The Unity of the Human Race

We proceed, as we intimated in the last chapter, to call the attention of the reader to the question of the unity of the human race. Whether the first man spoken of by Moses, was literally the first man, and the payment of the entire race of human beings, is an inquiry to which different answers have for the most part been given, as different authors have been believers, or disbelievers, in a supernatural revelation. Where the subject is investigated simply by the phenomena of nature and the lights of science, there indeed are those who have come to the conclusion, that all mankind are not the descendants of one common pair. Men imbued with Christian truth do not complain of these philosophical inquiries; for they are more and more satisfied that on this subject, as well as every other, the works and the word of God, when both are known and understood, are perfectly harmonious. The greatest naturalists in all ages, however diversified may have been their views in regard to Christianity, regarded all the races of men as composed of one species.* We are not a little surprised, therefore, when we find men who express their unhesitating confidence in the Scriptures, advocating the doctrine of a plurality of races, as has been recently done by two authors of eminence in our own country.f One of the writers here referred to afiirms, that “the Mosaic history affords a fair, and very strong presumption, that man was divided into several species by the Creator.” He expresses the belief that Adam and Eve were not the first and only created beings in the world; that the race spoken of by Moses, of which Adam was the first, is simply the race to which the Scriytures have reference, and which were to be employed by God in the design of redeeming mercy. The other affirms that the Bible yrofesses to give “the history of the white race, with special reference to the history of the Jews;” and, strange as it may appear to those who read the Scriptures, he asserts that” nowhere the colored races, as such, are even

* Among these were Linnaeus, Leibnitz, BufFon, Schrobler, Erxleben, Humboldt, Blumenbach, Cuvier, Owen, and others, who were the lights of the world, and studied all the departments of nature.

f See “The Natural History of Man,” a work of more than seven hundred octavo pages, by William Frederic Van Amringe, of the state of New York; and a work “On the Diversity and Origin of the Human Races,” by Prof. Agaeeiz, of Cambridge College. alluded to;” while he “challenges those who maintain that mankind originated from a single pair, to quote a single passage in the whole Scriptures, pointing at those physical differences, which may be adduced as evidence that the sacred writers regarded them as descended from a common stock.”

In the following discussion, therefore, we are concerned mainly with the scriptural argument in. favor of the unity of the race. All arguments against this position are, as it appears to us, arguments against the Scriptures; the verity of Moses and of Paul depend alike on the common origin of the species. In defence of this view, we remark —

In the first place, there is no intimation in the 8cri])ture-s that there was a ra/ie of men prior to the C7’eation of Adam and Eve. It has been alleged as a reason of the belief that there was such a race, that it is most improbable that the wife of Cain could have been the dausrhter of Adam and Eve; because, it does not appear that they had daughters at the time Cain was driven into exile, nor indeed until after the birth of Seth, who was born after Canaan’s son Enoch. And in keeping with this hypothesis, it is supposed that the unhallowed marriages subsequently spoken of between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men,” and through which the earth became degenerate, were alliances between the descendants of Adam, and the descendants of a race which existed prior to the creation, spoken of by Moses. This is no new hyy)othesis; it was known, at least as early as the days of Voltaire, and has often been repeated. No fact is more obvious than that the genealogy of the Scriptures, there is an irir complete record oi female descendants. The sons of Adam and Eve must have married their sisters; yet the names of his daughters are not once mentioned in the sacred writings. The first female on the record is the wife of Cain, and the next two are the wives of Lamech. It does not appear from the book of Genesis that even so late as the time of Cain’s exile, Adam and Eve had any female children; yet in a subsequent paragraph, which covers his entire life, we are told that Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years, and “begat sons and daughters The sacred records trace the events of patriarchal history, and the age of the world from Adam to Noah, through a period of 2000 years; they give us the intermediate names of Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methusaleh, and Lamech; but the most we know of the female descendants of any of them is the bald record that” they begat sons and daughters!’^ That the wife of Cain could not have been the daughter of Adam and Eve is entirely destitute of proof. The supposition assumes that the narrative contains an account of all the children of our first parents; while this was by no means necessary to the objects of the writer, or the accuracy of the narrative. There is no intimation in the nai’rative itself that our first parents had no daughters before Cain’s exile, or none between his exile and his marriage. He was banished during the life of his parents, and not until about one hundred and thirty years after their creation; so that there was abundant time for them to have a numerous and dispersed progeny before the marriage of Cain. Though the Scriptures do. not inform us when that marriage took place, they give no intimation that it did not take place previous to his banishment; but on the other hand speak of “his wife” as one well known to the family of ‘Adam, and as one who, as such, had been familiai’ly recognized.

