the Book of the Dead has often been quoted. 'He hath given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked; he hath given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath made the offerings to the gods, and paid the due rites to the departed.'

"The rites are paid to the departed, because death is but the beginning of a new life, and that life will never end.

"A sense of the Eternal and Infinite, Holy and Good, governing the world, and upon which we are dependent, of right and wrong, of holiness and virtue, of immortality and retribution-such are the elements of Egyptian religion. But where are these grand elements of a religion found in their simply purity?"-" Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of Ancient Egypt, by P. Le Page Renouf,” p. 250.

NOTE I TO CHAPTER IV.

"It is the first work known to us that seeks to arrange infinitesimal details of origin in one comprehensive genealogy. The work does, to be sure, take the nation of Israel at once as the grand centre of all nations and as the great final purpose of all history; but from that centre it overlooks the wide circle of all nations, and from this final purpose it boldly rises to the earliest conceivable beginning of all history. Both clements unite in the idea of portray-, ing the Origins-the origins of all historical things that admit of it, of the nation of Israel as of its individual tribes and families, of the heroes of Israel as well as of all its institutions and laws, of all nations of the earth as well as of the earth and heaven themselves."-Ewald: History of Israel," i., 81 and 78.

NOTE 2 TO CHAPTER IV.

There are three in the Bible: Gen. i.-ii., 4; Gen. ii., 4 ff.; and Proverbs, iii. 19, 20, with viii. 22–31.

NOTE 3 TO CHAPTER IV.

George Smith ("The Chaldean Account of Genesis ") found tablets containing the Chaldean version of the creation, which, he says, "so

far as I can judge from the fragment, agrees generally with the account of the creation in the Book of Genesis, but shows traces of having originally included very much more matter," (p. 61.)

The parallels are thus summed in the Enc. Britt. (Cosmogony): "(1) The general arrangement; (2) The introduction of a God speaking; (3) The notion of the primeval flood; (4) The repeated eulogy on the previous created work as delightful; and (5) The mention of the stars as placed to determine the year."

Those who are interested to trace the resemblances and contrasts between the Hebrew cosmogony and the cosmogonies of other peoples, may be referred to the following works, readily accessible to the general reader. Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. 6, Article Cosmogony, gives a good bird's-eye view of the subject. The Beginnings of History, by François Lenormant, is one of the latest and best books upon this topic, and is stored with the results of large learning. Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions (J. W. Bouton, New York) condenses the contents of many scholarly and of some curious and almost inaccessible books, into a convenient form.'

In successive chapters it presents the more striking parallels found among various peoples to the Hebrew stories of the Creation and Fall of Man, The Deluge, The Tower of Babel, The Trial of Abraham's Faith, Jacob's Vision of the Ladder, and other tales found in the Old Testament beyond the limits of the present book. Valuable as a classification of the materials bearing on this subject, Bible Myths is, however, utterly crude and raw in its reasonings; and the reader should be warned of its entirely untrustworthy character as an interpreter of the myths it handles. It is a singular exhibition of the failure of wide reading to form a sound judgment. There is nothing in all the array of facts which it presents to warrant its attitude toward Christianity. A reasonable conception of Christianity finds not the slightest difficulty in a recognition of its kinship with other religions, and in the admission of the natural order of its development. The Christian faith is no more emptied of its significance by showing its symbols to have developed out of nature-myths than are any of the great laws of civilization evacuated of their

reality by being shown to be higher terms of the same laws which are to be found in lower terms in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. A flower is none the less a flower because of its roots. See remarks in Note 12 to this same chapter.

Parents will find in The Childhood of Religions, by Edward Clodd, an admirable presentation of comparative religion adapted to the child mind; and in Chapter Second an interesting account of the Legends of the Past about Creation.

NOTE 4 TO CHAPTER IV.

"That which we read in the first chapter of Genesis is not an account dictated by God Himself, the possession of which was the exclusive privilege of the chosen people. It is a tradition whose origin is lost in the night of the remotest ages, and which all the great nations of Western Asia possessed in common, with some variations. The family of Abraham carried this tradition with it in the migration which brought it from Ur of the Chaldees into Palestine.”—“ The Beginnings of History," François Lenormant, preface, p. xv. Lenormant was a conservative, devout Catholic-and his admissions carry thus peculiar weight.

He continues: "I shall be asked, Where then do you find the Divine inspiration of the writers who made this archæology, that supernatural aid by which as a Christian you must believe them to have been guided? Where? In the absolutely new spirit which animates their narration, even though the form of it may have remained in almost every respect the same as among the neighboring nations," p. xvi.

NOTE 5 TO CHAPTER IV.

"The story of the Creation of Man lends itself very readily to that interpretation of his place in nature which is suggested by Mr. Wallace.

"If the views I have endeavored to sustain have any foundation they give us a new argument for placing man apart, as not only the

head and culminating point of the grand series of organic nature, but as in some degree a new and distinct order of being."-" The Action of Natural Selection on Man, by Alfred Russel Wallace," P. 22.

NOTE 6 TO CHAPTER IV.

The vexed question of the historic connection of the Hebrew cycle of primeval sagas with the Chaldaic Lays of the Beginnings is still far from being settled. It is too early to pronounce definitely upon the problem. Whether the Hebrews carried these legends with them on their migration from Chaldea, in their developed forms; or whether they learned them from the Babylonian libraries during the exile, is still undetermined. Scholars divide upon this question, and much can be said on each side of it. The extent of the references to these legends in the prophets has been indicated in Chapter II. There is no doubt that these traditions, in oral or written forms, existed in Israel at the time of the great prophets. The references are too slight, however, to prove the form in which the traditions existed. Among these references there are next to none to the story of Creation, as embodied in the first of Genesis, until we reach the Second Isaiah. On the other hand, a considerable portion of these sagas are found in the Jehovistic document which is now claimed as the oldest of the great texts of the Pentateuch. I have taken a media/ing position, as between the two schools; representing the Hebrews as having carried some of these legends from Chaldea in crude forms, which were subsequently worked over, in the spirit of the Jehovist, after communications had been renewed with Chaldea ; while additions were made to the group of primeval sagas in that period by the Elohist, thus incorporating into the ancient body of traditions much new material.

NOTE 7 TO CHAPTER IV.

Biblical references to the stories of the creation and of Paradise are cited and examined in "Mythology among the Hebrews,' Goldziher, pp. 324 et seq.

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NOTE 8 TO CHAPTER IV.

The saga of Eden opens a peculiarly rich field in the study of comparative religion. Almost every feature of the story is paralleled in the traditions of other peoples, and its main points form part of the most ancient legends of man. How closely it followed the Chaldaic traditions may be seen in Smith ("Chaldean Genesis "). He gives this cut as a probable representation of the scene of the temptation, taken from very ancient seals, and presenting the familiar human pair with the tree and the serpent.

Maurice ("Indian Antiquities") tells of, a similar representation in an ancient Hindoo temple. He also describes a representation of Krishnu stamping on the head of the serpent. Fergusson ("Tree and Serpent Worship") gives curious accounts of that strangest of ancient worships, that of the serpent, in its double character of the personification of the evil principle and of the embodiment of the spirit of wisdom. The action of the modeller in moulding clay is one of the most common, as it is one of the simplest conceptions of the divine action in the creation of man. We meet with it among our own North American Indians as well as among the most ancient people of the East.

We recall from our school-days the story of Prometheus moulding man out of clay, and of Athênê, the spirit of wisdom or the spirit of the air, breathing into the maiden formed by Hephaistos the breath of life. The whole imagery of the legend is familiar to every one who knows aught of the mythologies of the East.