and morality were remembered through many generations. Students of antiquity have discovered in the earliest writings and traditions of various peoples a much purer religion than that which was prevalent in the classic ages of Greece and Rome. They have thus strikingly refuted the theory of evolutionists which pretends that religion was evolved from the grossest fetichism, by constant improvements, to the gradual recognition of one only God. The opposite is known to be the truth. "It cannot be denied," writes Frederick von Schlegel, "that the early Indians possessed a knowledge of the true God; all their writings are replete with sentiments and expressions noble, clear, and serenely grand, as deeply conceived and reverentially expressed as in any human language in which men have spoken of their God" (Aest. and Misc. Works, Let. VIII. —See also Thebaud's Gentilism, pp. 30 etc., where the same is shown to be true of other ancient races). Prophets were also sent from time to time as special messengers of God to keep the Primitive revelation from corruption, and to prepare mankind for the coming of the Saviour.
19. When the nations generally were falling into idolatry, God selected Abraham to be the father of a Chosen People, from which the Messias was to be born, and in which the Primitive revelation was to be preserved in all its purity: "The Lord said to Abraham: Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father's house, and come into the land which I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee — and in thee shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed" (Gen. XII, 1-3). The Old Testament portion of the Holy Scriptures is almost entirely taken up with the history of that Chosen People,
