deposited originally at the bottom of the seas, have been lifted as it were on the back of other rocks, so as now to form lofty ridges. There are limestone strata of marine origin, labelled with shells iden- tical with others found in low-lying beds near Paris, which are now placed at a height of 10,000 feet above the ocean, crowning the summit of the Diablerets among the Swiss Alps. Examples of similar elevations are met with among the Himalayas, in Tahiti, and elsewhere. Many mountain masses and level strata consist chiefly of the remains of animals that formerly existed on the globe. Many species of beautiful marbles owe their variegated" markings to the shells which successive generations of creatures built up and left behind. And one feels astounded at the profusion of ancient life revealed by those " medals of creation. " — Benedicite, p. 227. Prof. William Buckland, D. D. — All observers admit that the strata were formed beneath the water, and have been subsequently converted into dry land ; GENESIS I. 23 and whatever may have been the agents that caused the movements of the gross unorganized materials of the globe, we find sufficient evidence of prospective wisdom and design, in the benefits resulting from these obscure and distant revolutions, to future races of terrestrial creatures, and more especially to man. — Bridgewater Treatise, p. 44. Gen. I: 10. — And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He Seas ; and God saw that it was good. Prof. Arnold Guyot. — In inorganic nature, the bodies are only simple ag- gregations of parts, homogeneous or heterogeneous, and differing among them- selves, the combination of which seems to be accidental. Nevertheless, to say nothing of the law that assigns to each species of mineral a particular form cf crystalization, we see that every aggregation, fortuitous in appearance, may constitute a whole, with limits, and a determinate form which, without having anything of absolute necessity, gives to it, however, the first lineaments of indi- viduality. Such are the various geographical regions, the islands, peninsulas and continents. Each of these terrestrial masses, considered as a whole, as an individual, has a particular disposition of its parts, of the forms which belong only to it, a situation relatively to the rays of the sun, and with respect to the seas or the neighboring masses, not found identically repeated in any other. In considering them simply in a geological point of view, it may appear quite accidental that such a plain should or should not have arisen from the bosom of the waters; that such a mountain rises at this place or that; that such a conti- nent should be cut up into peninsulas, or piled into a compact mass, accom- panied by or deprived of islands. But in physics, neither of these circum- stances is unimportant. Simple examples, without further demonstration, will be sufficient to set this in a clear light. Is the question of the forms of contour? Nothing characterizes Europe better than the variety of its indentations, of its peninsulas, and of its islands. Suppose, for a moment, that beautiful Italy, and Greece with its entire Archipel- ago, were added to the central mass of the continent, and augmented Germany or Russia by the number of square miles they contain ; this change of form would not give us another Germany, but we should have an Italy and a Greece the less. Unite with the body of Europe all its islands and peninsulas into one compact mass, and instead of this continent, so rich in various elements, you will have a New Holland with all its uniformity. Do we look to the forms of relief, of height? Is it a matter of indifference whether an entire country is lifted into the dry and cold regions of the atmos- phere, like the central table-land of Asia, or is placed on the level of the ocean? See, under the same sky, the warm and fertile plains of Hindostan, adorned with the brilliant vegetation of the tropics, and the cold and desert plateaus of Upper Tibet ; compare the burning region of Vera Cruz and its fevers, with the lofty plains of Mexico and its perpetual spring ; the immense forests of the Amazon, where vegetation puts forth all its splendors, and the desolate paramos of the summits of the Andes, and you have the answer. 24 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. And the relative position ? Do not the three peninsulas of the south of Europe owe to their position their mild and soft climate, their lovely landscape, their numerous relations, and their common life? Is it not to their situation that the two great peninsulas of India are indebted for their rich nature, and • the conspicuous part one of them, at least, has played in all ages ? Place them on the north of their continents : Italy and Greece become Scandinavia, and India a Kamtschatka. All Europe is indebted for its temperate atmosphere to its position relatively to the great marine atmospheric currents, and to the vicinity of the burning regions of Africa. Place it at the east of Asia, it will be only a frozen peninsula. Suppose the Andes, transferred to the eastern coast of South America, hindered the trade wind from bearing the vapors of the ocean into the in- terior of the continent, and the plains of the Amazon and Paraguay would be nothing but desert. In the same manner, if the Rocky Mountains bordered the eastern coast of North America, and closed against the nations of the East and of Europe the entrance to the rich valley of the Mississippi ; or if this immense chain ex- tended from east to west across the northern part of this continent, and barred the passage of the polar winds, which now rush unobstructed over these vast plains ; — let us say even less ; if preserving all the great present features of this continent, we suppose only that the interior plains were slightly inclined towards the north, and the Mississippi emptied into the Frozen Ocean, who does not see that, in these various cases, the relations of warmth and moisture, the climate, in a word, and with it the vegetation and the animal world, would undergo the most important modifications, and that these changes of form and relative posi- tion would have an influence greater still upon the destinies of human society, both in the present and in the future ? But to contemplate the form and elevation, the relations and functions of the great masses of dry land, as it was elevated from the deep, from a physical stand- point merely, is not enough. To understand and appreciate them at their full value, to study them in their true point of view, we must rise to a higher posi- tion. We must elevate ourselves to the moral world to understand the physical world ; the physical world has no meaning except by and for the moral world. The earth was made to be the abode of man. — Earth and Man, p. 24-29. Gen. i : 11. — And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the. earth : and it was so. Prof. John Tyndall, LL. D., F. R. S. — There are the strongest grounds for believing that during a certain period of its history the earth was not, nor was it fit to be, the theatre of life. Whether this was ever a nebulous period, or a merely molten period, does not much matter — its condition was unfit for either animal or vegetable life. — Fragments of Science, p. 158. Prof. Sedgwick. — It is beyond dispute, and is proved by the physical re- searches of the earth, that there, the visible forms of organic life (plantal as well as animal), had a beginning in time. — Discourse, p. 17. GENESIS I. 25 Prof. Huxley, LL. D., F. R. S. — As the result of his experiments, Francesco Redi, a man of the widest knowledge and most versatile abilities, reached the conclusion, that no life, animal or vegetable, is of spontaneous generation. Omne vivum ex vivo, no life without antecedent life, aphoristically sums up his doctrine. The researches of Schroeder and Dusch, in 1854, and of Schroeder alone, in 1859, confirmed this doctrine by experiments which are simply refine- ments upon those of Redi. And the last link necessary to complete its demon- ctration was supplied by M. Pasteur in those beautiful researches which will ever render his name famous ; and which, in spite of all attacks upon them, appear to me now, as they did seven years ago, to be models of accurate experimenta- tion and logical reasoning. — Lay Sermons, No. XV. William Fraser, LL. D. — Plant-life — whence is it? How has it appeared? It is a result beyond physical law. Mark how it acts. Vital force overcomes the law of gravitation, and while it uses chemical combinations, is in its origin independent of them. To all intents and purposes, plant-life is, in relation to the inorganic world, miraculous or supernatural. Higher laws are framed which suspend or modify chemical and mechanical forces. All that chemistry has achieved amid transformations which often startle, and always instruct us, has failed to organize a single form in which life may take up its abode. Life makes its own form, and plies its own force. Plant-life was a new thing in our world. It came into or upon it, supernaturally, not from it. — God said, Let the earth bring forth. — Blending Lights, p. 342. Gen. i: 12. — And the earth brought forth grass, and herbs yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind : and God saw that it was good. Prof. James D. Dana, M. A., LL. D. — It strikes us naturally with wonder, that even in senseless plants, without the emotional repugnance of instinct, and with reproductive organs that are all outside, the free winds being often the means of transmission, there should be rigid law sustained against intermixture. The supposed cases of perpetuated fertile hybridity are so exceedingly few, as almost to condemn themselves as no true examples of an abnormity so abhor- rent to the system. They violate a principle so essential to the integrity of the plant-kingdom, and so opposed to Nature's whole plan, that we rightly demand long and careful study before admitting the exceptions. — Quoted in What is Truth? p. 189. William Fraser, LL. D.