383

E.--Recent Facts as to the Antiquity of Man. 386

F.--Glacial Periods in Connection with Genesis. 395

G.--Chemistry of the Primeval Earth. 400

H.--Tannin and Bhemah. 405

I.--Ancient Mythologies. 408

K.--Assyrian and Egyptian Texts. 412

L.--Species and Varieties in Connection with Evolution and the
Unity of Man. 414

THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD.

CHAPTER I.

THE MYSTERY OF ORIGINS AND ITS SOLUTIONS.

"The things that are seen are temporal."--PAUL.

Have we or can we have any certain solution of those two great
questions--Whence are all things? and Whither do all things tend? No
thinking man is content to live merely in a transitory present, ever
emerging out of darkness and ever returning thither again, without
knowing any thing of the origin and issue of the world and its
inhabitants. Yet it would seem that to-day men are as much in
uncertainty on these subjects as at any previous time. It even appears
as if all our added knowledge would only, for a time at least, deprive
us of the solutions to which we trusted, and give no others in their
room. Christians have been accustomed to rest on the cosmogony and
prophecy of the Bible; but we are now frankly told on all hands that
these are valueless, and that even ministers of religion more or less
"sacrifice their sincerity" in making them the basis of their
teachings. On the other hand, we are informed that nothing can be
discerned in the universe beyond matter and force, and that it is by a
purely material and spontaneous evolution that all things exist. But
when we ask as to the origin of matter and force, and the laws which
regulate them--as to the end to which their movement is tending, as to
the manner in which they have evolved the myriad forms of life and the
human intelligence itself--the only answer is that these are
"insoluble mysteries."

Are we, then, to fall back on the real or imagined revelations and
traditions of the past, and to endeavor to find in them some foothold
of assurance; or are we to wait till further progress in science may
have cleared up some of the present mysteries? Whatever may be said of
the former alternative, all honest students of