The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1882-10-11
THE EARLIEST TRACES OF
MAN.
Editorial Correspondence
PARIS, FRANCE, Sept. Goth, 80


city, intending to devote another letter
to it, but it is too late now The world
will miss that like much else that has
never been sung.
From London, by Folkestone and Bou-
logne, you come to Paris in eight and
a half hours, occupying an hour and a
half in crossing the channel. Strange to
say, great many are sea-sick even in
that little time: 1 never knew the feel
ing, even in the Mediterranean.
l stopped four or FIVE days at Amiens,
on the Somme. Here there is splendid
old cathedral of the finest in Eu-
rope. AS stood beneath its lofty aisle,
and looked between its lofty pillars upon
its painted windows, said to myself,
This is no place for evangelical wor-
ship" l felt as if 1 was in great tenn
pie, reared for architectural effect, and
fifty expressing a general recognition of
a Divine Being; but l might nearly as
well have stood in the Parthenon or any
other noble edifce designed to express
the religious idea. Such structures do
well enough to reflect the sentiment OF
nominal Christianity; they do not an
swer for that sort of Christian worship
which Paul conducted in that upper
chamber at Troas, or which one finds in
one of those humble chapels connected
with the Mccall mission in Paris. | am
more and more persuaded that architec-
ture, like painting and the thing which
we call music in Europe, have little to
do with the genuine religious feeling.
Music, of course, has its place as medium
ofgiving expression to religious thought,
but it is not that music which fashionable
people go to hear in fashionable churches.
1t is music akin to that which re- echoed
through the prison walls at Philippi,
when Paul and 'Silas, at midnight, with
their feet in the stocks, sang praises to
God, and the simple melodies of the
Christian Church broke for the first time
upon the ear of Europe. The European
cathedral is very good place for that
sort OF devotion which warriors, and
knights, and beautiful ladies of noble
birth, throw off, in spirty kind of way,
In great emergencies (and which only
lasts for the special occasion); but for the
homely piety of plain and unromantic
people, who feel that they need real
making-over of their spiritual nature, it
IS not half so good as the humble base
ment room, with its little platform and
It's white-washed walls, of one of our vii
lage Presbyterian churches.
also spent day (before reaching
Paris) at Abbeville, in the Somme valley,
which also has fine old cathedral.
There are strange things to see at these
two old towns, besides their cathedrals
and their medieval streets. There are
things in the Somme valley great deal
older than the relics of the crusaders and
the medieval knights The valley of
this river is covered for some distance
from the banks Of the stream with beds
of peat, sometimes thirty feet deep, and
in this peat they find swords, and battle
axes, and helmets, and urns and ampho-
rae and many other objects of the Nero
vingian, the Gallo Roman, and the Ro-
man period-it is in fact history of
Gaul since Cesar's time. Warriors have
been found, with their horses, and their
armor, at great depths, and at Abbeville,
at the depth of IL feet, they found boat
loaded with Roman bricks. Sir Charles
Lyell, in his Antiquity of Man, and
Sir John Lubbock, in his Prehistoric
Times, have great deal to say about
this peat, and seek to leave the impress
sion that it is some fifteen or twenty thou
sand years Old The men of the second
or more recent stone age lived, they say,
before it began to form. But the boat
to which have referred, with the Ro-
man bricks, was at the very bottom of it,
and goes to prove that much of it, at
least, has been formed since the Christian
era.
Abbeville is more famous as the home
Of the celebrated Boucher de Perthes,
and as the place, where he discovered
(prior to 1844) the now celebrated flint