— The brief description of Moses is (in v. 12) repeated with emphasis, as if it were intended to be noticed. Its aptness, as related to Botanical science, will be acknowledged even by those who refuse to admit otherwise its importance. While the Linnsean system of classification according to distinctions in the flower, was brought as near perfection as possi- ble, and served useful ends, it was felt to be inadequate, and in some degree unscientific. Botanists strove to establish a more natural method, and they have succeeded by making the character of the seeds and other affinities of structure the basis of classification. This was found to be so satisfactory, that not long ago it was regarded as another trophy of science. It was, indeed, a new-height 26 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. gained, or rather an old one reached ; for Moses was seated there with that very principle written on his scroll, more than three thousand years ago. His distinctions are the same ; plants are classified by him according to their "seed" and "kind" or structure; he intimates a basis which is sufficient for every natural division, by whatever route it may be reached, whether by the elementary, the nutritive, or the reproductive function, and to which the labors of Jussieu, De Candolle, Endlicher, Lindley, and others, have added nothing essentially new. — B/ending Lights, p. 48. The Compiler. — And God saw that it was good. — Nothing can be more astonishing than the unbounded variety of trees, herbs and grasses that furnish and adorn the earth ; nor can anything more clearly exhibit the abounding goodness of the Creator. Nothing that either the necessity, or the improve- ment, or the pleasure of His creatures could demand, appears to be wanting. Grasses and herbs, in endless diversity, abound, to meet the various tastes and habits of all living things. Fruit-plants and fruit-trees, adapted to every climate and soil, proffer food to man and beast and bird, in every form and of every flavor. Flowers to delight us with their beauties, and to regale us with their odors. Shrubs and vines, without number, to shade and adorn our habitations. Add to all these the forest-trees, which offer to man timber fitted for all the purposes of art and industry — the soft pine and poplar ; the hard oak, beech and holly ; the light cedar and lime ; the heavy ebony and lignum vitae ; the flowery mahogany and rosewood ; the tough hickory and elm; the incorruptible teak, and durable yew; and a hundred other kinds adapted both for use and ornament. What munificence is here displayed ! And the grass, the general vegetative covering given to the earth — in this, as in all else, the Divine wisdom and goodness are equally conspicuous. Upwards of three hundred genera, and more than five thousand different species of grass, grow upon the surface of the earth. This needful sustenance of our herds and flocks, and of the beasts of the forests, is everywhere spread over its dusky soil, and is so constituted as to grow without care or cultivation; nay, in spite of every kind of abuse and violence. Like a living carpet, it covers and adorns the face of Nature. Self-propagating and self-perpetuating, it supplies the wants of every passing age, with undiminished abundance. Though ever trodden upon, and fed upon, it still lives. Lay it low to-day, and to-morrow it is stronger than before. Cut it down, and it renews and multiplies its shoots with fresher vigor. Crush it with the foot, and it sends up richer perfume. Bury it through all the winter months, beneath ice and snow, and in the spring it starts forth with all the glowing verdancy of its first creation. And then the beauty of the grass — in every landscape it is the most conspicuous object, the ground color on which nature embroiders her varied patterns, and from the midst of which the gay hues of flowers 'come forth in greater brilliancy, by the force of contrast, to arrest the admiring gaze. " The grass of the field : " the very sound carries in it all the charms of nature, all the delights of spring and summer; the silent scented paths ; the green banks of the murmuring brook ; the waving meadows ; the GENESIS I. 27 pastures of the meditative shepherd; the verdant lawns, glittering with the pearls of early dew. What a concourse of wonders and beauties and blessings, have we, then, even in the grass, that we so heedlessly and constantly trample under foot ! How true and appropriate the words that close the record of the third creative day — "And God saw that it was good." — Science and the Bible, p. 202-204. FOURTH BAY. Gen. i: 14, 15. — And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night ; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years : and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth : and it was so. John Kitto, D. D., F. S. A. — The dry land has appeared; the waters have retired to their ocean beds ; the scene is invested with all the variety and beauty of vegetation. What more is wanting? More light; by the full manifestation of those bright luminaries, that as yet are hidden by the dense clouds above, which their rays have not been able to dissipate and rarefy into pure azure sky. — Bib. Illustrations, p. 27. Hugh Miller. — That lower stratum of the heavens, formerly occupied by seething steam, or gray, smoke-like fog, has been cleared and made trans- parent, only in an upper region do clouds appear. But there, in the higher strata of the atmosphere they lie, thick and manifold, an upper sea of great waves, separated from those beneath by the transparent firmament, and, like them, too, impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A mighty advance has taken place in creation, its most notable feature being the existence of a trans- parent atmosphere; of a firmament stretched out over the earth, that separates the waters above from the waters below. And now, again, the Creator speaks, and those manifold clouds break up, disperse, and the stars look out from open- ings of deep unclouded blue ; and as day rises, and the planet of morning pales in the east, the broken cloudlets are transmuted from bronze into gold, and anon the gold becomes fire, and at length the glorious sun arises out of the sea, and enters on his course rejoicing. It is a brilliant day; the waves of a deeper and softer blue than before, dance and sparkle in the light; the earth, with little else to attract the gaze, has assumed a garb of brighter green; and as the sun declines amid even richer glories than those which had encircled his rising, the moon appears full orbed in the east, to the human eye the second great luminary of the heavens, and climbs slowly to the zenith as night ad- vances, shedding its mild radiance on land and sea. — Test, of Rocks, 207-209. Gen. i: 16. — And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night : He made the stars also. Robert Boyle, F. R. S. — In almost all ages and countries the generality of philosophers and contemplative men were persuaded of the existence of a Deity from the consideration of the phenomena of the universe ; whose fabric and conduct they rationally concluded could not justly be ascribed either to chance or to any other cause than a Divine Being. — Tract on the high Veneration Man' s Intellect owes to God. 28 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. Idem. — I am by all means for encouraging the contemplation of the celestial part of the universe, and the shining globes that adorn it, and especially the sun and moon, in order to raise our admiration of the stupendous power and wisdom of Him who was able to frame such immense bodies; and notwith- standing their vast bulk and scarce conceivable rapidity, keep them for so many ages constant both to the lines and degrees of their motion, without interfering with one another. — Essay on Final Causes. Sir Isaac Newton. — This beautiful system of suns, planets, and comets, could have its origin in no other way than by the purpose and command of an intelligent and powerful Being. He governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as the Lord of the universe. — Optics, scholium in fine. Colin Maclaurin. — Such an exquisite structure of things, as the Solar System, could only arise from the contrivance and powerful influences of an intelligent, free, and most potent Agent. — Account of Newton's Philosophy -, p. 407. William Whewell, M. A., F. R. S. — These magnitudes and proportions of the universe which leave our powers of conception far behind ; that ever expanding view which is brought before us, of the scale and mechanism, the riches and magnificence, the population and activity of creation ; may reasonably serve to enlarge and elevate our conceptions of the Maker and Master of all \ to feed an ever-growing admiration of His wonderful nature ; and to excite a desire to be able to contemplate more steadily, and conceive less inadequately, the scheme of his government and the operation of his power. — Bridgewater Treatise, p. 146. Sir John Herschel, D. C. L., F. R. S. — The greater Light to rule the day. What I am going to say about the sun will consist of a series of statements so enormous in , all their proportions, that I dare say, some maybe disposed to regard them as incredible as the mythical stories of the Hindoos. And yet there is nothing more certain in modern science than the truth of these state- ments. The sun is the centre of that system of planetary worlds, of which our world is one. By his powerful and all-pervading attraction he holds and guides all these in their appointed orbits, though moving with inconceivable velocities, and at the distance of hundreds and even thousands of millions of miles from him. His diameter is not less than 882,000 miles; his mass or weight is equal to 360,000 times that of the earth; while in bulk he exceeds it 1,331,000 times. The sun is the dispenser of light and warmth to the whole system, as well as the centre of attraction. But how shall I attempt to convey any conception of the scale on which the great work of warming and lighting is carried on in the sun ? All word-painting must break down, and it is only by bringing before you the consideration of great facts in the simplest language, that there is any chance of doing it. The quantity of light and heat that falls upon one square mile of the hot deserts of the equator is great ; yet upon the whole sphere of our globe there falls without intermission 50,000,000 times that quantity. GENESIS I. 29 What then must be the amount that descends on the vastly larger globes of Jupiter and Saturn? But take all the planets together, great and small; the light and heat they receive is only one-227 millionth part of the whole quantity thrown out by the sun. All the rest escapes into free space, and is lost among the stars ; or does there some other work that we know nothing about. The temperature or intensity of heat at the surface of the sun is found, by calculation, to be more than 90,000 times greater than the intensity of sunshine here on our globe at noon and under the equator, a heat far greater than suffi- cient to melt gold, and even platina, into liquid. The heat thrown out from every square yard of the sun's surface is equal to that which would be pro- duced by burning on that square yard six tons of coal per hour, and keeping up constantly to that rate of consumption. The most brilliant and beautiful light which can be artificially produced is that of a ball of quicklime kept violently hot by a flame of mixed ignited oxygen and hydrogen gases playing on its sur- face. This is of an intensity far too great for the eye unprotected. Yet the sun gives out a light 146 times more intense. Every ray of light which comes from the sun is not a simple but a compound thing; it may be separated, split, sub-divided, not into four, but into many hun- dreds, nay thousands, of perfectly distinct rays or things, or rather of three dis- tinct sorts or species of rays; of which one sort affects the eyes as light; one the sense of feeling and the thermometer as heat; and one the chemical composition of everything it falls upon, and which produces all the effects of photography. A ray of sunlight is a world in miniature, and if I were to set down all that experi- ment has revealed to us of its nature and constitution, it would take more vol- umes than there are pages in this lecture. The sun not only sways the whole planetary system by his gravitating force, and cheers and animates it by his light and heat, but pours forth also a subtle yet powerful magnetic influence upon its every member. The earth, during certain agitations in the sun, has been thrown into a perfect convulsion of elec- tro-magnetism; creating the most wonderful auroras in the heavens, and thrill- ing the whole frame of nature. The solid globe of the sun is wrapped in a luminous atmosphere. This, at times, appears perforated with apertures of various forms and sizes, that seem like so many dark spots on his surface. Such spots, embracing an area of between seven and eight hundred millions of square miles, are by no means uncommon. One spot which I measured in the year 1837 occupied no less than 3,780 millions; and the black space or "umbra" in the