and histories. God has not only given us a history of our world in the Bible, but he has given us a duplicate of that history written in the traditions of men, and in the ruins of decayed cities and empires.

Now, the text intimates that such witness is valid. We may rely upon these fragments of history, written upon the human mind and upon the earth's surface, as well as on much written upon paper, by uninspired authors.

Traditions, monuments of art, and written history, are the foot-prints of humanity, marking the progress of the race from the beginning.

I. In the prosecution of our subject, let us notice some points of autidiluvian history.

1. The Creation first claims our attention. Though, in Genesis, we find the only authentic record of the creation, yet, in the cosmogony of all other nations, we find much that corroborates the Mosaic account.

The oldest treatise on this subject, next to the account of Moses, is that of Sanchoniatho. He wrote respecting the cosmogony of the Phenicians, and a few fragments of his work, are preserved by Eusebius. According to this author, the PHENICIANS believed that the beginning of all things was a dark, windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black Erebus; and that these were unbounded, and for a long series of ages, destitute of form."

The CHALDEANS belived that there was a time when all things were darkness and water, from which various horrible monsters received life and light. The demon Omorica, presided over this chaotic mass. When the destined hour

of creation arrived, Belus slew this monster, and the world

was formed out of her substance. Matter having been created, Belus divided the darkness from the light, separated the earth from the heavens and called the starry host into being.

The EGYPTIANS maintained that the beginning of all things, was darkness beyond all conception; an unknown darkness.

HESIOD mentions :-"A chaos as first existing. Next was produced the spacious earth, the seat of the immortals; Tartarus hid within the recesses of the ample globe; and divine love, the most beautiful of the deities. From chaos, sprung Erebus and black night; and from the union of Erebus and night were born ether and the day.”

ARISTOPHANES says:-"Chaos and night, and black Erebus, and wide Tartarus, first existed; at that time, there was neither earth, air, nor heaven. But in the bosom of Erebus, a black-winged night produced an ærial egg; from which in due season beautiful Love, decked with golden wings was born. Out of dark chaos, in the midst of wide spreading Tartarus, he begat our race, and called us forth into the light."

OVID, as translated by Dryden, says:

"Before the seas and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven's high canopy that covers all;
One was the face of nature, if a face;
Rather a rude and indigested mass ;

A lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed,
Of jarring seeds, and justly CHAOs named."

But the cosmogony of the Hindoos makes the nearest approach to that of Moses. The Sanscrit word Brum

handa, earth, signifies the egg of Brumha, in allusion to the earth's spherical form. Amongst the numerous Hindoo accounts of the origin of this world we select the following from the sage Menu, who says, "that this world was all darkness, and undiscoverable, undistinguishable, altogether as in profound sleep; till the self-existent and invisible God, making it manifest with five elements, and other glorious forms, perfectly dispelled the gloom. Desiring to raise up creatures by an emanation from his own essence, he first created the waters, and impressed them with the power of motion; by that power was produced a golden egg blazing like a thousand stars, in which was born BRUMHA, the great parent of all rational beings-THAT WHICH IS the invisible cause, self-existent, but unperceived! That divinity, having dwelt in the egg through revolving years, HIMSELF meditating upon HIMSELF, divided it into two equal parts; and from the halves he formed the heavens and the earth, placing in the midst of the subtle æther, the eight points of the world, and the permanent receptacle of the waters."

From the above extracts, it will be seen, that darkness, water, chaos and an impulsive wind, agitating the abyss and brooding over the mundane egg, are circumstances that enter into almost all heathen systems of cosmogony. These circumstances do not materially differ from the Mosaic record. The Hebrew words tohu, vabohu, emptiness and desolation, are just what the Greeks meant by chaos. The Hebrew reads, "the Spirit of God was Mararkhafat, brooding upon the face of the waters." From this expression, the ancients may have derived the idea of a mundane egg.

But though much of the traditions of the heathen appear to corroborate the Mosaic account of the creation, the most of them appear to leave God very much in the back ground of their systems, and none of them make Him the earth's direct Creator.*

2. Faint shadows of the fall of man, appear in the traditions of different nations.

All nations, have traditions
Hessiod's Pandora, or the

of some kind on this subject. Grecian Eve, is represented as a beautiful and modest virgin, adorned with numerous gifts and graces; but, at length, was unluckily gifted with speech, and filled with all deceitfulness by Mercury, and hence, she became the corrupter of mankind.

The Persians believe in two principles, Ormudz and Ahriman, the good and the evil. A conflict once arose between them and Ahriman, the evil principle prevailed; and hence the fall, and subsequent imperfections of man. The same idea seems to be prefigured by the two races of the Hindoos-one gigantic and wicked, and ever making war against the races of the Brahmin patriarchs.

A people called Tschudas, residing in a mountainous range of Asia, are said to have preserved the very names of Cain and Seth, but with a change of character. Cain is the father of an enterprising and a good race. The Greeks, Romans, and all other ancient nations, held, that

*See on this subject-The History of Hindoostan; its arts and sciences, as connected with the history of other great empires of Asia: book 1: chapter 1.—The Patriarchal Age; by George Smith F. S. A., chapter 1.—Ancient and Modern Nations; by Thomas Dew, chapter 1.

man had greatly deteriorated since his creation, and Ovid represents the gross wickedness of man, as determining Jupiter to destroy the world with a flood. It is also remarkable that the Chinese represent the wickedness of their emperors as the cause of the flood.*

As the serpent bore so conspicuous a part in the defection of our first parents, we might expect to find him represented in the traditions of the nations, as filling an important place in their mythology. Now, the fact is, the serpent has been, not only an object of dread, but of worship, by all heathen nations. "The mystic serpent entered into the mythology of every nation; consecrated almost every temple; symbolized almost every deity; was imagined in the heavens, stamped upon the earth, and ruled in the realms of everlasting sorrow. His sublety raised him into an emblem of wisdom; he was therefore pictured upon the ægis of Minerva, and crowned the helmet. The knowledge of futurity which he displayed in Paradise, exalted him into a symbol of vaticination; he was, therefore, oracular, and reigned at Delphi. The opening of the eyes of our deluded first parents, obtained him an altar in the temple of the god of healing; he is, therefore, the constant companion of Esculapius. In the distribution of his qualities the genius of his mythology, did not even gloss over his malignant attributes. The fascination with which he intoxicated the souls of the first sinners, depriving them at once of purity and immortality, of the image of God, and the life of angels, was symbolically remembered, and

*Ancient and Modern Nations; by T. Dew, late President of the College of William and Mary; pages 5 and 6.