Thousands and thousands of years before Cain and Abel we see the palæolithic man, "dolichocephalic and with prominent jaws," pursue the great migrations of urus, reindeer, mammoth, and the thick-nose rhinoceros from Cumberland to Algeria, and Algeria to Cumberland, passing dry-shod to France, and from Sicily to Africa. He is naked. He is armed with a javelin with a flint head. He is an animal, struggling for survival with other animals. He eats his foes as wolves eat vanquished wolves. To extract the marrow from their bones he cracks them with his poor flint "celt" or "_langue du chat_;" and these cracked human bones 240,000 years afterwards are found in caves and in beds of gravel and sand, and brick earth, and tell their story. Some are charred, which proves that the notion of sacrifice to an unseen being was due to him. To this poor savage our debt is quite incalculable. 1. He invented the missile. This made the monkey dominant in the animal world. He became a man. 2. He invented religion. Here the valuable work of the anthropologist chimes in. He has collected the records of ancient and modern savages, and compared them with the records of caves and beds of gravel. In this way he has allowed us to peer into the mind of the stone-using savage, who lived at least 240,000 years ago. And the Bible of the Jews, from being a text-book for sermons which bewildered the moral sense even of children, has become, for the study of the great evolution of religion, one of the most valuable books in the world. It bridges the gap between the neolithic or polished-stone-using man and Christ and Mahomet. Before we go further, let us say a word about the authorship of the Old Testament. The Books of Moses were compiled by Ezra, at the date of Artaxerxes, the King of the Persians. It is to be observed that this is not an extravagant guess of German theorists. It is stated authoritatively by Clement of Alexandria. (Strom. i. 22.) Irenæus, Tertullian, Eusebius, Jerome, and Basil give the same testimony. But a greater authority is behind. It is known that Christ and His disciples, and the early fathers, used the Septuagint or Greek version of the Bible, and Dr. Giles goes so far as to say that there is no hint amongst the latter of the knowledge of even the existence of the Hebrew version. In this Bible (2 Esdras xiv.), it is announced distinctly that the "law was burnt;" and that Ezra, aided by the Holy Ghost and "wonderful visions of the night," wrote down "all that hath been done in the world from the beginning which was written in thy law." Let us write down a few dates from the accepted chronology. B.C. Adam 4004 Abraham 1996 Moses 1571 Nebuchadnezzar leads Jews in captivity to Babylon 587 Jews restored 517 Ezra 457