In opposition to the hypothesis on which we are animadverting, it may be remarked, that the narrative in the book of Genesis cannot fairly receive any other fair construction than that Adam was the first created of the race. It is compendious, but perfectly explicit. It is a narrative of the (yi’eation in its beautiful and divine order; first the commingled materials which formed the heavens and the earth — then light — then the firmament — then the sea and the dry land — then the vegetable world — then the sun, moon, and stars — then fishes and fowl — then cattle, and creeping things, and beast of the earth — and last of all man the first created man, as tLe crown of the creation and the parent of the race. Do we want anyi:,hing more than this to satisfy us that the first male and female ever created were Adam and Eve? If so, we have it in the fact that they vere invested with universal dominion, and that to them the command was given, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earW — not inhabited and replenished by a prior race, but to be inhabited and replenished by the new created-pair. Besides; if there were a yrior race, where are they? Who ai’e they? And what has become of this anomalous race of human beings, so separated from the race of Adam, that they hail from a different ancestry, and amid all the interlacing of the nations are not mentioned in the word of God, and have preserved DO tradition of their origin? In addition to this, the Scriptures expnessly assert that Adain was the first man. ‘■’’The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam a quickening spirit:” — “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.”

In proof of the common origin of the race, it may be again remarked that the Scriptures attribute to them all the same coimnon properties. In the question we are considering, due weight is to be given to the fact, that in their view of the nations, the Scriptures take a wdde survey. There is not a distinct, or a mingled people on the face of the earth, known to the records of ethnology, certainly not then in its infant state, whose history they do not trace, or of whom they do not give some intimation. They have respect to the entire race of man, and overlook no part of it. To a great extent, the Bible is definite in its notices of the nations, and where it is not thus definite, it speaks of them as “all the ends of the earth,” and as “dwelling afar off upon the sea.” People of every age of time, of every longitude and zone, under every form of government, and in all their diversities of descent, color, language and habits, are comprised in the descriptions, or allusions of Moses and the j)i’ophets, Christ and the apostles. The same dissimilarities in the various races of men existed at the time the Scriptures were written which have existed since, and which exist at the present day. It is not a little marvellous that a man distinguished for learning should hazard the bold assertion, that “the colored races are nowhere alluded to by the sacred writers.” Most abundantly do they allude to them. They speak of Ethiopia and they refer to its different families. Moses and the prophets were not unacquainted with the imbrowned inhabitants of Egypt, Nubia and Abyssinia; nor with the darker inhabitants of the interior and equatorial regions. They were Ethiopian princes who, at various times, occupied the tliroue of the Pharaohs; an Ethiopian princess is mentioned by St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles; the inhabitants of Ethiopia were letter known to the Hebrews than they are even to ourselves. Did Professor Agassiz never read of a Cushite chieftain whose name was Nimrod? Did he never hear of a Cushite woman who was the daughter of Jethro? or of a Cushite invader of Judah in the days of Asa? or of “recovering the remnant left from Cush?” or of the Ethiopian slave belonging to the household of king Zedekiah? or of “Ethiopia stretching out her hands unto God?” or of the glorious things spoken of Zion, in the day when it shall be said, “Behold Philistia and Tyre, with Etldopia: this man was born there?” Or does he suppose the sacred writers knew nothing of the peculiarities of this peoj)le, when they demand, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” The Cush and the Ethiopia of the Scriptures are the same; Cush is always rendered by the Septuagint translators Ethiopia. The historical fact is, that the word Ethiopian denoted the negro race. So the Greeks used it; to “wash the Ethiopian white,” was with them a proverbial expression applied to a hopeless attempt. They were the darkest race of people known to the Greeks, and in earlier times to the Hebrews. Yet the Scriptures everywhere speak of this race of men, who, in configuration, color, and constitutional peculiarity, are the very antipodes of the white races, as possessing a common humanity with them. No fact is more obvious, than that whatever there be in one portion of the world that constitutes its inhabitants human, tJiat the Scriptures decide belongs to the inhabitants of every other portion.

We know from an investigation of the laws of nature, and from the anatomy and physiology of the human frame, that all the varieties of the race, many as they are, and not a few of them from their immingling with other varieties almost imperceptible in degree, possess the same physical properties. In the structure of his body, and in that physical organization which distinguishes him from every other species of animals, man is the same being in Labrador and South Wales, on the Caucasian mountains, and on the burning sands of Africa. Change his condition; transplant him from his natural soil and climate; take him in the wilds of the forest, or under the culture of civilized and polished life; and he has everywhere the characteristics which designate the same species. These characteristics are obvious, striking, and permanent, even to the number of teeth and bones, the number and arrangement of the muscles, and the digestive, circulatory, secretory, and respiratory organs. There is no difference in these particulars which has as yet been detected among the different races; there is the same uniformity in the white and bhick, the Mongolian, the Malay, and the American. They are all omniverous, and capable of living on all kinds of food, and of inhabiting all climates; while all have the same period of gestation, the same slow growth, are subject to the same diseases, possess the same average longevity, and in all their varieties, and in every shade of amalgamation, produce a fertile offspring.

