poet. In the Homeric poems, that significance is almost entirely lost sight of, and its influence upon the poet is an unconscious influence."

I remark here, as before, that these resemblances do not prove that the Greeks derived their mythology from India. In the mass, and in details, it has very little in common with that of the latter country, although many of the names in them are etymologically the same. The most that I would claim is, that the elementary roots of the two systems were derived from a common source. Or, rather, those roots existed as a common stock among the remote ancestors of the two peoples before they separated in the primeval times, and when the separations took place, these elementary roots developed, in the different countries to which they were carried into the different systems subsequently found there.

II. The second part of our proposition is, that all the various systems of mythology existing among the ancient nations had their origin in the persons and events mentioned by Moses in the earliest chapters of Genesis.

The full exhibition of this fact would require a volume, or rather many volumes. Of course only some hints of the argument can be given here. The reader is referred, for a detailed view, to Bryant's

Ancient Mythology, Faber's Origin of Pagan Idolatry, Kitto's Daily Bible Illustrations, vol. i., etc.

It is not meant, of course, that every particular of the vast mass of fable, poetry, and song, which constitute those mythologies, was derived from the source mentioned, but only their roots, or the primary and leading facts from which all the rest have been developed. Some of these primary facts are the following:

The creation of the world. According to Moses, the earth was originally "without form and void" (Heb., emptiness and desolation), "and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The first thing formed was light, or the Day; then the firmament called Heaven; the dry land, Earth; the collections of waters, Seas; next vegetable life, yielding seed and fruit; after that, the sun, moon, and stars. Now, all this, told in the Greek and Roman mythologies, is as follows:

First was Chaos, "the confused mass containing the elements of all things," who was the mother of Erebos and Nyx, i. e., Darkness and Night. These intermarrying, begat Æther and Hemera, the Air,

* Smith's Dict. of Biog. and Myth., which will be our author,ity in the subsequent statements, unless otherwise noticed. Where two names are given together, the first is Greek, and the second its Latin equivalent.

or Welkin, and the Day. The eldest of the gods was Ouranos, Cœlus, who married Ge, Terra, i. e., the Heaven and Earth, and was the father of the Titans, viz., Oceanus, Cronus, Hyperion, Iapetus, Cœus, and Crius. Oceanus, the ocean, married his sister Tethys, and begat the Oceanides, nymphs of the ocean; the Nercides, nymphs of the Mediterranean; the Potameides, nymphs of the rivers; the Naiades, nymphs of fountains, etc. Kronos, Saturn, marrying his sister Rhea, was the father of Hestia, Vesta, i. e., fire; Demeter, Ceres, i. e., mother-earth, the goddess of corn and fertility; Zeus, Jupiter, and his sister-wife Hera, Juno, the gods of the sky or upper air; Poseidon, Neptune, the sea (Mediterranean); and Hades, Pluto, the under-world, hell. Hyperion, marrying another sister, Theia, was the father of Helios, Sol, the sun; Selene, Luna, the moon, and Eos, Aurora, the dawn.

Equally fruitful in fable has been the record of man's creation and fall. In Genesis, God is represented as taking counsel with himself, and then making man out of the dust of the earth, and animating him with an immortal soul, endowed with the divine image. Subsequently woman was made, and brought to the man, who, being tempted, brings sin and death into the world, "and all our woe,"

but to whom is given in mercy the hope of a Deliverer. This is told, mythologically, thus:

Iapetus, one of the Titans, was the father of Prometheus, i. e.,. forethought or counsel. He made the first man of clay, and then, with the aid of Athene, stole from heaven a celestial spark, with which to animate him. In punishment for this theft, Zeus ordered Hephæstus to make a woman, Pandora, - so called because endowed with "every gift," beauty, wisdom, etc., and gave her in marriage to Epimetheus, i. e., afterthought or repentance. She, led by curiosity, lifted the lid of the box in which Prometheus had confined diseases, misfortunes, and other woes, and let them loose to afflict mankind. In the bottom of the vessel, however, hope remained, which is appointed to solace man under his sufferings.

Before the flood there was, according to the Bible, a succession of ten patriarchs, who lived each many

hundred years. From these, we cannot doubt,

originated the idea, which prevailed among nearly all nations, of a series of antediluvian kings, sometimes regarded as divine, sometimes as human, whose reigns covered immense periods of time. These were the gods, demigods, and manes, of Egyptian chronology, that reigned before Menes, who, I doubt not, was Noah. In respect to the

term Manes (Gr. vexves), Bryant remarks (iv. 441), that the Egyptian word was Nechus, or Necho, signifying a king, as seen in the name PharaohNecho (2 Kings xxiii. 29), also in Nech-epsos, Nech-aos, etc., and that the Greeks, not understanding it, rendered it by vézus, a dead person; hence manes, or spirits of the dead. Instead, therefore, of "gods, demigods, and manes," he would read, "gods, and demigods, and kings who were mortals." These, it is said, reigned in all 24,900 years.* The Chaldeans, as we have seen (p. 94), enumerated ten kings before Xisuthrus and the flood, who reigned 432,000 years. So among the Hindus there were ten lords of created beings, and among the Chinese the first man, Pan-kou, who chiseled the heavens and earth out of granite, lived 18,000 years, and was followed by a succession of sovereigns called celestial, terrestrial, and human, until Fuh-hi (Noah), covering a period variously given as from 45,000 to 500,000 years.†

In consequence of the wickedness of the race, God, it is said, repented him that he had made man, and determined to destroy them with a deluge. What else could have originated the legend that Uranus hated his children, and sent them all, immediately after their birth, to Tartarus?

* Appendix, E., p. 362.

† pp. 121, 122. William, Mid. King., vol. ii. pp. 196, 199.