g, glass-staining, mosaic work,
and engraving, during the Middle Ages and the two centuries following,
culminated a belief which had been developed through thousands of years,
and which has determined the world's thought until our own time.

Its beginnings lie far back in human history; we find them among the
early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and they hold a
most prominent place in the various sacred books of the world. In nearly
all of them is revealed the conception of a Creator of whom man is an
imperfect image, and who literally and directly created the visible
universe with his hands and fingers.

Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which
controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian inscriptions
which have been recently recovered and given to the English-speaking
peoples by Layard, George Smith, Sayce, and others, show that in the
ancient religions of Chaldea and Babylonia there was elaborated a
narrative of the creation which, in its most important features, must
have been the source of that in our own sacred books. It has now become
perfectly clear that from the same sources which inspired the accounts
of the creation of the universe among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the
Assyrian, the Phoenician, and other ancient civilizations came the ideas
which hold so prominent a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In
the two accounts imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also in
the account of which we have indications in the book of Job and in the
Proverbs, there, is presented, often with the greatest sublimity,
the same early conception of the Creator and of the creation--the
conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a Creator
who is an enlarged human being working literally with his own hands,
and of a creation which is "the work of his fingers." To supplement this
view there was developed the belief in this Creator as one who, having

... "from his ample palm Launched forth the rolling planets into space."

sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens," perpetually
controlling and directing them.

From this idea of creation was evolved in time a somewhat nobler view.
Ancient thinkers, and especially, as is now found, in Egypt, suggested
that the main agency in creation was not the hands and fingers of the
Creator, but his VOICE. Hence was mingled with the earlier, cruder
belief regarding the origin of the earth and heavenly bo