Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/67

 inscriptions was found. There is not a single geologist who does not at once infer from these facts an enormous lapse of time during which the human race must have inhabited Egypt. Geologists are not more deficient in common sense than other men, and they are quite ready to allow that accidental circumstances may have contributed to bury some articles deeper than others; and their conclusions are not drawn from this or that experiment, but from the cumulative evidence derived from nearly a hundred experiments made over a very extensive area of land.

In reply to the objection that the artificial objects might have fallen into old wells which had afterwards been filled up, Sir Charles Lyell says: "Of the ninety-five shafts and borings, seventy or more were made far from the sites of towns or villages; and allowing that every field may have had its well, there would be small chance of the borings striking upon the site even of a small number of them in seventy experiments." I remember being once asked about these operations, and when I had described them, one of my friends came up to me and said in a voice of solemn warning and protest, "If what you have been saying is true, Christianity is a mere fable." I could only reply, "No; it only shows that your conception of Christianity involves something fabulous." Whatever claim a