middle of one, which was very nearly round, would have allowed the earth to drop through it leaving a thousand miles clear of contact on every side: and many instances of much larger spots than there are on record. What are we to think, then, of the awful scale of hurricane and turmoil and fiery tempest which can in a few days totally change the form of such a region, break it up into distinct parts, open up great abysses in one part, such as that I have just described, and fill up others beside them? 30 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. Such, then, is the scale of things with which we become familiar when we contemplate the sun. In what has been said I have been more anxious to dwell upon facts than theories, and rather to supply the imaginations of my readers with materials for forming a just conception of the stupendous mag- nificence of this member of God's creation, than to puzzle them with physical and mathematical reasonings and arguments. — Lectures on Scientific Subjects, No. II. Sir John Herschel. — The lesser light to rule the night. — The moon, though apparently about the same size as the sun, is, in reality, far smaller, her diameter being only one four-hundredth part of that of the sun, and the light of her full-orbed face but one three-hundred-thousandth part of his light. — See Out- lines of Astronomy, Arts. 404, 417. Gen. i : 17. — And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth. G. Chaplin Child, M. D. — Who can adequately appreciate the evidences of Power, Wisdom, and Beneficence crowded into this glorious creation, and how little do they comprehend its full value who see nothing in it beyond its convenience or its beauty ! Light is an essential condition of animated nature — the pivot on which life turns. All that lives upon the earth lives by light. Without it plants could not grow, or assimilate their food, or breathe, or purify the air ; and, without plants, animals must perish. — Benedicite, p. 97. The Compiler. — And God saw that it was good. — We are constantly par- takers of a thousand benefits that flow from the "great light" that rules the day. The rays of the sun are the ultimate cause of almost every motion which takes place on the face of the earth. By its heat are produced all winds, and all those electrical disturbances we call thunder-storms, which purify the atmosphere we breathe. By its heat also the waters of the ocean ascend in vapors, travel through the air, descend in showers, irrigate the land, supply the springs, and form the rivers. By its vivifying action vegetables are enabled to draw their support from the soil and the air, to put forth their blossoms, to ripen their fruits and seeds, and to become, in their time, the support of man and beast. Through its illuminating power we enjoy the inestimable advan- tages, and receive all the undefinable pleasures of vision. Every animal, every plant, owns that life and health are due to its light, and all living things rejoice in its presence. Foreseeing these and ten thousand other beneficent results that would flow from the celestial luminaries, rightly did the Great Creator pronounce them "good." — Science and the Bible, p. 254. FIFTH DAY. Gen. i : 20. — And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hatii life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. J W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S. — It will be observed that, according to Genesis, all the arrangements of the inorganic world were perfected, and the dominion of what geologists term "existing causes" fully introduced before the creation of animals. Further, a whole creative aeon elapsed between the GENESIS I. 31 completion of these arrangements, as far as the earth was concerned, and that event. The first animals are produced by the waters; but these waters are not now the shoreless ocean of the first day. They include depths and shallows of the sea, estuaries, and probably lakes and fresh water streams as well. Thus they afford all the conditions required for a varied and abundant aquatic fauna. — Nature and the Bible, p. 114. W. Fraser, LL. D. — Moses tells us that the lowest forms of life commenced to exist; Plants first, Animals next. This is as it ought to be. . Plants drawing their nourishment from inorganic substances were first created; and as anima's could live only on plants or animals, they were next introduced. Vegetable form", as they spread, act on the carefully prepared materials in the soil and water; they manufacture food for themselves, and, storing it up in their own fabric, they provide support for the succeeding animals. The Bible record thus harmonizes with that which science has shown to be necessary. Whence all this accuracy? Can it possibly be the outcome of chance? — Blending Lights, p. 47. Principal J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S. — It is remarkable that both the record of Nature and the record of the Bible concur in ascribing the origin and earliest existence of animal life to the sea, where we are told there are "creep- ing things innumerable." The sea is even yet the great storehouse of animal life, and it would seem for long geological ages to have been the only theatre of its development. This great cosmical truth, revealed to the ancient Hebrew prophet, is not without its scientific significance. In a physiological point of view, it indicates the important fact that the conditions of animal life are easier in the sea than on the land. There both the most minute and the grandest forms of life can find suitable conditions, and there the feebler tissues and the less energetic vitality can succeed in the battle of life. In its geological relations, it shows -that it was necessary that the land itself, to be suitable to the support of the higher forms of life, must be born from the sea, and that the action of marine organisms in heaping up beds of their skeletons was one of the necessary prepa- rations for the actual condition of our continents. Both records give us a grand procession of dynasties of life, beginning from the lower forms and culminating in man. — Nature and the Bible, p. 118. Prof. H. B. Tristram, LL. D., F. R. S. — Fishes are included in the first chap- ter of Genesis among the moving creatures created on the fifth day, along with great whales (reptiles) and birds. They are thus set forth as having been brought into existence prior to the inhabitants of the dry land. The researches of geology have illustrated this order of creation in a striking manner. Fishes, as they are the lowest class in organization of any of the vertebrate animals, so they are the earliest to appear in the strata of which the crust of the earth is composed. In the Old Red Sandstone rocks a few species of Ganoid and Pla- coid fishes are found; and they become more numerous in the more recent strata, until they reach their full development at the end of the Secondary Period or the Chalk epoch, just as warm-blooded mammals or quadrupeds 32 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. were first beginning to predominate on the earth. Thus geological research corroborates the order of sequence in the Mosaic record, testifying that "the moving creature that hath life" appeared upon the earth in the waters long before it existed on the dry land. Let the waters bring forth the moving creature and fowl that may fly. — Fish, reptiles and birds are combined in the creation of this day, and all are said to be produced from the water. And it is very noticeable that certain peculiarities are common to them all. All these classes of animals are oviparous, or bring forth their young from eggs or spawn, whilst the creations of the sixth day bring forth their young alive. Besides this point of affinity between the different orders of the fifth day, microscopists assure us that the globules, of the blood of birds and fishes, when closely examined, are seen to be the same, and do not at all resemble the globules of the blood of mammalia, or animals which sprang from the earth on the sixth day. — Natural History of the Bible, p. 282, 283. Gen. i : 21. — And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged^ fowl after his kind. J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S., etc. — Let us pause here a moment to con- template the greatness of the fact we have been studying — the introduction into our world of the earliest known vertebrate animals which could open their nostrils and literally "breathe the breath of life." All previous animals that we know had respired in the water by means of gills or similar apparatus. Now we have animals which must have been able to draw in the vital air into capaciou3 chambered lungs, and with this power must have enjoyed a far higher and more active style of vitality ; and must have possessed the faculty of uttering truly vocal sounds. What wondrous possibilities unknown to these creatures, perhaps only dimly perceived by such rational intelligences as may have watched the growth of our young world, were implied in these gifts ! It is one of the remarkable points in the history of creation in Genesis, that this step of the creative work is emphatically marked. Of all the creatures we have noticed up to this point, it is stated that God said, "Let the waters bring forth;" but it is said that " God created (not whales but) great reptiles " — taninim. No doubt these great taninim culminated in the succeeding Mesozoic age, but their first introduction dates as far back as the Carboniferous ; and this introduction was emphatically a creation, as being the commencement of a new feature among living beings. — Story of the Earth and Man, p. 150. H. B. Tristram, M. A., LL. D., F. R. S., etc. — In the summary of the history of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, birds are described as being brought into existence after fishes and sea-monsters. This position of birds in the Mosaic record is remarkably in accordance with the geological chronology of their appearance. The earliest traces of birds yet discovered are in the Triassic period ; and it is only in the Chalk period, just after the reign of the great sea- monsters and reptiles of the Wealden, that birds appear to any extent in the fossil remains. — Natural History of the Bible, p. 156. Hugh Miller. — God created every living creature after his kind. The GENESIS I. 33 infidel seeks to develop fishes of a higher order out of those of a lower by insensible and fortuitous variation. He substitutes progression for Deity; Geology robs him of his god. — Old Red Sandstone, p. 41. Prof. Agassiz. — While it may be said in a general sense that lower forms have preceded higher ones, it is not true that all the earlier animals were simpler than the latter. On the contrary, many of the lower animals were introduced under more highly organized forms than they have ever shown since, and have dwindled afterward. Animals that should be ancestors, if simplicity of structure is to characterize the first-born, are known to be of later origin ; the more com- plicated forms have frequently appeared first, and the simpler ones later, and this in hundreds of instances. The Development assertion does not bear serious examination. It is just one of those fancied results following the disclosure or presentation of a great law which captivates the mind, and leads it to take that which it wishes to be true for Truth. — Lectures before Afuseum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, No. XII. St. George Mivart, F. R. S. — Great whales after their kind. Those remark- able fossil reptiles, the Ichthyosauria and Plesiosauria, extended through