It is true, generally speaking, that our historical knowledge and research do not reach very far back. The Flood, to which the traditions of all people remount, and which all telluric sciences, whether geography, or natural history, or geology, or whatever other name they may bear, directly or indirectly confirm, forms an impassable gulf between the modern and later family of man, and that first and gigantic race of the antediluvian world. And yet careful criticism and historical investigation are still able to distinguish in the chaotic congeries of different mythologies the several strata and epochs, and can separate the primary rock of the earlier natural legend from the later mythical formations. But even this primary rock itself, amid the legends of primeval times--this first, and oldest, and simplest basis of heathenism, is itself but a fusion and the _debris_ of some earlier and precedent convulsion. But now all legends, every mythology, and universal tradition, agree in this one point. They concur in deriving the origin of man from God, and assert that the first man, who, while he proceeded immediately from God, was also the first-born son of earth, in which he was placed, because it was of a nature nearest akin to his and ours. Now this same first man, as proceeding and taking his beginning from God, could not well be without some knowledge of Him. The concurrent tradition of all nations leads us to the idea of man's possessing knowledge, and in truth an immediate and intuitive knowledge of God in and out of nature, and indeed primarily and principally from this source, and on the other hand also of his having an immediate and intuitive knowledge of nature in God. And this exactly is the old and true Gentilism of the holy patriarchs of the primeval world, if by this term we understand the original religion of nature, among the earliest families, and the pious patriarchs of the human race, as it is described in the language and after the analogy of Holy Writ,[51] and also in the ancient traditions which have grown out of and attached themselves to it. Now, according to the simple progression of truth, which is also that of God, and of the knowledge of Him, this revelation of nature was the first and earliest that was imparted to man upon earth, and must be carefully distinguished from that later or second revelation of God, which is both of a positive nature and is contained in a written law, or written word and book of the law. And in the written revelation this distinction is most carefully observed throughout. The divine law, which although not written on brazen tablets, unquestionably existed in these primeval ages of a natural revelation, which was read and intuitively understood in nature herself, or immediately in the hearts and minds of men, was far simpler, and consequently also easier and less burdensome, than the later law of the second revelation, which was designed for the moral regeneration of a degenerate people, and for fitting them to be a witness of the truth to other nations of the world still more degraded and benighted than themselves. And in the same way this second revelation was less stringent and less exalted in its scope than the last law of later times, promulgated in the third age of the world to all nations and kindreds of the earth. For the latter was not designed for the first happy period of the infancy of mankind, but for his last difficult, but decisive struggle, which is to end in the perfect triumph of good, and in man's total emancipation from the hostile and oppressive yoke of original evil. For the wise and omniscient Father of all has given to every age of man's history a peculiar and appropriate law. For the infancy of the race, He published an easy rule of life--permitting the full expansion and the blooming development of all his vital energies; but one of sterner preparation, of promise and of expectation, for his youth. For his maturity, lastly, He has set forth a law of determined struggle with evil, and of a predominant love of the invisible, and even of perfection. And consequently a new application of the same law, and a new strengthening for the same conflict, is to be looked for in the last times of the final consummation. But not only was the divine natural law, as promulgated to man in the earliest ages, far different from that of later times, and the subsequent stages of a further development of revealed knowledge. This immediate revelation, and intuitive knowledge of nature, was likewise very dissimilar to the artificially elaborate and complicated systems of physical science.