Mingled with its rattling shingle, the sea-beach bears hazel-nuts and fir-tops—things which once belonged to the blue hills that rise far inland on the horizon. Dropped into the brooks of bosky glens, they have been swept into the river, to arrive, after many windings and long wanderings, at the ocean; to be afterwards washed ashore with shells and wreck and sea-weed. The Gulf Stream, whose waters by a beautiful arrangement of Providence bring the heat of southern latitudes to temper the wintry rigour of the north, throws objects on the western coasts of Europe which have performed longer voyages—fruits and forest-trees that have travelled the breadth of the Atlantic, casting the productions of the New World on the shores of the Old.

Like these, the record of events which happened in the earliest ages of the world has been carried along the course of time, and spread by the diverging streams of population over the whole surface of the globe. The facts are, as was to be expected, always more or less changed, and often, indeed, fragmentary. Still, like old coins, which retain traces of their original effigies and inscriptions, these traditions possess a high historic value. Their remarkable correspondence with the statements of the Bible confirms our faith in its divinity; and their being common to nations of habits the most diverse, and of habitations separated from each other by the whole breadth of the earth, proves the unity of our race. If they cannot be regarded as pillars, they are buttresses of the truth; being inexplicable on any theory but that which infidelity has so often, but always vainly, assailed, namely, that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and that He has made of one blood all the nations of the earth.

To take some examples. Look, for instance, at a custom common among the Red Indians, ages before white men had crossed the sea and carried the Bible to their shores! At the birth of a child, as Humboldt relates, a fire was kindled on the floor of the hut, and a vessel of water placed beside it; but not with the murderous intent of those savage tribes who practise infanticide, and, pressed by hunger, destroy their children to save their food. The infant here was first plunged into the water—buried, as we should say, in baptism; and afterwards swept rapidly and unharmed through the flaming fire. A very remarkable rite; and one that, as we read the story, recalled to mind this double baptism, “He shall baptize you,” said Jesus, “with the Holy Ghost and with fire;” “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Its administration to infants, to such as had committed no sin, nor knew, indeed, their right hand from their left, implied a belief in the presence, not of acquired, but of original impurity. It is based on that; and without it this rite is not only mysterious, but meaningless. Blind is the eye which does not see in this old pagan ceremony a tradition of the primeval Fall, and dull the ear which does not hear in its voice no faint echo of these words, “I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.... Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

Like the Fall, the Flood also was an event which, though it may have worn no channel in the rocks, has left indelible traces of its presence on the memory of mankind. The Greeks had strange traditions of this awful judgment; so had the Romans; and so had almost all the heathen nations of antiquity—strange legends, to which the Bible supplies the only key. Its account of the Deluge explains the traditions, and the traditions corroborate it; and by their general mutual correspondence we are confirmed in our belief that its authors were holy men of old, who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. To evade this argument, infidels may trace these legends to Jews, who, led captive of the heathen, related to them the Mosaic story, and took advantage of man’s love of the marvellous to practise on his credulity. The attempt is vain; since, on turning from the Old World to the New, we find the very same traditions there; and there, long ages before Jew or Christian knew of its existence, or had landed on its shores. Those paintings which were to Mexicans and Peruvians substitutes for history, for a written or printed language, embody the story of the Flood. One of these pictures, for example, shows us a man afloat with his family in a rude boat on a shoreless sea; in another, the raven of Bible story is cleaving on black wing the murky sky; in a third, the heads of the hills appear in the background like islands emerging from the waste of waters, while, with such confusion as is inseparable from traditionary lore, the raven is substituted for the dove, and appears making its way to the lone tenants of the boat with evidence of the subsidence of the waters—a fir-cone in its bloody beak. Rolled down the long stream of ages, the true history is more or less changed, and even fragmentary, like a water-worn stone. Still, between these traditionary records and Bible story there is a remarkable agreement. They sound like its echo. In them pagan voices proclaim the holiness of God. Lest we also should perish with those who, looking on the placid sea and starry sky of the Old World’s last night, asked, “Where is the promise of His coming?” they warn us to flee from wrath to come.

Of all these venerable legends painted in colours or embalmed in verse, written in story or sculptured on stone, none are more remarkable than those where the serpent appears. Old divines imagined that the creature whose shape Satan borrowed for the temptation had originally no malignant aspect; neither the poisoned fangs, nor eyes of fire, nor cold, scaly, wriggling form which man and beast recoil from with instinctive horror. They fancied that the curse, “Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat,” was followed by a sudden metamorphosis, and that till then the appearance of the serpent was as lovely as it is now loathsome. They gave the words of the curse a literal interpretation. They bear a deeper meaning, no doubt; yet the fancy of these old divines may have approached nearer to fact than many perhaps suppose. Science reads the history of remote ages as she finds it inscribed on the rocks; and, on turning over these stony leaves, we find that the earliest form of the serpent was different from that which, as it crawls and wriggles along the ground, so forcibly recalls the very words of the curse. Though they have now only such powers of motion as belong to the meanest worm, those skeletons which the rocks entomb show that the serpent tribe had once feet to walk with, and even wings to spurn the ground and cleave the air. Such is the testimony of the rocks! And, taking the words of Scripture in their literal sense, there is, to say the least of it, a very curious coincidence between the voices of the rocks and the voice of revelation. But, be that as it may, what else but fragmentary traditions of Eden and the Fall are the forms of serpent worship among the heathen, who acted, as they still often act, on the principle of propitiating the powers of evil, the many old monuments on which its figure is sculptured, and the many old legends in which it plays a conspicuous part? What else was the belief of our pagan fathers, that within a dark cave in the bowels of the earth there sat a great scaly dragon, brooding on gold? What else was the fabled garden of the Hesperides, where the trees, guarded by a fierce and formidable serpent, bore apples of gold? What else was the tragic story of a father and his sons dying by the bites and crushed within the scaly folds of a coil of serpents; and on which, as touchingly represented in the sculptured marble, we have never looked without recalling the fate of Adam and his unhappy offspring? And what else is the old legend of him who with rash hand sowed serpent’s teeth, and saw spring from the soil, not clustering vines, or feathery palms, or stalks of waving corn, but a crop of swords, and spears, and armed men? Read that fable by the light of the Bible, and the wild legend stands out the record of an awful fact. To the serpent the world owes it wars, and discords, and the sin which is their source. Disguised in its form, Satan brought in sin; and when sin entered on the scene, peace departed—peace between God and man, peace between man and man, peace between man and himself—the peace which, with all its blessings, He descended from heaven to restore who is our Peace, and whom angels ushered on the scene of His toils and triumphs, of His atoning death and glorious victory, with songs of “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.”