It is now a well-ascertained fact, that animals of different si3ecies are incapable of producing and perpetuating themselves. Our learned countryman, Dr. Bach man, has shown, with a force of testimony that cannot be resisted, that in no instance has a fertile progeny arisen from the amalgamation of distinct species. Prichard, in his work on the Natural History of Man, mentions that Dr. Wagner, of Germany, has proved by the dissection of animals of mixed blood, that nature has interposed in the anatomical structui-e of hybrids, an absolute barrier to their reproduction. Yet the proof is abundant from the Scriptures, that the different varieties of the race mingle without limit, and reproduce indefinitely. They do not fail to criminate the illicit intercourse of the sexes who form different varieties of the race, as the prohibited intercourse with beings who are human, and belonging to the same species.

The more important properties, and those which the Scriptures dwell upon as characteristics of the race, are man’s intellectual and moral nature, and his indestructible immortality. Indeed, this whole subject is important, chiefly for its moral ends, and in relation to man’s responsibility as a being who is human in all the varieties of his descent. It is a spiritual nature which he possesses. He is a percipient, thinking, willing existence. He has reason and conscience. He possesses a mind which is capable of progress and expansion; he is so far a religious being, that he possesses a sense of right and wrong, is capable of holiness and happiness, and of wickedness and misery. He was formed for immortality, and is constituted the deputed lord of this lower creation. These are high prerogativ’es, but they belong to man wherever he is found; the Scriptures everywhere attribute them to all the races, of every variety on the face of the globe.

In the next place, the Scriptures represent all the varieties of the race as having a common interest in the truths which they reveal. No matter fix)m what proximate parentage he is descended, or what his peculiarities of form and color, they look upon man as the subject of God’s moral government, and as having an interest in his revealed truth. The great truths of the Bible are man’s apostasy and God’s redemption; while, as the consequence, or rather as part and parcel of these revelations, they disclose to us man’s accountability, and his final and irrevocable award to the retributions of eternity. They speak of him as a transgressor, but as the prisoner of hojDe; enjoying a reprieve from condemnation, living under the mediatorial reign of mercy, and to whom the offer of salvation is made on revealed conditions. In all these particulars, so descriptive of what is exclusively human, the Bible addresses itself equally, and with equal appropriateness, to all the ^’arietie8 of the race. It requires that the same instruction should be given to them all; the same obligation enforced; the same offers of mercy proclaimed; and the same divine solicitude for their salvation made known. It requires that the same class of motives, drawn from truth and duty, from all that is authoritative in the divine government, and all that is persuasive in the tenderness of infinite love, be urged upon all men as inducements to accept its great salvation. It tells them that this day of grace and hope terminates at death; that none may look for a subsequent opportunity of repentance; that then the righteous hath hope, and the wicked is driven away in his wickedness; and that after death is the final and irrevocable sentence to heaven, or hell. Just look at these leading truths. Is it of human sinfulness that the Scriptures speak; they speak of man wherever he is found, of every form of Humanity in all its varieties, of Jew and Gentile, slave and freeman: “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Is it of the salvation by Christ; their language is, “For if by one mans offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by One Jesus Christy If there be a truth they state with clearness, it is the ruined condition of the race from the apostasy of the first man; and with the same clearness its blessed counterpart, the salvation by Christ. They require that” the gospel be preached to every creature’’ and affirm that “according to the commandment of the everlasting God, it is made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.” Is it of repentance they speak; their lansruaore is, “God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.” Or do they lift the veil of future things, and tell of the resurrection both of the just and the unjust; their language is, “All that are in their graves shall hear his voice and come forth;” “The sea gave up the dead which were, in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them;” “As in Adam all die, so in Christ, shall all be made alive.” And when they speak of the judgment, they say, “I saw the dead, small and great stand before God;” we shall “all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ;” “Every one of us shall give an account of himself before God;” “Christ shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.”

