Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 Excerpt:...the names of stars in the book of Job. Some system of noting the flight of time appears to have been in use, from the minute accuracy of the genealogical tables in the book of Genesis, and from the records of the birth, age, and death of the patriarchs, as well as from the intimation of the year, month, and day, in which some important events are described as occurring. The condition in which men dwelt, usually in peace with each other; the scrupulous regard enjoined upon them as to the sacredness of human life; the authority of the patriarchs in enforcing laws, whether human or divine; the reference to judges sitting in the gate; and the deference paid by men when grown up to the will of their parents, all indicate a state of things in which piety and morality gave security to personal liberty and property. The men described in the first pages of the Bible were not brutes nor savages, but civilized beings. The building of the ark, at the end of the antediluvian period, though begun and carried on by Noah under a divine direction, nevertheless supposed considerable knowledge and skill on the part of the workmen engaged in its construction. Some superiority in mensuration and mechanics is implied in reaving so large a structure as the ark. Some acquaintance with the varieties of timber is indicated in the selection of the proper kind of wood; and some knowledge of the properties of those bodies which were fitted to protect the vessel from the corrosion of the elements, and from the havoc of marine insects, is implied in the injunction to " pitch it within and without with pitch." Immediately after the miraculous preservation of a root of the human family by the construction of the ark, we find Noah and his sons taking possession of the new world. F...