the secondary period, probably over the greater part of the globe ; yet no single tran- sitional form has yet been met with in spite of the multitudinous individuals pre- served. The same is true with their modern representatives, the Cetacea, or whales. — Genesis of Species, p. 146. H. B. Tristram, LL. D., F. R. S. — Every winged Jowl after his kind. — Birds are the most distinctive and best characterized class in the whole animal' kingdom. There is a constancy in the nature of their covering, which does not admit of the variations found in mammals, reptiles and fishes ; for every bird, whether capable of flight or not, is clad with feathers. No species of bird brings forth its young alive, or produces them in any other way than from eggs, con- sisting invariably of yolk, white and a calcareous shell, and incubated by artificial heat. No bird deviates in its skeleton from the typical form, as the whale does among mammals, and the serpent among reptiles. No bird deviates from the ordinary mode of generation of its class, as do the marsupials from other quadrupeds. — Natural History of the Bible, p. 157. Prof. Joseph Le Conte. — The evidence of Geology, to-day, is that species seem to come in suddenly and in full perfection, remain substantially unchanged during the term of their existence, and pass away in full perfection. Other species take their place apparently by substitution, not by transmutation. — Religion and Science, p, 22. Gen. i : 22. — And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas. Principal J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S. — The teeming multitudes of ma- rine creatures in the Cambrian and Silurian periods were so great, that thick beds of limestone are often made up of fragments of their skeletons, and it ap- pears that the seas then brought forth the lower forms of life in abundance since unsurpassed. — Nature and the Bible, p. 122. 3 34 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. SIXTH DAY. Gen. i : 24. — And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind : and it was so. Prof. James D. Dana, M. A., LL. D. — The order of events in the Scripture cosmogony corresponds essentially with that which has been given in this Treatise. First, the lower animals, those that swarm in the waters ; then creep- ing and flying species on the land; then beasts and cattle; and, lastly, man. In this succession, we observe not merely an order of events, like that deduced from science ; there is a system in the arrangement, and a far-reaching prophecy, to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed. The record in the Bible is, therefore, profoundly philosophical in the scheme of creation which it presents. It is both true and divine. — Manual of Geology, Revised Ed., p. 744-746. J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S. — The first animals belong to the lower grades of the aquatic fauna. As we ascend in the geological series, vertebrate life has its commencement, beginning like the lower forms, in the waters, and represented at first only by the fishes; and it is not until we are approaching the close of the Palaeozoic that reptile life is introduced. Reptiles and birds make their appearance abundantly in the earlier and middle Mesozoic, in which also reptilian life culminates in the gigantic and multiform Dinosaurs and their allies, of what is par excellence the Reptilian age. In like manner, the Scripture record of creation, after stating the creation of lower forms, goes on to specify the gigantic reptilian animals of the Mesozoic by the term taninim, and con- nects with them the birds, which, with allied winged reptiles, were their contemporaries in geological time. As we pass into the next creative aeon, the Mammalia, represented in the Mesozoic of geology by only a few small species, become dominant ; and here we have, in the prominence given to the larger Herbivora, a position corre- sponding to their grandeur and dominance in the Eocene ; while in the intro- duction of the beasts of the earth, or carnivorous mammalia, we have the inaugu- ration of an era, the later Tertiary, in which these assume the highest rank in nature, and take the place of the great reptilian life-destroyers of the Mesozoic. Lastly in this long procession, Man appears, not the product of a separate day, but, in accordance with the revelations of geology, at the close of the same great period, in which the mammalia became dominant. The progress in animal life thus shortly sketched is sufficient to show the re- markable manner in which Revelation had long ago foreshadowed what in these last days the rocks have opened their mouths to tell. — Nature and the Bible, p. 122. Gen. i : 25. — And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind. Duke of Argyll. — The various hypotheses of Development (J. 33 6 - Gen. ii : 21, 22. — And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept; and ' he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. Plato. — Our nature of old was not the same as it is now. It was then one man-woman; whose form and name partook of and was common to both the male and the female. Then Jupiter said, I will divide them into two parts.— Sympos., c. 14, 15. THE FALL OF MAN. Gen. iii : 1.— Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had- made. W. Houghton, M. A., F. L. S.— It was an ancient belief, both amongst Ori- entals and the people of the Western world, that the serpent was endued with a large share of sagacity. The ancients give various reasons for regarding ser- 48 > TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. pents as being endued with wisdom, as that one species, the Cerastes, hides itself in the sand, and bites the heels of animals as they pass; or that, as the head was considered the only vulnerable part, the serpent takes care to conceal it under the folds of the body. Serpents have in ail ages been considered as emblems of cunning craftiness. The particular wisdom alluded to by our Lord refers, it is probable, to the sagacity displayed by serpents in avoiding danger. The disci- ples were warned to be as prudent in not incurring unnecessary persecution. The Chinese consider the serpent as a symbol of superior wisdom and power, and as- cribe to the kings of heaven bodies of serpents. And in the Egyptian symboli- cal alphabet the serpent represents subtlety and cunning, lust and sensual pleas- ure. In the Zendavesta of Zoroaster, Ahriman or the lord of evil, who first taught men to sin, is represented under the guise of this reptile. — Smith's Diet, of Bible, p. 2928. Gen. iii : 4, 5. — And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Plutarch. — It was a very ancient opinion, that there are certain wicked and malignant demons, who envy good men, and endeavor to hinder them in the pursuit of virtue, lest they should be partakers at last of greater happiness than they enjoy. — Pint. Dion., § 2. Gen. iii : 6, 7. — And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her ; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. W. Fraser, LL. D. — Traditions of the fall of primitive man are almost as widespread as the human family. Their prevalence is utterly inexplicable, except through the Bible narrative. — Blending Lights, p. 134-136. John Kitto, D. D., F. S. A. — Seeing that ail mankind are descended from one pair who were tempted to disobedience under the enticements of the ser- pent, and whose disobedience "brought death into the world, and all our woe," we should expect to find throughout the world variously corrupted traditions of that event. The fact that such traditions do exist, and that in them all the main ci unstances, as related by Moses, may be recognized, is of very material importance. The variations are not greater than might be expected to arise in the course of ages, among different nations, in different regions, under different degrees of cultivation, and within different systems of religious corruption. In- deed, taking these differences into account, the substantial agreement among them in the essential facts is wonderful, and can in no other way be accounted for than by the literal truth of the account of this event which the Scripture has given to us, and by the belief that, as Moses affirms, all the races of men have a common origin. — Bible llhist., Vol. I., p. 58. Prof. G. Rawlinson, M. A. — The races that have retained a remembrance of the primitive state of man have all of them a tradition of the Fall. With some the fall is more gradual than with others. The Greeks pass by gentle de- GENESIS III. 49 grees from the golden age of primeval man to the iron one, which is the actual condition of human kind when the first writers lived. The Hindoos, similarly, bring man, through* a second and a third age, into that fourth one, which they recognize as existing in their day. But with some races the Fall is sudden. In the Edda, corruption is suddenly produced by the blandishments of strange women, who deprive men of their pristine integrity and purity. In the Thibe- tan, Mongolian, and Cingalese traditions, a similar result is brought about by the spontaneous development of a covetous temper. In the earliest of the Persian books, the Fall would seem to be gradual ; but in the later writings, which are of an uncertain date, a narrative appears which is most strikingly in accordance with that of Genesis. The first man and the first woman live originally in purity and innocence. Perpetual happiness is promised to them by Ormazd, if they persevere in their virtue. They dwell in a garden, wherein there is a tree, on whose fruit they feed, which gives them life and immortality. But Ahriman, the Evil Principle, envying their felicity, causes another tree to spring up in the garden, and sends a wicked spirit, who, assuming the form of a serpent, per- suades them to eat its fruit, and this fruit corrupts them. Evil .feelings stir in their hearts ; Ahriman becomes the object of their worship instead of Ormazd ; they fall under the power of demons, and become a prey to sin and misery. — Historical Illustrations of the Old Test., p. n. Lamaism. — Then were men holy, invisibly nourished and possessing the power of ascending at pleasure to the skies. In an evil hour the earth produced a kind of manna, a honey-sweet substance; a glutton ate of it, and seduced the rest of mankind to v follow his example. From that time, man lost his happiness and innocence. His body became gross. His commerce with the skies was passed. His days were shortened ; and his stature no longer attained its original gigan- tic proportions. In time, the manna failed, and man resorted by degrees to food more and more gross; and, at last, all virtue fled the world, and wicked- ness prevailed. Eventually the spontaneous increase of the earth no longer sufficed, and man began with labor and sorrow to till the ground. — Palas* Travels, Vol. I., p. 334. .Chinese Mythology. — Man, in the beginning, was obedient to the gods. His state was one of innocence and happiness. There was no sickness, no death. He was good and wise by nature. He was all spirit. But his strong desire for knowledge, with the temptation of the woman, was his ruin. Man held no more power over himself; lust and passion gained the ascendency over him, and he lost his intellectual pre-eminence. All beasts and birds and rep- tiles now waged war against him; and as he acquired science, all creatures became his enemies. — Memoires Chinoises, Vol. L, p. 107. Vishnu Pijrana. — The beings who were created by Brama were, at first, en- dowed with righteousness and perfect faith. They abode wherever they pleased, unchecked by any impediment. Their