There are phrases here which certainly include all the varieties of the race, and which regard the race itself as one. What is there of humanity that is not comprehended in the word, Christ? Who shall shut out Christ from the great brotherhood of man, when he stands as the God-man Mediator, as embodying humanity, and as the brother of the race — stands in the very centre of the stream of time, bound alike to the first and the last man? And who that is human has not these characteristics — that he is a fallen sinner — that his only hope is in the gospel of the grace of God — and that the federal personages by which he is bound to these great realities, are on the one hand the first, and on the other the second Adam? Perish the infidel thought that there is any portion of the human race, who are so isolated from the common parentage as to be cut oif from all access to the common Saviour! Surely wherever man is found, the relation he bears to the Saviour of men identifies him with Adam’s posterity. If there was a prior race, or if there be any other race, the Scriptures nowhere give the least intimation of it. If there be such a race, it is one not affected by Adam’s apostasy; nor have they any interest in the Redeemer of his descendants; nor do they come within the sphere of the commission given to

THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. HI

those who preach his gospel; nor may it be preached to them; nor are they entitled to any of its promises or hopes; nor have any lot nor part in this matter. Do the Scriptures anywhere recognize such a race? We can understand why it was that such a man as Voltaire should advocate the doctrine of a variety of races, because his object was to invalidate the truth of the Sacred Writings; but it is not easy for us to understand why professed believers in the Sacred Scriptures should be the advocates of this doctrine, and urge in favor of it the established laws of science. We marvel not a little at the inconsistency which puts the question upon such an issue. It becomes such writers, as men of science, if not as Christians, to show with some precision, what those distinctive differences in the race are, which necessarily give men a different origin; from what, and how many, different sources they have originated; and how, in the dispensation of the gospel, we are to discriminate them from the descendants of Adam. When they have done this, we, in our turn, will undertake to show that those very Imes of demarcation are distinctly recognized in the Scriptures, not as characteristics of a different origin, but as belonging to those who are the descendants of the same pair, and as component parts of the one great family to all of whom the Scriptures address the truths and hopes of the common salvation.

This leads me to another and a distinct topic, which is, that in their references to the various nations and tribes of men and in all their diversities the Scriptures do in fact trace their genealogy to one common ‘parentage. The common objection to the doctrine we are advocating is, that men are so widely diffused over the earth, that it is irrational to suppose them to have originated from a common centre. Man is found everywhere; and in varieties so numerous, so great, and so permanent, that it is more consistent with analogy to suppose him to have originated from different sources, than to have sprung from the same source. If we were to answer this objection on philosophical principles merely, we would undertake to show with Dr. Pickering, “on zoological grounds, that the human family is foreign to the American continent.” It has been shown, as we judge, from the migratory habits of man, and from the facilities and motives to his migration, that it is no absurd, nor unnatural hypothesis, that he migrated from that portion of the earth which the Scriptures assign as the place of his creation. The theory of Professor Agassiz is that men are traceable to different creations., as they inhabit different zoological regions, or zones. Yet it might be shown, that large districts of country, comprising different zones, are inhabited by tribes and nations which all ethnological wiiters trace to the same common stock. This theory has been well tested by a recent reviewer in our own country.* Within the American continent, says this searching writer, “are four provinces, reaching through a greater extent of climate than any other body of land upon the globe can supply — from the north star to the southern cross — occupied through all its length by one aboriginal race. This American race, whose distribution over four zoological provinces is not questioned, affords the most convincing proof of the utter futility of this attempt to connect each race of men whose limits are naturally circumscribed with a particular organized province. It is not like the Aztec race, of no real foundation in nature; nor like the Mongol of undecided extent; nor like the Malay mingled throughout its extent with other races; nor like the negro, blended in every direction with other and related tribes. It is of almost j!?W/r(5 blood and is limited in every direction by the ocean, which cuts it off from all association.”f This fact alone is a perfect confutation of the Professor’s theory, and a perfect refutation of his whole argument.

But our concern is more with the argument as it is presented in the Scriptures. The genealogical tables contained in the Scriptures present a remarkable feature in the Sacred Writings. I

* The New Euglander for Oct. 1850.

f In proof the common origin of the American Aborigines. See Stone’s Life of Red Jacket call them genealogical; and while some of them are strictly so, others are rather statements and ethnological sketches, by which the inhabitants of the earth are traced down from earlier to later periods. The author of the Book of Genesis furnishes a succinct history of the inhabitants of the earth from the creation to the Deluge, and from the Deluge to his own times; a period of twenty-five hundred years, and during which men had greatly multiplied, and formed different clans, and large and powerful nations. This enumeration contains a great variety of the human race; so great, that science might be justified in advocating the doctrine of a plurality of races from this diversity as it then existed, for as good reasons as justify the doctrine at the present day. There were the same diversities of color and form; yet it will not be questioned, that Moses traces them to a common origin; with all their diversity, there was the same lineal descent from Adam and from Noah. It would be an instructive work on ethnology which should follow in the track of Moses, and trace up the different nations of the earth to the point where he left them, and show that all the great branches of the race sprang from Noah’s three sons. We may be pardoned for suggesting that this threefold classification is the more natural one. Cuvier, in substance, retains it, and divides the race into three varieties, Caucasian, Mongolian, and Ethiopian. Blumenbacli, and his classification has been more generally received, makes five varieties, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the American, the Negro, and the Malay. This classification appears to us objectionable on many accounts; nor is it at once comprehended by the ordinary reader. Nor is that classification of one of our learned countrymen less objectionable, by which he designates the varieties as the Shemitic species, the Japhetic, the Ishmaelitic and the Canaanitic species. These two latter classifications separate what God has historically joined together. Philologists have traced the languages of the earth to the languages originally spoken by the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japheth; would not the work of the ethnologist be facilitated by thus classifying the great varieties of the race?

