remember the lengthened lives of those who lived before the flood; and men enough would be found among them to build and inhabit a city. The very name, moreover, of the land to which Cain wandered, implies that it received its designation from him, and not from any people already inhabiting it; for Nod means "wandering."

originally.

2. Again, there have not been wanting men who have profanely ridiculed the account which Moses gives, not only of the origin of nations but of the confusion of tongues. They have One tongue asserted that the variety of languages is so great, and their differences of character so wide, and history is so far from furnishing any example of the formation of even one new language, that it is inconceivable that men could ever have spoken only one tongue, and they deny that the "fable" of the dispersion is sufficient to explain the endless and wide variations which at present prevail. But this subject has received the attention of the most learned philologists. Alexander von Humboldt, the Academy of St. Petersburgh, Merion, Klaproth, and Frederic Schlegel, have all come to one conclusion, by a comparison of languages, that they bear such marks in common, that they must have been originally one. And in addition to this, other philologists, viz., Herder, S. Turner, Abel-Remusat, Niebuhr, and Balbi, have discovered evident internal proofs, that the separation into different tongues must have been by

some violent and sudden cause. So singularly-do their labours confirm the literal truth of Scripture. *

At the close of the last century an attack was made upon the Scripture account of the creation and subsequent history of man, by appealing to the astronomical works of the Hindoos, and especially to an astronomical table for which an age was claimed Age of the reaching back more than 700 years before Human Race. the flood. The epoch of the table was the commencement of one of the enormous periods of Hindoo chronology, called Yugas. A conjunction of the sun, moon, and planets is spoken of in the Hindoo books as having then occurred, and is mentioned in such a manner as to imply that the fact was a matter of observation.

We are indebted to the late Mr. Bentley of Calcutta, a member of the Asiatic Society, for a complete exposure of the fallacy of this. Indeed, the adversary's weapons are effectually turned upon himself, and one more proof is added of the harmony of Scripture and

* See this well worked out in Wiseman's Lectures on Revelation and Science.

"The results of maturer and very extensive investigation prove, that the 3064 languages of Adelung, and the 860 languages and 5000 dialects of Balbi, may be reduced to eleven families; and that these again are found to be not primitive and independent, but modifica

tions of some original language; and that the separation between them could not have been caused by any gradual departure, or individual development, but by some violent, unusual, and active force, sufficient at once to account for the resemblances and the differences."-Unity of the Human Races, p 214.

By M. Bailly: Histoire de l'Astronomie ancienne.

Science when rightly interpreted. By using the accurate calculations of modern astronomy it is shown, that the phenomenon of the conjunction above alluded to is a mere fable, devoid of all truth, as it could not have taken place at the date assigned, nor at any other epoch near it. It could not therefore have been, as pretended, an observed fact; but must have been determined by the Hindoo astronomers by calculating backwards, and upon imperfect data. But more than this, Mr. Bentley has examined the table itself, with a view to determine the date of its construction from internal evidence. He lays down the following just principle to guide him. At the date of the table's construction, the positions and rates of motion of the heavenly bodies were determined by actual observations and their positions at previous and subsequent dates inferred by calculation. He contends, that the places determined by observation must in general be more accurate than those assigned by calculation with imperfect methods, and that the wider the interval from the date of observation the more erroneous the table would be. He considered therefore, that if he could find an epoch for which the Hindoo table, as compared with the exact calculations of modern astronomy, assigns places to all the heavenly bodies differing from the truth by quantities much smaller than at any other epoch before or after, that is the date when the table was constructed and the observations made. Pursuing this process he demonstrates, that beyond a

doubt the date falls in the 12th century of our era. By a similar investigation he shows that the earliest of all the observations recorded in any of the sacred books of the Hindoos-the division of the zodiac into "lunar mansions -was in the 15th century before Christ.

Flood.

4. More recently another attack has been made upon the truthfulness of the Scripture history. The Differences objectors, under the force of evidence of nations brought forward by Dr. Prichard, admit that, notwithstanding the diversities existing among the several tribes of the earth, all races may have sprung from an original stock, if we allow time enough for the operation of the causes of change. But they contend that, according to Scripture chronology, the time reckoned from the Deluge, when the earth was repeopled, is altogether inadequate to the necessities of the case. It is asserted that Egyptian paintings which may be dated at 1,000 or 1,500 years before the Christian era, display the forms and complexion of the Negro, the Egyptian, and some Asiatic nations distinctly marked. The earliest of these dates coincides with the age of Moses; and is, according to Scripture, only 848 years subsequent to the Deluge, when, as it is assumed, the population of the world began a second time. This interval, it is contended, even if we lengthen it by supposing the antiquity of the Egyptian monuments to have been carried too far back by some centuries, is too short for the produc

tion of such national diversities as those pourtrayed in Egyptian tombs.

This at first sight is a formidable objection. But it is one, after all, which need not stagger us, nor shake our belief in the full inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. In the first place, this apparent difficulty proceeds upon the assumption, that the rate of change in man's physical condition is the same now that it was in the earlier ages of the renovated world. But it is quite conceivable that in those primitive and half-civilized times, physiological changes might take place much more rapidly than they have done more recently and among nations of settled and civilized habits. In the next place, it is assumed, that the changes were always, not only slow, but gradual. It is, however, quite possible, that in some cases a new type may have arisen, as it were, per saltum. As far as regards colour, there are remarkable examples in India of the apparent want of all law. The children of the same parents-one a European, the other a Hindoo, or even an Eurasian-will be some white, and others black. Sometimes the grandchildren are dark, although the children were white and were married to Europeans. So unaccountable are the changes in colour. In the third place, it is a mistake to assume, that the population of the world began again from a new single centre after the Deluge. Eight persons repeopled the earth. There is no evidence that Ham had not in him all the elements,