Page images
PDF
EPUB

mined at the day of judgment, the great day of assize. Peter Jones, now strong in his new notions, conferred with the friend who had at first suggested the idea of ANNIHILATION to him. The subject, he was told, was an awful and a dangerous one; all minds would not acquiesce with him; and he might bring into question his own "soundness in the faith," by unsettling other people's notions with what at best was only a speculation. "ONLY A SPECULATION!" Peter exclaimed. "Is it only a speculation to free the character of God from a libel? How do I know how many minds have been driven into Infidelity by the appalling doctrine of everlasting existence in anguish or torment?” "Take care," was the reply; "you are too rash and impetuous-consider well before you speak." The advice was good; but Peter did not feel its force, nor see how much knowledge he had still to acquire. Rather did he imagine that he had built for his FAITH an ARK, in which he might sail securely over the flood of doubt.

CHAP. VI.

THE DELUGE OF DOUBT.

"Mysterious Night! when our first Parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely Frame,
This glorious canopy of Light and Blue?

Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,

Bathed in the rays of the great setting Flame,
Hesperus, with the Host of Heaven, came,
And lo! Creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such Darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly, and leaf, and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless Orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"
REV. BLANCO WHITE.

PETER JONES had been reading an account of the terrible engagements on the banks of the Sutlej, the defeat of the Sikhs, and the occupation of Lahore by the British troops. Anxious to get some idea of the remote country where these scenes had taken place, he procured a map, and gazed over it. Now, for the first time, did a dim consciousness of the vast extent of India break in upon him. His eye wandered from Cape Comorin, the extreme point of the peninsula, up to the great range of the Himalayan Mountains, from whence flow down the mighty rivers that water the continent, the Brahmaputra, the Gauges, the Indus, and their many tributaries or companion streams; and as he was searching for Lahore, a friend, who overlooked him in his occupation, took

his finger, and laying it on Cashmere, said, “There was the site of Paradise, and the cradle of the human race."

The first feeling of Peter Jones, was that of surprised incredulity. The idea that the power of Great Britain now stretched to the foot of the mountains which had enclosed that Paradise, in which Adam and Eve had walked in their innocence, provoked a smile. An odd thing, he thought, that British red-coats, with their guns and bayonets, should now be close upon the spot, from which our first parents had been ejected! Did the place preserve any memorials of its once blessed condition? Ancient tradition magnified the tranquillity, healthiness, and fertility of the "happy valley" of Cashmere, but modern travellers depicted it in colder colours; and there appeared now no necessity for a "fiery sword," to impel outwards the progenitors of the human race, when, “hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow," they" took their solitary way" through Eden, and

"The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."

The incredulity of Peter Jones was caused by his associations. He had not hitherto been curious about the site of Paradise; and his limited knowledge of geography prevented him from having anything but a vague conception of the regions supposed to have been the primitive habitations of the human race. Moreover, the land of Palestine was to him the most ancient and even the largest spot in the inhabited world. Here had lived Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; here had occurred all the many and wonderful scenes in the history of the Jews; here had the Saviour lived and died; and from thence had his apostles gone forth to enlighten the world. If, in this state of mind,

[ocr errors]

he had met with such an intimation as the one contained in Gibbon's History, that Palestine was no bigger than Wales, he would have rejected it as an injurious attack on the Bible. For, somehow or other, though he knew that other nations and kingdoms, as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome, were mentioned, and, indeed, associated with the history of the Jews. he had an indistinct idea that the Holy Land embraced a large extent of the earth's surface, as its history comprised a main portion of human knowledge; to him it was almost as exclusively THE EARTH, as it had been to David; and the Mediterranean was that "great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable."

But now, startled by the intimation that the power of Great Britain had stretched to the foot of the mountains that once enclosed Paradise, he set himself to acquire knowledge on the subject; and soon found out that the presumed site of that original abode of the race was one of the tangled questions on which men had gravely wrangled, and even joked in sober seriousness. But of those who seemed most practical on the question, he found that one set of commentators presumed that the Garden of Eden was situated in Armenia, between the sources of the Euphrates, Tigris, Phasis, and Araxes; while others placed it in Cashmere, and assumed the four rivers to be the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Indus, and the Jihon, all flowing from the vast range of the Hima layan Mountains, but running in different directions. "Settle it as ye will," thought Peter, "it seems to be true that to Cashmere all tradition and history seem to point as the primitive abode of the human race." Man's dispersion over the world must surely be a curious thing to read about; and impelled by his

curiosity, he set to work to gather whatever information he could find on the subject.

Peter Jones ascertained that ancient history indicates the north-west of Hindustan-including the whole of the country so recently conquered by Britain -as the seat of primitive civilization; while on the north-east, on the other side of the Himalayan mountains, stretched vast plains and deserts, the seats of primitive barbarism. From thence had mankind flowed, as from a life-giving fountain, in perpetual streams, each taking its own course, like the great rivers that water the continent. But mankind had not flowed over the world, indiscriminately, without mark or distinction. Though descending from the one source, the race had parted into grand branches, appropriated different countries, and, though frequently overflowing specific boundaries, had maintained themselves as distinct as did the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, or the Indus. The white, or Caucasian, branch had descended into Hindustan, covered Persia and Palestine, had passed from Asia into Europe, through Greece and Italy, had penetrated Germany, peopled Scandinavia, and planted France and the British Isles. The yellow, or Mongolian, branch, while preserving its great deserts, had gone towards China and Russia, peopled the extreme north of Asia and Europe, and had probably spread over America, as the progenitors of Mexicans, Peruvians, and Indians. As for the black, or Ethiopian branch, its great seat was the vast or scantily known continent of Africa; while the numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean were in. habited by races, allied, some to the Mongolian, and some to the Ethiopian, branches of mankind.

Already did Peter Jones feel that he was enlarging his ideas the progress of the human race seemed to

« PreviousContinue »