for
the rest that remaineth for the people of God.

_PART IV._

Mingled with its rattling shingle, the sea-beach bears hazel-nuts and
fir-tops--things which once belonged to the blue hills that rise far
inland on the horizon. Dropped into the brooks of bosky glens, they
have been swept into the river, to arrive, after many windings and
long wanderings, at the ocean; to be afterwards washed ashore with
shells and wreck and sea-weed. The Gulf Stream, whose waters by a
beautiful arrangement of Providence bring the heat of southern
latitudes to temper the wintry rigour of the north, throws objects on
the western coasts of Europe which have performed longer
voyages--fruits and forest-trees that have travelled the breadth of
the Atlantic, casting the productions of the New World on the shores
of the Old.

Like these, the record of events which happened in the earliest ages
of the world has been carried along the course of time, and spread by
the diverging streams of population over the whole surface of the
globe. The facts are, as was to be expected, always more or less
changed, and often, indeed, fragmentary. Still, like old coins, which
retain traces of their original effigies and inscriptions, these
traditions possess a high historic value. Their remarkable
correspondence with the statements of the Bible confirms our faith in
its divinity; and their being common to nations of habits the most
diverse, and of habitations separated from each other by the whole
breadth of the earth, proves the unity of our race. If they cannot be
regarded as pillars, they are buttresses of the truth; being
inexplicable on any theory but that which infidelity has so often, but
always vainly, assailed, namely, that all Scripture is given by
inspiration of God, and that He has made of one blood all the nations
of the earth.

To take some examples. Look, for instance, at a custom common among
the Red Indians, ages before white men had crossed the sea and carried
the Bible to their shores! At the birth of a child, as Humboldt
relates, a fire was kindled on the floor of the hut, and a vessel of
water placed beside it; but not with the murderous intent of those
savage tribes who practise infanticide, and, pressed by hunger,
destroy their children to save their food. The infant here was first
plunged into the water--buried, as we should say, in baptism; and
afterwards swept rapidly and unharmed through the flaming fire. A very
remarkab