Although it is evident that many thousands of years must have passed since the men who wrote in Sanscrit, in Northwestern India, could have dwelt in Europe, yet to this day they preserve among their ancient books maps and descriptions of the western coast of Europe, and even of England and Ireland; and we find among them a fuller knowledge of the vexed question of the sources of the Nile than was possessed by any nation in the world twenty-five years ago.
This perpetuation of forms and beliefs is illustrated in the fact that the formulas used in the Middle Ages in Europe to exorcise evil spirits were Assyrian words, imported probably thousands of years before from the magicians of Chaldea. When the European conjurer cried out to the demon, "Hilka, hilka, besha, besha," he had no idea that he was repeating the very words of a people who had perished ages before, and that they signified Go away, go away, evil one, evil one. (Lenormant, "Anc. Hist. East," vol. i., p. 448.)
Our circle of 360 degrees; the division of a chord of the circle equal to the radius into 60 equal parts, called degrees: the division of these into 60 minutes, of the minute into 60 seconds, and the second into 60 thirds; the division of the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds; the division of the week into seven days, and the very order of the days—all have come down to us from the Chaldeo-Assyrians; and these things will probably be perpetuated among our posterity "to the last syllable of recorded time."
We need not be surprised, therefore, to find the same legends and beliefs cropping out among the nations of Central America and the people of Israel. Nay, it should teach us to regard the Book of Genesis with increased veneration, as a relic dating from the most ancient days of man's history on earth; its roots cross the great ocean; every line is valuable; a word, a letter, an accent may throw light upon the gravest problems of the birth of civilization.
The vital conviction which, during thousands of years, at all times pressed home upon the Israelites, was that they were a "chosen people," selected out of all the multitude of the earth, to perpetuate the great truth that there was but one God—an illimitable, omnipotent, paternal spirit, who rewarded the good and punished the wicked—in contradistinction from the multifarious, subordinate, animal and bestial demi-gods of the other nations of the earth. This sublime monotheism could only have been the outgrowth of a high civilization, for man's first religion is necessarily a worship of "stocks and stones," and history teaches us that the gods decrease in number as man increases in intelligence. It was probably in Atlantis that monotheism was first preached. The proverbs of "Ptah-hotep," the oldest book of the Egyptians, show that this most ancient colony from Atlantis received the pure faith from the mother-land at the very dawn of history: this book preached the doctrine of one God, "the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked." (Reginald S. Poole, Contemporary Rev., Aug., 1881, p. 38.) "In the early days the Egyptians worshipped one only God, the maker of all things, without beginning and without end. To the last the priests preserved this doctrine and taught it privately to a select few." ("Amer. Encycl.," vol. vi., p. 463.) The Jews took up this great truth where the Egyptians dropped it, and over the heads and over the ruins of Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, and India this handful of poor shepherds—ignorant, debased, and despised—have carried down to our own times a conception which could only have originated in the highest possible state of human society.
And even skepticism must pause before the miracle of the continued existence of this strange people, wading through the ages, bearing on their shoulders the burden of their great trust, and pressing forward under the force of a perpetual and irresistible impulse. The speech that may be heard to-day in the synagogues of Chicago and Melbourne resounded two thousand years ago in the streets of Rome; and, at a still earlier period, it could be heard in the palaces of Babylon and the shops of Thebes—in Tyre, in Sidon, in Gades, in Palmyra, in Nineveh. How many nations have perished, how many languages have ceased to exist, how many splendid civilizations have crumbled into ruin, how many temples and towers and towns have gone down to dust since the sublime frenzy of monotheism first seized this extraordinary people! All their kindred nomadic tribes are gone; their land of promise is in the hands of strangers; but Judaism, with its offspring, Christianity, is taking possession of the habitable world; and the continuous life of one people—one poor, obscure, and wretched people—spans the tremendous gulf between "Ptah-hotep" and this nineteenth century.
If the Spirit of which the universe is but an expression—of whose frame the stars are the infinite molecules—can be supposed ever to interfere with the laws of matter and reach down into the doings of men, would it not be to save from the wreck and waste of time the most sublime fruit of the civilization of the drowned Atlantis—a belief in the one, only, just God, the father of all life, the imposer of all moral obligations?
CHAPTER VII.
THE ORIGIN OF OUR ALPHABET
One of the most marvellous inventions for the advancement of mankind is the phonetic alphabet, or a system of signs representing the sounds of human speech. Without it our present civilization could scarcely have been possible.