hearts were free from guile; they were pure, made free from soil by the observance of the sacred institutes. In their sanctified minds Hari dwelt; and they were filled with perfect wisdom, where- 50 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. with they contemplated the glory of Vishnu. After a time, that portion of Hari which has been described as one with Kala, infused into created beings sin, as yet feeble, though formidable, and passion, and the like. The impediment of the soul's liberation — the seed of iniquity — arose from darkness and desire. The innate perfectness of human nature was then no more evolved. All the perfec- tions were impaired, and these becoming feeble, sin gained strength, and mortals became subject to pain. — Professor Horace Wilsoris Tra?islatio?i. Gen. iii : 15. — And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her- seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. Egyptian Monuments. — On the monuments of Egypt there not unfrequently occurs the figure of a man in regal costume (probably an incarnate deity), pierc- ing with a spear the head of a large serpent — remarkably suggestive of a tradition of the prophecy that "the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head." — Tristram's Nat. Hist, of the Bible, p. 280. Temples of India. — In one of the most ancient pagodas of India is a figure of Chreeshna, one of the Avatars of Vishnu, trampling on the crushed head of a serpent, the kali-naga, or black snake — it is his triumph. In another figure, the serpent is seen compassing Chreeshna with its folds, and biting his heel. In all this, and much more, we cannot fail to perceive adumbrated the remarkable prediction which accompanied the fall of man. — Murray's Truth of Revel. De77ionstrated, p. 197. Ancient Coins. — In a Tyrian coin, a serpent appears twisted around a tree, with z.petra ambrosiana on either side. Ancient coins of Athens, from their figures, appear associated with the same mythological belief — on them is repre- sented a human figure in connection with the serpent-god. And on an early Roman coin is represented a female with a mural crown, a palm branch in her hand, and a dove by her side; she is trampling on a serpent. — lb., p. 199, 200. Gen. iii : 17-19. — Unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it : cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life ; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken : for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt .thou return. The Nineveh Creation Tablets. — Hea called his assembly. He said to the gods his sons, .... I made them .... shall not stretch until before he turns. Their wickedness I am angry at, their punishment shall not be small, I will look to judge the people, in their stomach let food be exhausted, above let Vul drink up his rain, let the lower regions be shut up, and the floods not be carried in the streams, let the ground be hardened which was overflown, let the growth of corn cease, may blackness overspread the fields, let the plowed fields bring forth thorns, may the cultivation be broken up, food not arise, and it not produce; may distress be spread over the people, may favor be broken off, and good not be given. — Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 154. GENESIS IV. 53 Gen. iii : 24. — So he drove out the man : and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cheru- bim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. Mr. George Smith, British Museum. — The tree of life, in Genesis, .certainly appears to correspond to the sacred grove of Anu, which the following fragment states was guarded by a sword turning to all the four points of the compass. Chaldean Tablet, describing the battle between Bel, Creator and Lord of the world j and the Dragon : 11 ... . and with it his right hand he armed. His flaming sword heraised in his hand. He brandished his lightnings before him. A curved scymitar he carried on his body. And he made a sword to destroy the dragon, which turned four ways; so that none could avoid its rapid blows. It turned to the south, to the north, to the east, and to the west." — Chaldean Account of Genesis ; p. 88 and 96. DEVELOPMENT OF TRADES AND ARTS. Gen. iv : 2, 20, 21, 22. — Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. — Jabal was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. — Jubal was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. — Tubal-cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. Archbishop Richard Whateley, D. D. — The process by which men emerged from their primitive state, and gradually invented the various arts of life, has been supposed to be this : One man, wishing to save himself the trouble of roaming through the woods in search of wild plants and roots, would bethink himself of collecting the seeds of these, and cultivating them in a plot of ground cleared and broken up for the purpose. And finding that he could thus raise more than enough for himself, he might agree with some of his neighbors to exchange a part of his produce for some of the game or fish taken by them. Another man, again, it has been supposed, would contrive to save himself the labor and uncertainty of hunting by catching some kind of wild animals alive, and keeping them in an inclosure to breed, that he might have a supply always at hand. And again, others, it is supposed, might devote themselves to the occupation of dressing skins for clothing, or of building huts* or canoes, or of making bows and arrows, or various kinds of tools, each exchanging his produc- tions with his neighbors for food. And each, by devoting his attention to some one kind of manufacture, would acquire increased skill in that, and would strike out new inventions. And then, these having in this way become divided into husbandmen, shepherds, and artisans of several kinds, would begin to enjoy the various advantages of division of labor, and would advance, step by step, in all the arts of civilized life. — Exeter Hall Lects., 9-1 1. Prof. George Rawlinson, M. A. — The early invention of the arts, recorded in Genesis iv., is in harmony with the Greek tradition, according to which Prometheus, in the infancy of our race, not only ''stole fire from heaven," but taught men "all the arts, helps and ornaments of life," especially the working in metals. It is in equal agreement with the Babylonian legend of Oannes, who, long before the Flood, instructed the Chaldeans both in art and in science, "so 54 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. that no grand discovery was ever made afterwards." And it receives confirma- tion from the fact that, both in Egypt and in Babylonia, the earliest extant remains, which go back to a time that cannot be placed long after the Flood, show signs of a tolerably advanced civilization, and particularly of the posses- sion of metallic tools and implements. — Historical Illust. of the Old Test., p. 14. LONGEVITY OF THE ANTEDILUVIANS. Gen. v: 5-32. — And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years : and he died. And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years : and he died. — Etc. Prof. G. Rawlinson, M. A. — Patriarchal longevity presents itself as one of the most striking of the facts concerning mankind which the early history of the Book of Genesis places before us. Objections have been brought against it on grounds which are called scientific. But these have little weight, as they have failed to convince such men as Haller and BurTon. Now it is beyond a doubt that there is a large amount of consentient tradition to the effect that the life of man was originally far more prolonged than it is at present, extending to at least several hundred years. The Babylonians, Egyptians, and Chinese exaggerated these hundreds into thousands. The Greeks and Romans, with more modera- tion, limited human life within a thousand or eight hundred years. The Hindoos still further shortened the term. Their books taught that in the first age of the world, man was free from diseases, and lived ordinarily four hundred years ; in the second age the term of life was reduced from four hundred to three hundred ; and in the third it became two hundred ; and in the fourth and last it was brought down to one hundred. So certain did the fact appear to the Chinese, that an Emperor who wrote a medical work proposed an inquiry into the reasons why the ancients attained to so much more advanced an age than the moderns. — Hist. Illust. of the Old Test., p. 13. The Maha-wansi, of Budhism. — At that time all beings lived an assankaya of years (incredible number of years) ; no sin was in the world ; the immense duration of their life caused men to forget their birth, and to be unmindful of their death ; they knew not the infirmities of life nor the miseries of the world. They derided the very deities, as these were not the fortunate partakers of such a length of days ; so that at that time the life of mankind in this world outlasted the existence of the gods. — Upham's Literal Translation. Josephus. — Let no one upon comparing the lives of the ancients with our lives, and with the few years which we now live, think that what we have said of them is false; or make the shortness of our lives at present an argument, that neither did they attain to so long a duration of life. I have for wit- nesses to what I have said, all those that have written antiquities, both among the Greeks and Barbarians ; for even Manetho, who wrote the Egyptian his- tory, and Berosus, who collected the Chaldean monuments, and Mochus and Hestiseus, and besides these Hieronymus the Egyptian, and those that composed the Phenician history, agree to what I here say. Hesiod also, and Hecataeus, GENESIS VI. 55 and Hellanicus, and Acusilaus ; and besides these, Ephorus and Nicolaus relate that the ancients lived a thousand years. — Antiquities, B. L, chap. 3, § 9. GIANTS. Gen. vi: 4. — There were giants (nephilim) in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Prof. George Bush. — Nephilim — by the Greeks, this class of men are termed Gigantes, from two words, signifying to be born of the earth; a term from which we learn both the origin and the import of the English word "giant." The giants of the ancient mythology are fabled to have sprung from the earth, from some broken traditions respecting these antediluvian apostates, who, in the sense of being earthly, sensual, vile, despising heavenly things, might be justly denominated "earth-born." — Notes on Genesis. Plutarch. — Those times produced men of strong and indefatigable powers of body, and of extraordinary swiftness and agility; but they applied those powers to nothing just or useful; on the contrary, their genius, their disposition, and their pleasures, tended only to insolence, to violence and rapine. — Thes., c. 6. Principal J. W. Dawson, LL. D., F. R. S., F. G. S. — The oldest men whose remains have been found are not of a different species from modern men, but, on the contrary, are nearly allied to the most widely distributed modern race; while their great stature and physical power remind us of the Nephilim, or Giants, of Genesis. They testify, in short, to a specific identity and common descent of all men; and their great bodily development, accompanied probably with great longevity, is such as geological facts would lead us to anticipate in the case of a new type recently introduced, rather than in one which had de- scended through a long course of struggle for existence from an inferior an- cestry. — Nature and the Bible, p. 177. J. W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S. — All nations have had a dim fancy that the aborigines who preceded them, and the earliest men generally, were of immense stature. Berosus says that the ten antediluvian kings of Chaldea were giants. That we are dwarfs compared to our ancestors was a common belief among the Latin and Greek poets. — In Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 911. THE DELUGE. Gen. vi: 5, 13, 14, 15. — And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them ; and behold I will destroy them with the earth. Make thee an Ark of gophei wood. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of. Hesiod. — (Speaking of those of the silver or second age of the world) — Their frantic follies wrought them pain and woe; Nor mutual outrage would their hand forego ; 56 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. Nor would they serve the gods, nor altars raise, That in just cities shed their holy blaze. Them angry Jove ingulfed, who dared refuse The gods their glory and their sacred dues. Oper. et Dier. v. 126. Aratus. — What an unworthy and degenerate race Our golden sires bequeathed ! Phenom., v. 123. Prof. H. B. Hackett, Trevor Hall. — The history of the great wickedness of men, and of a genera, inundation, as related in the Mahabharata and other Indian Asiatic writings, affords an unmistakable agreement with the Mosaic writings. In the translation of a part of that work out of the Sanskrit, the em- inent orientalist, Prof. Bopp, states the substance of the story as follows : — "The Lord of creatures, Brahma, the highest existence, appeared to a pious king named Manus, and announced to him the impending deluge, which was to destroy everything. He commanded him to build a ship, and in the time of danger to enter it, and to take with him seeds of all kinds, as they would be named to him, separated from one another. Manus obeyed the command of the Deity, and brought all seeds into the ship, into which he himself then entered. But the ship, guided by the Deity, swam many years upon the sea, until it finally settled upon the highest summit of the mountain Himawan, when it was bound fast at the command of the Deity. And from Manus descends the present race of mankind." — Bibl. Sacra, XXII. , 422. Polynesian Traditions. — Traditions of the Deluge have been found to exist among the natives of the South Sea Islands, from the earliest periods of their history. The principal facts are the same in the traditions prevailing among the inhabitants of the different groups, although they differ in several minor particulars. In one group, the accounts stated that Taarsa — the principal god, according to their mythology — being angry with men on account of their disobe- dience to his will, overturned the world into the sea, when the earth sunk in the waters, excepting a few projecting points, which, remaining above its surface, constituted the present cluster of Islands. — Ellis' Polynesian Researches, Vol. II., p. 57, etc. Chaldean Tradition. — During the reign of Xisuthrus, in the tenth genera- tion of mankind, the god Chronos appeared to this king in a vision, and warned him that, on the fifteenth day of the month Dasius, there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to build a vessel, and take with him into it his friends and relations, and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and to trust himself fearlessly to the deep. In obe- dience to these directions, Xisuthrus built a vessel five stadia (nearly three quarters of a mile) in length, and two in breadth, into which he put everything he had prepared, and last of all went into it himself, with his wife, children and friends. — Cory's Ancient Pragments. GENESIS VI. 57 Greek Mythology. — There was another race of men before the present, which owes its origin to Deucalion. The first race of men were a fierce and haughty people, who committed most heinous iniquities. For this a horrible calamity came over them. All at once the waters burst forth from all parts of the earth, and floods of rain came down from above, till the earth was covered with water, and all mankind perished. Deucalion alone was preserved, on account of his piety and uprightness, for the propagation of a new race. He had a very large chest, into which he packed his wives and children, and last of all went in himself. Just as he was entering, there came running to him all kinds of wild beasts and creeping things, pair-wise. He took them all in, and Jupiter instilled into them such peaceful dispositions that they did him no harm, but lived in the most peaceful accord together, and were thus preserved in the chest, as in a ship, so long as the flood lasted. — Lucian, De Dea Syria. Asiatic Indian Traditions. — In ancient times, the god Vishnu appeared to the sun-born monarch, Satyavrata, in the form of a fish, and said : "In seven days all creatures that have offended me shall be destroyed by a deluge, but thou shalt be preserved in a capacious vessel miraculously formed. Take there- fore all kinds of medicinal herbs and esculent grains for food, and, together with seven holy men, your respective wives, and pairs of all animals, enter the ark without fear." Satyavrata conformed himself to these directions, when, after seven days, the floods descended and drowned the world. — Sir William Jones' Asiatic Researches, Vol. II., p. 116, 117. Chinese Tradition. — Fa-he, the reputed founder of Chinese civilization, is represented as escaping from the waters of a deluge ; and he reappears as the first man at the production of a renovated world, attended by his wife, three sons, and three daughters. — Hard wick's Christ and Other Masters, Part III., p. 16. American Traditions. — Traditions of the Flood are, if possible, more com- mon in the New World than in the Old. The form in which the natives relate them agrees so strikingly with the traits of the Bible History, that we cannot blame the astonished Spaniards, the first European discoverers, if they were ready to believe, on account of these and similar traditions, that the Apostle Thomas must have preached Christianity there. — Prof. Hackett's Translation from Auberlen. Mexican Tradition. — This people had a tradition that a deluge had destroyed all animals, with the exception of one man and his wife, who escaped in the hollow trunk of an Ahahuete, or cypress tree ; and that, after this, they had a numerous race of children born to them. — Humboldt's Vues des Cordil- leras, p. 26, 206, 207. Mechoachan Tradition. — This nation, neighbors to the Mexicans, believed that mankind, becoming forgetful of their duties and origin, were punished by a universal deluge, from which the priest Tezpi, and his wife and children, were alone preserved. He shut himself up in a large chest of wood, into which he put all kinds of animals and useful seeds. When the Great Spirit ordered the 58 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. waters to subside, Tezpi sent out a bird called Aura, which, finding .food in dead carcasses, returned; then several other birds, till at length the humming- bird returned with a branch in his beak. — Humboldt's Researches, Vol. II., P- 6 5- . The Great Lake Tribes' Tradition.— These believe that the father of all their Tribes originally dwelt towards the setting sun, where, being warned in a dream that a Flood was coming, he built a Raft, on which he preserved his own family, and the whole of the animal world. The Raft drifted for many months upon the waters, till at length a new earth was made, and man and the animals placed upon it. — Thatcher's Indian Traits, II., 148, 149. Gen. vi : 9. — Noah was a just man, and perfect in his generations; and Noah walked with God. Hesiod. — The sea gave Nereus life, unerring seer And true ; most ancient of his race, whom all Hail as the sage, for mild and blameless he : Remembering still the right, still merciful As just in counsels. Theog., v. 233. Ovid. — (Speaking of the survivors of the Flood, says) — The most upright of mortal men was he, The most sincere and holy woman she. Metam., Lib. I., v. 322. Gen. vii : 7. — And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him, into the ark. Chinese Tradition. — Fa-he, the father and founder of the nation, after escaping the perils of the Flood, reappeared as the first man at the production of the renovated world, attended by his wife, three sons, and three daughters (daughters-in-law). — Hardwick's Christ and Other Masters, Part III., p. 16. Figi Tradition. — The Figi Islanders have a very clear and distinct tradition of a deluge, from which one family only, eight in number, was saved in a canoe. — Hardwick, III., p. 185. Gen. vii: II, 12, 19. — In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seven- teenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. The Compiler. — Geology offers proofs that a Deluge was possible. — The devel- opments of geology abundantly demonstrate that the occurrence of a deluge is quite possible, and entirely credible. Infidels were wont to argue that all the waters of the earth were altogether insufficient to overflow the land — and, in fact, that ocean must be heaped upon ocean to do so. But this bold and seem- ingly decisive objection against the Mosaic Deluge, like many others, has vanished before the progress of science. It is now proved, and conceded by every intelligent man, that any region, however elevated above the level of the GENESIS VII. 59 sea, may, by subsidence of that region, be laid beneath its waters; and that, as a matter of fact, every portion of the earth's surface has once and again been the bed of the ocean. In the Cretaceous or Chalk Period, Europe was but an archipelago, by far the larger portion of its present area being submerged, as was also that of Asia, while the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Himalayas did but just lift their tops above the general level of the waters. And since that period, the British Isles and the proximate parts of the continent have been upheaved and submerged, again and again. — Present Confl. of Sci. with Religion, 509. Geology furnishes examples and illustrations of a Deluge. — At one of the most charming spots on the coast of Norfolk, England, you will see the boulder clay forming a vast mass, which lies upon the chalk, and must consequently have come into existence after it. Interposed between the chalk and the drift is a comparatively insignificant layer, containing vegetable matter. But that layer tells a wonderful history. It is full of stumps of trees, standing as they grew. Fir-trees are therewith their cones, and hazel bushes with their nuts ; there stand the stools of oak and yew-trees, beeches and alders. Hence, this stratum is appropriately called the "forest bed." It is obvious that the chalk must have been upheaved and converted into dry land, before the timber trees could grow upon it. As the bolls of some of these trees are from two to three feet in diameter, it is no less clear that the dry land thus formed remained in the same condition for long ages. And not only do the remains of stately oaks and well-grown firs testify to the duration of this condition of things, but addi- tional evidence to the same effect is afforded by the abundant remains of elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, and other great wild beasts. When you look at a collection of such remains, and bethink you that these elephantine bones did veritably carry their owners about, and these great grinders crunch, in the dark woods of which the " forest bed " is now the only trace, it is impos- sible not to feel that they are as good evidence of the lapse of time as the annual rings of the tree-stumps. Thus there is a writing upon the wall of the cliffs of Norfolk, and whoso runs may read it. It tells us, with an authority that cannot be impeached, that the ancient sea-bed of the chalk sea was raised up, and remained dry land, until it was covered with forest, stocked with the great game whose spoils have rejoiced your geologists. How long it remained in that condition cannot be said; but "the whirligig of time brought its revenges" in those days as in these. The dry land, with the bones and teeth of generations of long-lived elephants, hidden away among the gnarled roots and dry leaves of its ancient trees, sank gradually to the bottom of the icy sea, which covered it with I^uge masses of drift and boulder clay. Sea-beasts, such as the walrus, now restricted to the extreme north, paddled about where birds had twittered among the topmost twigs of the fir-trees. How long this state of things endured we know not, but at length it came to an end. The upheaved glacial mud hardened into the soil of modern Norfolk. Forests grew once more, the wolf and the beaver replaced the rein- deer and the elephant; and at length what we call the history of England dawned. — Huxley's Lay Sermons, No. IX. 60 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. Geology points to specific Facts corroborative of the Mosaic Deluge. — As we have already stated, says M. Figuier, there is very distinct evidence of two suc- cessive deluges in our hemisphere, during the Quaternary Epoch. The two may be distinguished as the Eu?