The Meeting-Place of Geology and History

ting-place. They must indeed not only meet, but overlap and run abreast of each other throughout nearly the whole time occupied by the existence of man on

e time of the earliest known men, many thousands of years ago. Throughout all this interval the two r

t the effects of these are small, and the time in which they have been active is insignificant in comparison with that occupied by previous geological ages; but they introduce new questions which constantly grow in importance, down to those later times in which human agency has so profoundly affected the surface of the earth and its living

tion by modern analogies, until at length he is fain to have recourse to the pick-axe and spade, and to endeavour to disinter from the earth the scanty relics of primeval man, much as the geologist searches in

be difficult to disentangle, and which the geological specialist alone, or the historical specialist alone, may be unable fully to understand. The object of this little volume will be to unravel as many as possible of these threads of contact, and to make their

and organic preparations for his advent, has many and important uses. It would seem indeed that it is a great advantage to our Christian civilisation that our sacred books begin with a history of creation, giving an idea of order and progress in the creative work. Whether we regard the days of creation as literal days or days of vision of a seer, or whether we hold them to be days of God and His working, suitable to the Eternal One and His mighty plan, and bearing the same relation to Him that ordinary working days bear to us, we cannot escape the idea of an orderly work in time. This, while it delivers the Bible reader from the extravagant myths current among heathen peoples, ancient and modern, predisposes him to expect that something may be

e an extent been those of Christians interested in the Bible history. Yet some littérateurs, who have contributed nothing to these results, attempt to

ges up to its modern condition; but perhaps the parts of its history least clearly known, especially to general readers, are those that relate to the beginning and the end of the creative work. The earlier stages are those most different from our experience and whose monuments are most obscure. The later stages on the other hand have left fewer monuments, and these have been complicated with modern changes under human influence. Be

ogy and arch?ology, and the more modern world which is still present, or of which we have written records. The main point to be observed is that it is necessary to place distinctly before our minds the fact that we are studying a period in

known remains of man preserved in the crust of the earth, and trace his progress through the earlier part of the anthropic or human period, in so far as it is revealed to us by the relics of man and his works preserved in the e

ne includes what has been called the glacial age, a period of exceptional cold and of much subsidence and elevation of the land, in the northern hemisphere at least. The modern, or anthropic, is for our present purpose divisible i

inguished by the use of certain stone implements, which is not the fact. I have preferred, therefore, to call the earlier races of men pal?ocosmic, and the later neocosmic, where it may