Would it be impracticable to define with very considqj*able precision the branches of the Shemitic family, or the descendants of Shem? Moses traces his descendants down to Abraham; and from Abraham are traced all the varieties of the Jews proper all the ramifications of Moabite and Ammonite origin and the still greater varieties descended from Hagar through Ishmael forming as his descendants did one of the most extensive empires in the world; extending themselves over Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and civilized Africa — penetrating Europe and invading Tartary — overrunning Spain and the larger islands of the Mediterranean — reaching from the Ganges to the Atlantic, and from the Pyrenees to the deserts of Africa — combining the scattered Saracen tribes, everywhere marked by peculiarities and customs of their own, a people “dwelling in the presence of their brethren,” and proclaiming their descent from the archer in the wilderness of Paran. The ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Ophir were all the descendants of Shem. If we carefully compare the ethnological portions of the Book of Grenesis with the ethnological portions of the First Book of Chronicles, we may collect no small amount of knowledge in regard to this portion of the human race.

Though not without its difficulties, there is still less embarrassment in tracing the descendants of Ham. They had a different destiny from the descendants of Shem. For the unnatural, jmfilial, and Ibul sin of their father, they were the accursed race, and doomed to be “the servant of servants,” to the descendants of Shem and Japheth. Nothing is more obvious than that this race must, in some way, be kept so distinct from the other races, that this curse could be visibly executed. Without some line of demarcation, either physical or geographical, or both, the frequent intermarriages between these races would have gradually blotted out their predicted isolation, and rendered the descendants of Ham, in the progress of time, undistinguished from the descendants of Shem and Japheth. We know from all history and observation, that there is a race of men who possess strong specific difi*erences of color and features; that these differences have prevailed from the earliest times, and that, let them be removed to whatever portion of the earth, and live under whatever regimen they may, these specific differences exist still. Ham had four sons, and they were early assigned to a well-defined portion of the earth. Cush was the oldest, and as we have already seen, was but another name for Ethiopia. Mizrawi was the second son; he yeopled Egypt; Egypt is called the land of Mizraim. Canaan the youngest, early occupied Palestine; but this fair land was reserved for the posterity of Shem, and the idolatrous Canaanites were conquered by Joshua, and driven, into Egypt, where they founded Carthage. Ham is supposed to have settled in Egypt, together with his son Mizraim. Egypt is called the land of Ham, not only by ancient historians, but in the Old Testament. The Greeks called it Egypt; but its proper name in the Hebrew Scriptures is Mizraim. The Libyans, inhabiting a country in Africa, west of Egypt, were the descendants of Lehabim, one of Mizraim’s sons. Phut, another of the sons of Ham, occupied Africa also, and by the Septuagint translators, is identified with the Libyans.

They are associated with Cusli and Lud and Egypt; and the evidence preponderates in favor of their occupying the Barbary coast. From Cush descended those who are more appropriately called the Ethioyian race. A colony of them early removed from the land of Shinar, and settled in that part of Africa which lies south of Egypt, in the western part of the continent, and bounded on the north by the Great Desert. Africa was peopled by the sons of Ham. All the other races, which have from time to time inhabited it, were not indigenous races. Africa is not, we are sorry to say, their permanent residence; for they are found everywhere; in India, in China, in Japan, among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans, in the islands of the Indian and West Indian oceans, and in North and South America. But, though thus scattered, they are known as the race of Ham. Yet, strange to say, it is with this peculiar variety of the human race, so easily traced to one of the sons of Noah, that naturalists find the greatest difficulty in allowing to belong to the common family of man.

