the instant it was formed; like a cloud or a fog was its beginning. Then the mountains rose over the water like great fishes; in an instant the mountains and the plains were visible, and the cypress and the pine appeared. Then was the Gucumatz filled with joy, crying out: Blessed be thy coming, O Heart of Heaven, Hurakan, Thunderbolt. Our work and our labor has accomplished its end."

This corresponds to the work of the first four creative days; and next details are given as to the introduction of animals, with which, however, the Creator is represented as dissatisfied, because they could not know or invoke the Creator. They are therefore condemned to be subject to be devoured one of another. Again there is a council in heaven, and the gods determine to make man. But he also is imperfect, for he has speech without intelligence: so he is condemned to be destroyed by water. A new council is held, and a second race of men produced; but this fails in the capacity for religious worship—"they forgot the Heart of Heaven." These were partly destroyed by fire and partly converted into apes. Lastly another council is held, and perfect men created. Then follows a remarkable series of stories relating to the early history and migrations of men.

It is known that similar creation myths existed among the Mexicans and other early civilized nations of America, and in ruder and more grotesque forms even among the semi-barbarous and hunter tribes. Their connection with the ancient Semitic and Turanian revelations of Asia is unquestionable.

We have thus in the Assyrian Genesis a relic of early religious belief belonging to a period when such widely separated stocks as the Assyrian and American were still one: to a period, therefore, presumably long anterior to that of Moses. Yet at this very early period the central portions at least of the Turanian race had already devised some means of recording their traditions in writing—probably the arrow-head writing, afterwards used by the Assyrians, had already been invented. Again, at this early period a complex polytheism had already sprung up, and this was connected with cosmological ideas, inasmuch as the primitive abyss, the firmament, the starry heavens, the principle of life, were all subordinate gods; and so were also some of the earliest of the patriarchs of the human race. It is possible, however, that this was among the early Chaldeans an exoteric representation for the vulgar, and that the priestly caste may have understood it in a monotheistic sense. In any case, the idea of a Supreme Creator remains behind the whole. Farther, in the early Chaldean record we have a more detailed and expanded document than that of the Hebrew Genesis, probably intended for the popular ear, and to include as much as possible of the current mythology. As an example, I quote the following in relation to the creation of the moon, being apparently a part of the narrative of that creative period corresponding with the fourth day of Genesis:

"In its mass [that is, of the lower chaos] he made a boiling,
The God Uru [the moon] he caused to rise out, the night he overshadowed.
To fix it also for the light of the night until the shining of the day,
That the month might not be broken and in its amount be regular.
At the beginning of the month at the rising of the night,
His horns are breaking through to shine in the heavens.
On the seventh day to a circle he begins to swell,
And stretches toward the dawn farther."

We now come to the historical connection of all this with Abraham and with the Hebrew Scriptures. The early life of the "Father of the Faithful" belongs to the time when Turanian and Semitic elements were mingled in the Euphratean valley. Himself of the stock of Shem, he dwelt in Ur of the Chaldees, a city in whose ruins, now known by the name of Mugheir, Chaldean inscriptions have been found of a date anterior to that of the patriarch. In the time of Abraham a polytheistic religion already existed in Ur, for we are told that his father "served other gods." Further, the legends of the creation and the deluge, and the antediluvian age, with the history of Nimrod and other postdiluvian heroes, existed in a written form; and, strange though this may seem, there can be little doubt that Abraham, before he left Ur of the Chaldees, had read the same creation legends that have so recently been translated and published by Mr. Smith. But Abraham's relation to these was of a peculiar kind. With a spiritual enlightenment beyond that of his age, he dissented from the Turanian animism and polytheism, and maintained that pure and spiritual monotheism which, according to the Bible, had been the original faith of the sons of Noah. But he was overborne by the tendencies of his time, and probably by the royal and priestly influence then dominant in Chaldea, and he went forth from his native land in search of a country where he might have freedom to worship God. It is thus that Abraham appears as the earliest reformer, the first of those martyrs of conscience who fear not to differ from the majority, the father and prototype of the faithful of every age, and the earliest apostle of the monotheistic faith which still reigns among all the higher races of men.

Did Abraham take with him in his pilgrimage the records of his people? It is scarcely possible to doubt that he did, and this probably in a written form, but purified from the polytheism and inane imaginations accreted upon them; or perhaps he had access to still older and more primitive records anterior to the rise of the Turanian superstitions. In any case we may safely infer that Abraham and his tribe carried with them the substance of all that part of Genesis which contains the history of the world up to his time, and that this would be a precious heir-loom of his family, until it was edited and incorporated in the Pentateuch by his great descendant Moses. It seems plain, therefore, that the original prophet or seer to whom the narrative of creation was revealed lived before Abraham, but we need not doubt that the latter had the benefit of divine guidance in his noble stand against the idolatry of his age, and in his selection of the documents on which his own theology was based. These considerations help us to understand the persistence of Hebrew monotheism in the presence of the idolatries of Canaan and Egypt, since these were closely allied to the Chaldean system against which Abraham had protested. They also explain the recognition by Abraham, as co-religionists, of such monotheistic personages as Melchisedec, king of Salem. They further illustrate the nature of the religious basis in his people's beliefs on which Moses had to work, and on which he founded his theocratic system.

Before leaving this part of the subject, I would observe that the view above given; while it explains the agreement between the Hebrew Genesis and other ancient religious beliefs, is in strict accordance with the teachings of Genesis itself. The history given there implies monotheism and knowledge of God as the Creator and Redeemer, in antediluvian and early postdiluvian times, a decadence from this into a systematic polytheism at a very early date, the protest and dissent of Abraham, his call of God to be the upholder of a purer faith, and the maintenance of that faith by his descendants. Besides this, any careful reader of Genesis and of the book of Job, which, whatever its origin, must be more ancient than the Mosaic law, will readily discover indications that Abraham and the patriarchs were in the possession of documents and traditions of the same purport with those in the early chapters of Genesis, and that these were to them their only sacred literature. The reader of the Pentateuch must carry this idea with him, if he would have any clear conception of the