two thousand
years later. Professor Rawlinson seeks to obviate this difficulty by
appealing to the version of the Seventy instead of to the Hebrew text,
by which he obtains the remote antiquity of 8159 B.C., instead of 2848,
for the Deluge. But this chronology does not reach within four hundred
years of the civilisation denoted by the sculptures referred to! And
there must have been milleniums of silent progress in Egypt before that
period.

On the ancient monuments of Egypt the negro head, face, hair, form,
and color, are the same as we observe in our own day. Consequently, the
orthodox believer must hold that, in a few generations, the human family
branched out into strongly marked varieties. History discountenances
this assumption, and Biology plainly disproves it. Archdeacon Pratt
supposes that Shem, Ham, and Japheth "had in them elements differing as
widely as the Asiatic, the African, and the European, differ from each
other." He forgets that they were brothers, sons of the same father
and presumably of the same mother! Such extraordinary evolution throws
Darwinism into the shade.

Noah lived fifty-eight years after the birth of Abraham. Shem lived a
hundred and ten years after the birth of Isaac, and fifty years after
the birth of Jacob. How was it that neither Abraham, Isaac, nor Jacob
knew either of them. They were the most interesting and important men
alive at the time. They had seen the world before the Flood. One of
them had seen people who knew Adam. They had lived through the confusion
of tongues at Babel, and were well acquainted with the whole history of
the world. Yet they are never once mentioned in Scripture during all
the centuries they survived their exit from the ark. Why is this?
Noah before his death was the most venerable man existing. He was five
hundred years older than any other man. He must have been an object
of universal regard. Yet we have no record of the second half of his
career; no account is given of his burial; no monument was erected to
his memory. Who will explain this astounding neglect? The Bible is a
strange book, and they are strange people who believe it.

BALAAM'S ASS.

BIBLE ROMANCES.--IX.

By G. W. FOOTE.

The ass has figured extensively in romance. His long ears and peculiar
bray are explained by a story which goes back to the Flood. On that
occasion, it is said, the male donkey was inadvertently left outside the
ark, but being a good swimmer, he neverthe