Now, my evangelical friends, here is this book which you call “Word of God,” and idolatrously print for your little children’s reading and your own, as if your eternal lives depended on every word of it. And here, of the very beginning of the world—and the beginning of property—it professes to tell you something. But what? Have you the smallest idea what ‘dellium’ is? Might it not as well be bellium, or gellium, or pellium, or mellium, for all you know about it? Or do you know what an onyx is? or an anthrax? or a prase? Is not the whole verse pure and absolute gibberish and gabble to you; and do you expect God will thank you for talking gibberish and gabble to your children, and telling them—that is His Word? Partly, however, the verse is only senseless to you, because you have never had the sense to look at the stones which God has made. But in still greater measure, it is necessarily senseless, because it is not the word of God, but an imperfectly written tradition, which, however, being a most venerable and precious tradition, you do well to make your children read, provided also you take pains to explain to them so much sense as there is in it, and yourselves do reverently obey so much law as there is in it. Towards which intelligence and obedience, we will now take a step or two farther from the point of pause in last Fors. Remember that the three sons of Noah are, respectively, Shem, the father of the Imaginative and Contemplative races. Japheth, ,,    ,,   ,, ,,  Practical and Constructive. Ham, ,,    ,,   ,, ,,  Carnal and Destructive. The sons of Shem are the perceivers of Splendour;—they see what is best in visible things, and reach forward to the invisible. The sons of Japheth are the perceivers of Justice and Duty; and deal securely with all that is under their hand. The sons of Ham are the perceivers of Evil or Nakedness; and are slaves therefore for ever—‘servants of servants’: when in power, therefore, either helpless or tyrannous. It is best to remember among the nations descending from the three great sires, the Persians, as the sons of Shem; Greeks, as the sons of Japheth; Assyrians, as the sons of Ham. The Jewish captivity to the Assyrian then takes its perfect meaning. This month, therefore, take the first descendant of Ham—Cush; and learn the following verses of Gen. x.:— “And Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one in the earth. “He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. “And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel in the land of Shinar. “Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh.” These verses will become in future a centre of thought to you, whereupon you may gather, as on one root-germ, what you farther learn of the influence of hunting on the minds of men; and of the sources of Assyrian power, and causes of the Assyrian ruin in Birs Nemroud, out of which you have had those hunting-pieces brought to the narrow passage in the British Museum.