Page:The future of Africa.djvu/163

Rh the Euphrates; and which, transmitted to England and to France, adorn the Tuileries and the British Museum. It is a wrong idea to suppose that the first ages of the world were blind and uncultivated; and equally wrong is it to suppose that man advanced from barbarism to civilization, instead of that he fell from it. Adam was doubtless a most complete and proper man; and his descendants, although they carried with them for many hundred years, some of his high enlightenment and rare capability, still must have greatly deteriorated from the high pattern of their great progenitor. But still, though fallen, they did carry with them, as they spread abroad in the earth, those lofty ideas of the great God, with whom their Father talked in Paradise: and those ideas made them great, started thought, kept up the consciousness of a high manhood, led to enterprise, originated large ideas and grand purposes, prompted them to build great cities, and to lay the foundations of magnificent empires. But, alas! so soon as they lost those lofty principles, then commenced the facile process of sure decline. As they became idolatrous, weakness advanced, and ruin ensued. This was doubtless the downward course of the first five empires of the world. By the inspiriting force of simple, natural religion, they were raised to power, majesty, and culture. Bxit when they became deceived and seduced by the idolatries of their neighbors; or allowed a loose authority to a corrupt imagination; and fashioned the forms of a Divine Power to themselves; then, not all their intellectual greatness, nor the vastness of their imperial power, could preserve them