COUNTLESS MILLIONS.

Te Aroha News, 15 February 1890, Page 3

COUNTLESS MILLIONS.

Did you ever make a calculation of the number of people that have inhabited this globe since the beginning of time ? No doubt you will say that such calculations involve a loss of time and are, after all, barren of results, but as we are engaged in giving curious readings and odd calculations, let us take a few minutes’ time and approximate* with a certain degree of accuracy at least, the number of souls that have been ushered into and out of this sinful world since the time when it was not good for Adam to be alone. At the present time it is believed that there are 1,400,000,000 human beings on our globe; but let us suppose there has been an avernge of 900,000,000 living at one time since the creation. To give room for any possible doubt as to the average length of life, we will pub it down at fifty years. [lt may have been longer than that during Bible times ; it has been much shorter since.] With the average length of life, reckoned as above, we have had two generations of 900,000,000 every century for the past 6000 years. Taking this for granted, we have had about 66,627,844,237,075,256 inhabitants on this globe since the beginning of time. Admitting that there is a great deal of guess work about this calculation, and that it has been hastily and perhaps inaccurately done, and it will be perceived, nevertheless, that our earth is a vast cemetery. On each rood of it 1,283 human beings have found a burial place. A rood being scarcely sufficient for ten graves, each grave must contain the remains of 129 persons. The whole surface of the globe, if all people bury within the earth as we do, has been dug over 120 times in order to get room or burial places.