art of Africa. A copper bar of native
manufacture four feet long was offered to us for sale at Chinsamba's.
These arts are monuments attesting the fact, that some instruction from
above must at some time or other have been supplied to mankind; and, as
Archbishop Whately says, "the most probable conclusion is, that man when
first created, or very shortly afterwards, was advanced, by the Creator
Himself, to a state above that of a mere savage."

The argument for an original revelation to man, though quite independent
of the Bible history, tends to confirm that history. It is of the same
nature with this, that man could not have _made_ himself, and therefore
must have had a Divine _Creator_. Mankind could not, in the first
instance, have _civilized_ themselves, and therefore must have had a
superhuman _Instructor_.

In connection with this subject, it is remarkable that throughout
successive generations no change has taken place in the form of the
various inventions. Hammers, tongs, hoes, axes, adzes, handles to them;
needles, bows and arrows, with the mode of feathering the latter; spears,
for killing game, with spear-heads having what is termed "dish" on both
sides to give them, when thrown, the rotatory motion of rifle-balls; the
arts of spinning and weaving, with that of pounding and steeping the
inner bark of a tree till it serves as clothing; millstones for grinding
corn into meal; the manufacture of the same kind of pots or _chatties_ as
in India; the art of cooking, of brewing beer and straining it as was
done in ancient Egypt; fish-hooks, fishing and hunting nets,
fish-baskets, and weirs, the same as in the Highlands of Scotland; traps
for catching animals, etc., etc.,--have all been so very permanent from
age to age, and some of them of identical patterns are so widely spread
over the globe, as to render it probable that they were all, at least in
some degree, derived from one Source. The African traditions, which seem
possessed of the same unchangeability as the arts to which they relate,
like those of all other nations refer their origin to a superior Being.
And it is much more reasonable to receive the hints given in Genesis,
concerning direct instruction from God to our first parents or their
children in religious or moral duty, and probably in the knowledge of the
arts of life, {6} than to give credence to the theory that untaught
savage man subsisted in a state which would prove fatal to all his
desce