Our circle of 360 degrees; the division of a chord of the circle equal to the radius into 60 equal parts, called degrees:  the division of these into 60 minutes, of the minute into 60 seconds, and the second into 60 thirds; the division of the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds; the division of the week into seven days, and the very order of the days—­all have come down to us from the Chaldeo-Assyrians; and these things will probably be perpetuated among our posterity “to the last syllable of recorded time.”

We need not be surprised, therefore, to find the same legends and beliefs cropping out among the nations of Central America and the people of Israel.  Nay, it should teach us to regard the Book of Genesis with increased veneration, as a relic dating from the most ancient days of man’s history on earth; its roots cross the great ocean; every line is valuable; a word, a letter, an accent may throw light upon the gravest problems of the birth of civilization.

The vital conviction which, during thousands of years, at all times pressed home upon the Israelites, was that they were a “chosen people,” selected out of all the multitude of the earth, to perpetuate the great truth that there was but one God—­an illimitable, omnipotent, paternal spirit, who rewarded the good and punished the wicked—­in contradistinction from the multifarious, subordinate, animal and bestial demi-gods of the other nations of the earth.  This sublime monotheism could only have been the outgrowth of a high civilization, for man’s first religion is necessarily a worship of “stocks and stones,” and history teaches us that the gods decrease in number as man increases in intelligence.  It was probably in Atlantis that monotheism was first preached.  The proverbs of “Ptah-hotep,” the oldest book of the Egyptians, show that this most ancient colony from Atlantis received the pure faith from the mother-land at the very dawn of history:  this book preached the doctrine of one God, “the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked.” (Reginald S. Poole, Contemporary Rev., Aug., 1881, p. 38.) “In the early days the Egyptians worshipped one only God, the maker of all things, without beginning and without end.  To the last the priests preserved this doctrine and taught it privately to a select few.” ("Amer.  Encycl.,” vol. vi., p. 463.) The Jews took up this great truth where the Egyptians dropped it, and over the beads and over the ruins of Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, Greece, Rome, and India this handful of poor shepherds—­ignorant, debased, and despised—­have carried down to our own times a conception which could only have originated in the highest possible state of human society.