east in America. We think,
however, that these objections will yet be harmonized with the general
results. Neither is this claimed to be an exhaustive presentation of the
matter. It is an outline only--the better to enable us to understand the
mystery connected with the data of Paleolithic man.

In these few chapters we have been dealing with people, manners, arid
times, of which the world fifty years ago was ignorant. Many little
discoveries, at first apparently disconnected, are suddenly brought into
new relation, and behold, ages ago, when the great continents were but
just completed, races of men, with the stamp of humanity upon them, are
seen filling the earth. With them were many great animals long since
passed away. The age of animals was at an end. That of man had just
begun.

The child requires the schooling of adversity and trial to make a
complete man of himself, and it is even so with races of men. Who
can doubt that struggling up from dense ignorance, contending against
adverse circumstances, compelled to wage war against fierce animals,
sustaining life in the midst of the low temperature which had loaded
the Northern Hemisphere with snow and ice, had much to do in developing
those qualities which rendered civilization possible.

As to the antiquity of man disclosed in these chapters, the only
question that need concern us is whether it is true or not. Evidence
tending to prove its substantial accuracy should be as acceptable as
that disproving it. No great principle is here at stake. The truth of
Divine Revelation is in no wise concerned. There is nothing in its truth
or falsity which should in any way affect man's belief in an overruling
Providence, or in an immortality beyond the grave, or which should
render any less desirable a life of purity and honor. On the contrary,
we think one of the greatest causes of thanksgiving mortals have is the
possession of intellectual powers, which enable us to here and there
catch a glimpse of the greatness of God's universe, which the astronomer
at times unfolds to us; or, to dimly comprehend the flight of time since
"The Beginning," which the geologist finds necessary to account for the
stupendous results wrought by slow-acting causes.

It seems to us eminently fitting that God should place man here,
granting to him a capacity for improvement, but bestowing on him no gift
or accomplishment, which by exertion and experience he could acquire;
for labor is, and ever