-opean Deluge, and the Asiatic Deluge. The European Deluge occurred prior to the appearance of man; the Asiatic Deluge happened after that event ; and the Human Race, then in the early days of its existence, certainly suffered from this cataclysm. — World Before the Deluge, 367. In the Post-glacial Era, relates Principal Dawson, the land had reached its maximum elevation, but its foundations, " standing in the water and out of the water," were not yet securely settled; and it had to take one more plunge-bath before attaining its modern fixity. This seems to have been a comparatively rapid subsidence and re-elevation, leaving but slender traces of its occurrence, but changing to some extent the levels of the continents, and failing to restore them fully to their former elevation, so that large areas of the lower grounds still remained under the sea. If, as the greater number of geologists now believe, man was then on the earth, it is not impossible that this constituted the Deluge recorded in the remarkable " log-book " of Noah preserved to us in Genesis, and of which the memory remains in the traditions of most ancient nations. This is at least the geological deluge which separates the Post-glacial period from the modern, and the earlier from the later pre-historic period of the archaeologists. I have long thought that the narrative in Gen. vii. and viii. can be understood only on the supposition that it is a contemporary journal or " log" of an eye- witness incorporated by the author of Genesis in his work. The dates of the rising and fall of the water, the note of soundings over the hill-tops when the maximum was attained, and many other details, as well as the whole tone of the narrative, seem to require this supposition, which also removes all the difficulties of interpretation which have been so much felt. — Story of Earth and Man, 290. Geology shows the means and manner in which the Deluge might have been produced. — If we take a slender brass or iron hoop, and with the finger press it inward at any point, it will necessarily bulge out on either side in proportion to the depression made by the finger; and conversely, if we push it outward, the parts on this side and on that side of the point of pressure will sink or be drawn inward. Now similar results are produced in the earth's crust by the pressure of subterranean forces; the elevation by these of a continent, or of any consid- erable part of a continent, will be attended by a corresponding depression of the bed of the adjoining ocean ; or, the elevation of that ocean's bed will necessarily be followed by a depression of the continent. This is not mere theory, but an established fact. At this present time, while Scandinavia on one side of the North Atlantic is steadily rising from its waters, Greenland on the other side is as steadily sinking into them. This fact may help us to a conception of the manner in which the Noahian deluge was brought about. Noah, and the living creatures to be preserved with him, having been safely lodged in the ark, and the fatal hour decreed having arrived, let us suppose that, at the behest of Omnipotence, the ocean beds encompassing that region of the GENESIS VII. 61 globe inhabited by the antediluvians had been elevated step by step by the re- peated impulses of subterranean forces, occurring, as they often do, at intervals of one. two, or three days ; and that at the same time the whole of that region, and to a distance beyond, had subsided at the same rate : what would have been the consequences of all this ? what would have taken place in the ocean, and what would have befallen the land and its inhabitants? The answer is obvious — the waters of the ocean, on every side, in far-reaching and tumultuous waves, would have rushed in upon the land, as if "the fountains of the great deep had been broken up." It was in some such manner as this, we may suppose, the Noahian deluge was brought about ; at any rate, many of our eminent geologists hold that some of the formidable cataclysms of the Pre-Adamite periods were occasioned in this way, by the sudden upheaval of vast tracts of the sea-bed, which, by displacing great bodies of water, and rolling them outwards in the form of enormous waves, inundated wide regions, elevated hundreds of feet over the ocean level, and strewed them over with the clays, gravels and organic remains of deep sea-bottoms. It is further worthy of notice, as evidence of the accuracy of Scripture history, that just such rains as are indicated by the forcible expression, " the windows of heaven were opened," are the usual concomitants of convulsions and cata- clysms, such as was the Deluge. "Subterranean movements and volcanic eruptions," says Sir Charles Lyell (Principles, I, 595), "are often attended not only by incursions of the sea, but also by viole?it rains ." — Present Conflict of Science with Religion, p. 529, 534, 535. David King, LL. D. — It is now proved and conceded that vast regions of the earth have been laid under water, and that such events as the deluge have incontrovertibly happened. It is of great consequence to observe that deluges are thus shown to be a part of the course of nature. When this is admitted, and no one now denies it, all that we are required to believe in regard to the Noahian deluge is that God, in a particular instance, employed, in a very signal manner, his natural and usual administration to fulfil his moral purposes. Principles of Geology Explained, p. 65. Gen. vii : 21, 22, 23. — And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man : all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. Lycophron. — Jove spread the sluices of the skies In wild uproar : Earth heard the billows break About her, and above ; high palaces Came crashing down ; and the pale sons of men Swam, and saw death in every swelling wave. On fruits, and acorns, and the growth of grapes, Sea-monsters batten' d : e'en upon that couch Where luxury had languished, cumbrous forms, Dolphins, and ores, wallowed unwieldily. — Cassand., v. 79. 62 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. The Compiler. — Such is the Scripture account of the most terrible catastrophe that has befallen our world since it has been inhabited by man — an event so appalling that it so strongly impressed itself on the mind of the race that it has never been forgotten, but has lived and floated down through the ages, in one form or another, in the traditions of all the branches of the human family. The mythologies and histories of all the ancient nations are full of the remem- brances of it. It is described in the stories of the Greeks, and sung in the verses of the Latins. Its memory is enshrined in the sacred books of the Parsee, the Brahmin and the Mahommedan, and has been assigned a place in the Legend of the Scandinavian, and in the mythic records of the Chinaman. s symbols are found stamped on the coins of ancient Greece, may be traced amid the hoary hieroglyphics of Egypt, recognized in the sculptured caves of Hindoostan, and detected even in the pictured writings of Mexico. In Cuba and Tahiti, on the banks of the Orinoco, on the Pampas of Brazil, in the mountains of Peru, and in the Islands of the Pacific, the traveller has met with traces or traditions of the Flood, the Ark, and the rescue of the Favored Few. "The tradition of the Flood," says Hugh Miller, "may be properly regarded as universal, seeing there is scarcely any considerable race of man among which, in some of its forms, it is not to be found." And Humboldt speaking of this fact says : " These ancient traditions of the human race, which we find dispersed over the whole surface of the globe, like the relics of a vast shipwreck, are highly interesting in the philosophical study of our own species. How many different tongues, belonging to branches that appear totally distinct, transmit to us the same facts. The traditions concerning races that have been destroyed, and the renewal of nature, scarcely vary in reality, though every nation gives them a local coloring. In the great continents, as in the smallest islands of the Pacific Ocean, it is always on the nearest and loftiest mountain that the remains of the human race have been saved ; and this event appears the more recent in proportion as the nations are uncultivated, and as the knowledge they have of their own existence has no very remote date." So long as the descend- ants of Noah remained together in one region, the story of the Deluge would be one and the same among all. But as they multiplied and became dispersed, the account which the different tribes carried with them would unavoidably grow more or less blurred, and in time more or less distorted, as affected by the events of their own history, and by the features of their respective localities, till, though retaining the main facts, it assumed the varied forms and colorings in which we now find it among the different nations of the globe. In these widespread but wonderfully concurrent traditions, therefore, we have a remarkable corrobor- ation of the sacred history ; for on no other ground can we rationally or credibly account for them, than that they have had their origin in one and the same event — the Deluge of the Bible. — Present Conflict of Science with Religion, 503. Gen. viii : 1.