The descendants of Jcqylietli comprise the Caucasian, or white races, scattered over the earth, dwelling in the tents of Shem, inhal;)iting a large portion of the finer parts of the habitable globe, and comprising the most civilized and powerful nations. They peopled the northern parts of Asia and all Europe, including the ancient Persians, Scythians, Celts, Greeks, Romans and Gauls, the various Gothic and Teutonic and Tartar races, and those insular portions of the earth in Lesser Asia and Europe which are described in the Scriptures as the “isles of the Gentiles.” Japheth had seven sons. From Gomer descended the ancient Galatians, the Trojans of the Hellespont, the Phrygians, the inhabitants of the Axanian islands, or the coasts of the Euxine, the Gomerians, or early Germans of the Danube, and from Germany spread themselves into Gaul. The ancient Britons, too, as well as our own Saxon ancestors, were the descendants of Japheth, through hig first-born son Gomer. The descendants of his second son, Magog I have not the means of tracing more extensively than to learn they were the Scythians, the Tartars and the Goths, who overran the Roman empire. Mada% his third son, was the ancestor of the Medes and the Samaritans. From Javan the fourth son, descended the inhabitants of Cilicia, Tarshish, Chittim, the ancient Dorians, and the islands lying between Europe and Asia, or what the prophet Ezekiel calls” the isles of Elirshd’’ — the Elisae Pontus, or the Hellespont, and the colonies of Tarshish. Tiibal and Meshech the fifth and sixth sons, names so often united in the sacred writings, syread themselves over Cappadocia and Armenia, ancient Albania, and, according to the prophet Ezekiel, carried on an extensive slave-trade with Tyre. Wells, in his Historical Geography of the Old Testament, says that the Spaniards have a tradition that they are descendants from Tubal; for they were the Asiatic Iberi. The Muscovites were a colony descended from Meshech. Of Tyras the youngest son of Japheth, it is generally agreed that he was the progenitor of the ancient Thracians, and first settled in the country of Thrace, and spread over the north side of the Euxine sea *

The thought is not always present to those advocates of the doctrine of plurality of races who profess to submit to the teachings of the Scriptures, that these writings refer to a verij great number of distinct nations and tribes of men, to all of which they not only ascribe a common origin, but, notwithstanding all their varieties, and all these gradations of difference, historically trace them to a common parentage in one of the sons of Noah. If these historic facts lay unembarrassed by local differences in the mind of the sacred historian, why should these differences be perplexing to us f

The ethnological sketching of the sacred writers, subsequent to the days of Moses, while it is far from being full, is also far from being impov-

* See Well’s Hist. Geog. of the Old Test., vol. i. — The Commentaries — Calmel’s Dictionary — and some valuable hints from Lempriere’s Class. Diet, bjr Anthon — Bedford’s Chronology. erished and bald. There are so many scraps of history and ethnology, scattered throughout the classics and classic historians, as well as throughout some of the larger commentaries on the Scriptures, the more valuable biblical and biographical dictionaries and charts of history,* that it demands no great credulity, even independently of the sacred writings, to adopt the conclusion, that the various races of men may, in fact, be traced to a common origin. The great outlines of this descent are in some good degree obvious; nor are they obliterated by the unnumbered crossings of blood which assign some portions of the earth to two, or even more proximate races. Nor do we entertain a doubt, that with the rapid progress of scientific knowledge, the more thorough research into the natural history of our race, and a more extended acquaintance with the descent, and immingled population of the nations, facts will abundantly illustrate and confirm the Mosaic narrative in regard to the origin of mankind.

The only consideration that detracts from the force of this general outline is, that it is necessarily

* See a most valuable depository of facts entitled Atlas und Tahellen, (fee, by Frederich Kruse, Leipzig: also the Annales Antiquitatis, or Oxford Chronological Tables of Ancient History, synchronistically and ethnologically arranged. Also Atlas Historique et Chronologique, A. Jarry De Mancy: in the Astor Library.

Not a few valuable hints on this topic may be also gathered from Hallam’s Literature of Eui-ope.

SO imperfect. The different nations are so immingled, that is difficult to trace them with precision to their national origin. But does not this fact itself confirm the general argument? Does it not show that the farther back we trace the origin of the nations, the more we find these streams commingled, and issuing from the same fountain? Even the Jews themselves are not a perfectly unmingled race. It would be a remarkable fact, if not an unaccountable one, that so few of the nations of the earth have been able to retain with certainty the knowledge of their distinct origin, if they originated from as many new creations, as their zoological zones. Upon the hypothesis that they are all descended from one common origin, this is perfectly natural, and just what might be looked for. The different branches became gradually more and more ramified from their very growth. Necessity, policy, their own arrangement and choice, dispersed them over the earth so widely, that while the main trunk and the principal branches are visible, it requires a minuteness of inspection, a microscopic view, of which the human mind is not capable, to affirm with certainty, amid the ten thousand graftings, to which of the main branches the more remote and dense twigs and foliage belong. This general fact is ascertained, that all tradition, monuments, hieroglyphical writing, and history, point to a common origin of the race.

