THE CHILDHOOD OF RELIGIONS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. A POET who has put many wise and tender thoughts into verses full of music, once wrote some lines on the birthday of a great and good man, whose life's delight was in listening to all that Nature has to tell, and who not long since passed away from earth to learn new lessons in some other part of the wide universe of God. The poem tells us that as the boy lay in his cradle, 'Nature, the old nurse, took The child upon her knee, Thy Father has written for thee." ""Come wander with me," she said, And read what is still unread A 'And he wandered away and away 'And whenever the way seemed long, She would sing a more wonderful song, It is some fragment of the wonderful story 'without an end' to which Agassiz (for it is he of whom Longfellow speaks in the poem) listened so gladly, a story as true as it is wonderful and as beautiful as it is true, that I want to tell you, if you too wish to open your young eyes to the sights that ever grow more charmful, and your ears to the sounds that give forth no unsweet notes; otherwise the story is not for you. To learn well the lessons which Nature is ever willing to teach, we must begin while we are young, for then the memory is 'wax to receive and marble to retain.' The mind, like a knife, quickly rusts if it be not used. Unless the eye is trained to see, it becomes dim; unless the ear is trained to hear, it gets dulled; and this is why so many, careless to sharpen their wits on the whet stone of outlook and thought, enter into life and pass away from it, never knowing in what a world of beauty, of bounty and of wonder they have lived. So I would have you treasure the joy which earth and heaven yield as riches that no moth or rust can corrupt or thief break through and steal; that make the poorest boy who smiles his thanks for the bit of blue sky that roofs the murky court in which he lives, happier, and therefore wealthier, than the richest lord whose sunlit acres of woodland and meadow call from him nothing but a yawn. I think you will be interested in listening to a few curious stories in which men of old have striven to account for the universe, how it all began to be and what keeps it going. Some of these stories have only come to light during the last few years, and this through the patient labours of learned scholars, who have found them buried in the sacred writings of certain religions of the East. We will then see what our men of science have learned from the story-book of Nature about the earth's history in the ages long, long ago, when as yet no man lived upon it; when no children, with eyes laughter-filled, made nosegays of its flowers, and ran after the jewels which they were told lay sparkling where the rainbow touched the ground; but when God, ever-working, never-resting, since work and rest with Him are one, was fitting it to be the abode of life. Following the same sure guides into that dim old past, we will learn a little of the mighty changes which, wrought by fire and water, have given to the earth's face its rugged, ragged outline, and also a little about the strange creatures that lived and struggled and died ages before God's highest creature, man, was placed here. Then after telling how the earliest races of men slowly covered large parts of the earth, the way will be clear for an account of the great parentnation whose many children have spread themselves over nearly the whole of Europe, over large portions of Asia, and, since its discovery by Columbus, of America. We will learn something about the life these forefathers lived while together in one home, the language they spake, the thoughts that filled their breasts, and how those thoughts live on among us and other peoples in many shapes, both weird and winsome. For I expect it that the dear old will be news to some of you tales which come now-a-days bound in green and gold and full of fine pictures, such as Cinderella, Snow-White and Rosy-Red, Beauty and the Beast, are older than any schoolhistories, and were told, of course in somewhat different form, by fathers and mothers to their children thousands of years ago in Asia, when Europe was covered with thick forests, amidst which huge wild beasts wandered. I must stay here a moment to say that only a very little of what is now known concerning the matters already spoken of has been gathered from books. Men of science, wistful to learn more of that long before out of which we have come, have deemed none of its relics too trifling for their study. They They have searched on the slopes of valleys through which rivers once flowed for the stone tools and weapons wherewith the first men worked and fought, and explored the caverns which from early times gave shelter to man and beast; they have opened great earth-mounds and |