— And God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged. Pindar. — In tales of ancient lore 'tis said O'er earth, the whelming waters spread, GENESIS VIII. 63 Urged all their congregated force. But Jove's high will his headlong course Bade the usurping foe restrain, And sink absorbed the refluent main. — Olymp., IX., 75. Gen. viii : 4. — And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat. Mahabharata. — The ship, guided by the deity, swam many years upon the sea, until it finally settled upon the highest summit of the mountain Himawdn (Himalaya), when it was bound fast at the command of the deity. This summit is therefore still named at this day Nau Bandhanann (/. e., ship-binding) ; and from Manus descends the present race of mankind. — Prof. Bopp's Translation from the Sanskrit. Nicolaus. — There is a great mountain in Armenia, over Minyas, called Baris, upon which it is reported that many who fled at the time of the Deluge were saved ; and that one who was carried in an ark came on shore on the top of it, and that the remains of the timber were a great while preserved. — Quoted in Josephus, Antiquities, B. L, Chap. 3, §6. Berosus. — But there was one among those ancient giants that reverenced the gods, and was more wise and prudent than all the rest. This man, fearing the destruction, which he foresaw from the stars, would come to pass, began, in the seventy-eighth year before the inundation, to build a ship covered like an ark. Seventy-eight years from the time he began to build this ship, the ocean of a sudden broke out, and all the inland seas and the rivers and fountains bursting from beneath, attended by the most violent rains from heaven for many days, overflowed all the mountains, so that the whole human race was buried in the waters, except this man and his family, who were saved by means of the ship, which, being lifted up by the waters, rested at last upon the top of the Gendyoz or mountain, on which, it is reported, there now remaineth some part, 'and that men take away the bitumen from it, and make use of it by way of charm or expiation to avoid evil. — -Josephus, lb. Ovid. — Here a mountain, named Parnassus, advances with two tops toward the stars, and with his lofty front rises above the clouds. When here Deucalion (for the sea had covered all the rest), carried in a 'little bark with the partner of his bed, first rested, they adore the Corycyan nymphs, the deities of the moun- tains. — Metamorphoses, lines 315-320. Gen. viii : 6, 7, 8. — And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Noah opened the window of the ark which he had made; and he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. And he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground. Chaldean Tradition. — After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel, which, finding no food or place for rest, returned to him. . After some days he sent them forth again, and they returned with their feet tinged with mud. Subsequently he made a third 64 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. trial with them, and they returned no more, by which he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. He therefore made an opening in the vessel, and on looking out found that it was stranded upon a mountain, which he afterwards found to be in the land of Armenia. — Cory's Ancient Fragments. Mechoachan Tradition. — When the Great Spirit ordered the waters to sub- side, Tezpi sent out a bird called aura, which, finding food in dead carcasses, returned; then several other birds, till at length the humming bird returned with a branch in its beak. — Humboldt's Researches, Vol. II., p. 65. Mexican Tradition. — The Mexicans had paintings, representing the event, which showed a man and woman in a boat, or on a raft, a mountain rising above the waters, and a dove delivering the gift of language to the children of the saved pair. — Prescott, History of Mexico, Vol. III., p. 309, 310. Gen. viii: 18. — And Noah went forth [of the ark], and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him. Apam^ean Medal. — We have a striking memorial of Noah and his family quitting the ark in the famous Apamaean Medal. It was struck during the reign of Philip the Elder (in the fourth century b. a), at the town of Apamsea in Phrygia. The city is known to have been formerly called Kibotos, or "The Ark;" and it is also known that the coins of cities in that age exhibited some leading point in their my- thological history. The medal in question represents a kind of square vessel floating in the water. Through an opening in it are seen two persons, a man and a woman, the latter wearing a veil. Upon the upper verge of this chest or ark is perched a bird, and over against it another, which seems to flutter with its wings, and bears a branch, with which it approaches the ark. Before the vessel is a man following a woman, who, by their attitude, seem to have just quitted it, and to have gotten on the dry land. These are doubtless the same pair, shown at successive points of time in the scene. Whatever doubt might be entertained as to the purport of this representation, seems to be removed by the letters engraved upon the ark itself, beneath the persons "enclosed therein. These letters are NftE, Noe; being the very name of Noah in its Greek form, and as used in the New Testa- ment. This is a most surprising circumstance; not the representation, for we have others nearly as distinct, but that the very name of Noah should have been so long preserved among the heathen, in nearly its original form. — See Seguin's Selecta Nwnismata Antiqua. Egyptian Hieroglyphics. — Eminent Egyptologers assure us that the name of Noah is found on the monuments, represented as the "god of water." Osbum cites Champollion and Birch in favor of this interpretation of Nh, Nuh, Nou, etc., and has no doubt that the name is that of the Patriarch through whom the race was perpetuated after the Flood. The names of the first of the eight great APAM^EAN MEDAL. GENESIS IX. 65 gods of the Egyptians, as given by Wilkinson from the monuments, are believed to be different forms of the name of Noah. In the legend of Osiris, the chief primitive divinity of the Egyptians, incidents are stated which seem clearly to identify that deity with Noah of the Hebrew Scriptures. And we have perhaps a reminiscence of the three sons of Noah in the occurrence of nu- merous localities in Egypt in which a triad of deities was worshipped. Wil- kinson gives a list of a number of such places, among them Thebes, with the names of the deities. — Prof. Hackett's Note in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible ; p. 2187. Gen. viii : 20. — And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar. Assyrian Inscriptions. — In the story of the Flood occurs this notable pas- sage : — I sent the animals forth from the vessel to the four winds. I poured out a libation. I built an altar on the peak of the mountain, by seven herbs I cut, at the bottom of them I placed reeds and pines and simgar. The gods collected at its burning, the gods collected at its good burning, the gods like sumbe over the sacrifice gathered. From of old also, the Great God in his course, the great brightness of Anu had created ; when the glory of these gods, as of Ukni stone, on my countenance I could not endure ; in those days I prayed that for ever I might not endure. — Mr. George Smith's Translation. Polynesian Memorial. — The tradition preserved by the inhabitants of Eimeo of the deluge states, that, after the inundation of the land, when the water sub- sided, a man landed from a canoe, near Tiatarpura, in their island, and erected an altar in honor of his god, and offered sacrifice. — Ellis, Polynesian Researches, Vol. II., p. 57- Gen. ix : 1. — And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. Prof. Geo. Rawlinson, A. M. — To deny the occurrence of a Deluge,, or to conclude that, in respect to mankind, it was partial, because some of the great divisions of the human family had no tradition on the subject, is to draw a con- clusion directly in the teeth of the evidence. The evidence shows a consentient belief — a belief which has all the appearance of being original and not derived — among members of all the great races into which ethnologists have divided mankind. Among the Semites, the Babylonians, and the Hebrews — among the Hamites, the Egyptians — among the Aryans, the Indians, the Armenians, the Phrygians, the Lithuanians, the Goths, the Celts, and the Greeks — among the Turanians, the Chinese, the Mexicans, the Red Indians, and the Polyne- sian Islanders, held the belief, which has thus the character of universal tradition — a tradition of which but one rational account can be given, namely, that it embodies the recollection of a fact in which all mankind was concerned. It is remarkably confirmatory of the Biblical narrative to find that it unites details, scattered up and down the various traditional accounts, but nowhere else found in combination. It begins with the warning, which we find also in the Babylonian, the Hindoo, and the Cherokee Indian versions. It comprises 5 66 TESTIMONY OF THE AGES. the care for animals, which is a feature of the Babylonian, the Indian and of one of the Polynesian stories. It reckons the saved as eight, as do the Figi and Chinese traditions ; as in the Cninese story these eight are a man, his wife, his three sons, and three daughters-in-law. In assigning a prominent part to birds in the experiments made before quitting the ark, it accords (once more) espe- cially with the tradition of the Babylonians. In its mention of the dove, it possesses a feature preserved also by the Greeks and by the Mexicans. The olive-branch it has in commonwith the Phrygian legend, as appears from the famous medal struck at Apamaea Chibotus. Finally, in its record of the building of an altar, immediately' after the saved quitted the ark, it has a touch that forms equally a portion of the Babylonian and of one Polynesian story. Altogether, the conclusion seems irresistibly forced upon us that the Hebrew is the authentic narrative, of which the remainder are more or less corrupted versions. It is impossible to derive the Hebrew account from any of the other stories, while it is quite possible to derive all of them from it. Suppose the Deluge a fact, and suppose its details to have been such as the author of Genesis declares them to have been, then the wide-spread, generally accordant, but in part divergent, tradition is exactly what might have been anticipated under the circumstances. No other theory gives even a plausible explanation of the phenomena. — Historical llhcst. of the Old Test., 21-23. Prof. PI. B. Hackett, D. D., LL D. — Some fifteen years ago, in excavating the site of the old palace of Nineveh, the debris of the royal library was found there. History in that age was written on clay tablets, and some of those found here were twenty-live hundred years old. They were brought to England, and deposited in the British Museum. Among those who have studied these inscrip- tions is Mr. George Smith, connected with the Museum, whom Sir Henry Raw- linson pronounces the greatest Assyrian scholar now living. Among these tablets Mr. Smith found some relating to the Flood, of which three different copies exist containing duplicate texts, and belonging to the time of Assurbani- pal, about 670 b. c. The original text, as appears from the tablets, must have belonged to the city of Erech, and have been translated into the Semitic Baby- lonian at a very early period. The original composition is decided to be as old at least as the Nineteenth Ce?itury before the Christian era. The principal per- sonage in these legends is Izdubar, a king who lived near the time of the great Deluge, and belonged to Erech, the capital of Nimrod. Izdubar, having con- quered Belesus, a great king, and put on his rival's crown, and having married Ishtar, a princess of great beauty, became ill and began to fear death, man's great enemy. To escape such a fate he wandered forth in search of a patriarch named Sisit, whom the Babylonians supposed to have become immortal without having died. Izdubar hoped to learn from him the secret of his escape from the 'Common lot of mortals. Arrived at the place where Sisit dwelt, he made 'known his request to him— but must- converse across a stream which divided the immortal and the mortal from each other. Izdubar inquires of Sisit how he •became immortal. Sisit, ;in, answer