Science is bound by all her own laws, if she insists on a plurality of sources, to prove what those sources are. This she has not done; this she cannot do. She is pressed with this difficulty, and does not attempt what she knows is impossible. Yet, as the lawyers would say, the onus probanda lies upon her. According to all the laws of fair reasoning, her bold affirmative that the different races proceeded from different sources, we call upon her to support, by defining at least some of those sources. To speak with the confidence with which Agassiz has spoken, and then retire from the field in his own covert way, is presumption and not science. The Mosaic history never was palmed upon the world; there is every reason to place the fullest confidence in its representations.

I remark also, that the Scriptures ecpressly affirm that the entire race of men with all their varieties have one and the same origin. They do not leave us to deduce this doctrine from their great design and object merely, nor from their ethnological records; they explicitly instruct us that Adam and Eve were the parents of the race. In Genesis it is written, “Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness; and let them, have dominion.” The plural verb here shows that the word man, or Adam, is employed collectively, as equivalent to mankind. Afterwards it is written,” And God created the man in his own image; in the image of God created he him; male and female created he themP

The application of male and female to the Admn and the plural pronoun, at the end of the verse, show that the name is used generically, or to denote the first of mankind. Nor may it be denied that the word Adam is often used in the Old Testament as an appellative noun for the species, and in this collective sense denotes mankind — the human race. Was not this then the germ, the original stock? In chap. iii. v. 20, we have the following declaration, “And Adam. called his wife’s name Eve” — life — “because she was the mother of all living!’’’ Was she not the mother of the whole human race? The scriptural account of the flood proves incontestably the same fact. By that catastrophe we are told that “all flesh died that moved upon the earth” — “every man — every living substance, both man and cattle” — and that “Noah only remained and they that were with him in the ark.” Where were those who, as Professor Agassiz supposes, were descended from other pairs? And then again, by what evasion can the subsequent declaration be set aside, that of the three sons of Noah “was the ivliole earth overspread?” In the book of Deuteronomy it is affirmed, that “when God divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.” Are not the divided nations here called the sons of Adam f The prophet Malachi, also, writing four thousand years after the creation, demands, “And did he not make one? And wherefore one] that he might seek a godly seed?” In the 17th ch. of the Acts of the Apostles, Paul addresses the learned men of Athens in the following language: God that made the world, “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and determined the bounds of their habitation.” Does not this declaration assert that God formed the whole race of men of one family; and that, however widely scattered, and by whatever external varieties they may be distinguished, these diversities, and this different locality, are consistent with their common parentage ?* Can language be more plain or more decisive, than such statements as these? In view of such declarations, what becomes of the hypothesis of that class of Christian writers, who would fain have us believe that the Scriptures have reference only to the Caucasian race; and that other races of men exist who were of a different origin from the posterity of Adam? If the earth is “replenished” and peopled from one common pair; if “all the living,” and the “di-

* The summary manner in which Professor Agassiz disposes of this passage is as summarily disposed of by an able and characteristic Review in the Biblical Repertory for Oct. 1850. vided nations,” and “all nations of men” have this common parentage, this natural descent, this blood relationship; where is the tribe, or family, or man, be he Greek or Jew, Ethiopian or Caucasian, ihonarch or slave, that hails not from the same primogenitors?

There is one more consideration in favor of the unity of the race, which rests, also, originally on the testimony of the Scriptures. The last enumeration gives us 3664 known languages now in the world. Yet the Bible teaches us that the languages of the earth had a common origin. At the time of the division of the nations after the flood, “the whole earth was of one language, and one speech.” At the building of the tower of Babel, God confounded their language, and thereby more effectually scattered them abroad. It is generally agreed, that the Hebrew language was the primitive language of men; and that it was retained among the descendants of Heber long before the calling of Abraham. The immediate descendants of Abraham probably spoke the Chaldaic tongue, as he was from Chaldea; or if that nation spoke the Hebrew language, there is no doubt of the fact that they no longer preserved it in its purity after they were carried captive to Babylon; for there it became mixed with the language of the Chaldeans. The Chaldee, or Chaldaic, is said to comprise the Aramean, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, Samaritan, and Coptic; while these are said to be linked by unquestionable affinities with all the languages spoken by the great Indo-European and Shemitic races. The Japhetic race, scattered throughout Asia Minor, the northern parts of Asia, and all Europe, including the Celtic and Teutonic families, had a different language, while their radical words are proved to have been essentially the same, and the difference between this family of languages and that of the Shemitic family, consists in its inflections and combinations. The Greek language is formed on the same radical words as the Celtic and Teutonic languages; while the affinities between the Latin and the Teutonic show that they are of the same origin. It is admitted, too, that the Sanscrit, or ancient language of India, the parent of all the dialects in the great Peninsula, is radically from the same stock as the Greek and Latin. The modern Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese are all from the Latin, retaining some words of Celtic, and Carthaginian, and Gothic origin. The German, Belgian, Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Swedish languages are all of Gothic parentage. The languages of the Chinese, of Polynesia, and original America, belong to the same group with the languages of northern Asia, and of parts of northern Europe. “In proportion as a careful inquiry has penetrated into the past, the streams of speech have been traced upward to their points of divergence from their parent channels; while these channels have been found to converge and unite in a common source.” Nor is this any inconsiderable witness to the common origin of the nations which speak them. If we have good evidence of the common origin of all languages, we have good evidence in confirmation of the Mosaic account of the unity of the race.

It appears to us that there is no small temerity in the hypothesis, that there are other races of men, of a different origin from the posterity of Adam, and some weakness in the considerations by which it is supported. Its authors are too clearly under the influence of their romantic love of theory, rather than inflexible love of truth. For humanity’s sake, we hope better things of human science. We are alarmed at such things, lest they prove the incipient step to a more arrogant infidelity.

We have not, in this discussion, except incidentally, designed to present the philosophical argument in favor of the common origin of mankind. Few questions have been more ably or more abundantly discussed upon the mere principles of natural science. In adverting to these discussions, one fact is quite obvious, that if we once wander from the unity of the race, we know not where to stop. Our distinguished countryman, Dr. Pickering, himself an eminent naturalist, and employed

by tte government in the scientific corps of the Exploring Expedition, which sailed around the world, has written ably on this general subject, and sums up his views in the following sentence: “There is, I conceive, no middle ground between the admission of eleven distinct species in the human family, and the reduction to one;” while a still later writer affirms, that “if there be five different sources, he sees not why there must not be five hundred.” The all- wise Disposer of the human race has assigned to natural causes then* appropriate agency, in the varieties of our race, but he has limited their power; and when the naturalist expects to find a solution for all the varieties in the sole agency of natural causes, he finds himself at fault. There are anomalies which natural science does not account for; our true resort is to the word of God. Our convictions are continually strengthening, that the laws of natural science, on this, as well as every subject, the more they are known, confer abundant honor on the sacred Scriptures.

And on this firm basis of God’s word do we rest the question. There is no safety, no true science, but in the scriptural account of the origin of the human family. The subject is one of history and not of natural science. God is the author of the race, and he has plainly indicated its origin. He has given man a physical constitution fitted to all climates, and fitted to produce those varieties wticli are adapted to their condition, their wants, and their responsibilities. Man goes everywhere, and everywhere carries with him his distinctive humanity, and therefore his obligations to God and his fellow-men.

It is a mischievous, an infidel thought, that we may look upon any portion of the human family as a distinct race from ourselves, and not entitled to our love and sympathy. There are no diversities which do not carry with them the evidence of their common humanity, and enforce its claims. Shem, Ham, and Japheth are still impersonated in the different nations of men; but they are brethren; there should be no strife between them. The weak may not envy the strong; nor the strong oppress the weak. The polished and the rude, the black and the white, the master and the slave, the rich and the poor, meet together; the Lord is the Maker of them all. The things in which they differ are neither so many nor so important as those in which they agree. All are creatures of the same God; descended from the same ancestry; fallen by their iniquity; subjected to the same wants and trials; if saved, saved by the same grace. All are born to die, destined to the same final account, and heirs of a deathless immortality. Tried by such standards, we see the true and proper value of the race; while thus tried, all the varieties that are incidental to their existence in the present world, vanishes away. It behooves us to take heed, lest with the spirit of the first murderer we say, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” “No man,” saith the Apostle, “ever hateth his own flesh.” It was a powerful appeal once uttered by Wilberforce in behalf of an a]3used and crushed people, “Am I not a man and a brother V Born under whatever skies, and however degraded their condition, men and because they are men, are all linked together by these fraternal bonds. “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor.” Unkindness and revenge, oppression and injury, desolation and bloodshed, do not rest in the bosom of love. There is no poison of asps under her lips; she has no venomous breath, and no deadly sting. She mingles no bitter ingredients in the cup of man, and no poison with his joys. She plants no thorns in his path, and never blights the verdure of his hopes. Nay, she knows no cold indifference and chilling neglect; it is no barren heart that beats within her warm bosom; it is light and cheerfulness beaming on the dark places of the earth, and making the wilderness blossom as the rose. She does not say to the voice of the needy, or to the sighing of the prisoner, he is an Indian — he is a poor negro — he belongs to another race. Never may men thus lose sight of the obligations of humanity, associated as they are by a common origin, common responsibilities, common trials, and a common eternity. There is another and a better world, where the saved of all nations will meet, and the elevated will be no more elevated than their meaner brethren on the earth, and the degraded will be degraded no more. It was a rapturous vision beheld by the exiled apostle, when he said, “And after this I beheld, and lo a great multitude which no man could number, of all nations and hindreds and people and tongues stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice saying. Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb!”