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  THE UNITY OF  MAHKIND.        .
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      AN  INTRODUCTORY

   LECTURE,
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            OF THE

MEDICAL  DEPARTMENT,
            OF THE
  ST.  LOUIS UNIVERSITY,
   By M. L.  LINTON, M. D.,
     Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine
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    SEfifSION"  '34-35.


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     PRINTED AT THE MISSOURI DEMOCRAT OFFICE. 
CORRESPONDENCE.
  At a meeting of tho Medical Class of the St. Louis University, held in the Lecture Boom
of the College, P. Young, was called to the chair, and A. Montgomery, appointed  Secre-
tary.  The object of the meeting being stated it was unanimously resolved, that a commit-
tee be appointed to  solicit a copy of Prof. Lintok's Introductory Address for publication.
The following gentlemen were appointed a committee  for that purpose, A. Montgomery,
G. Moreau Holt, and Jno. LeBrecht.
                                                    St. Louis, Mo, Nov. 2d, 1854
Prof. Linton,
            Dear Sir,
                     At a meeting of the Class  of the Medical  Department of  the St.
Louis University, the undersigned were appointed a committee to solicit the manuscript of
your Introductory Address, delivered on the 31st ult. for  publication.
      With assurances of high respect, we remain,
                                                 Truly yours,
                                                        A.  MONTGOMERY,
                                                        JOHN LrBRECHT,
                                                        Q. MOREAU HOLT.
                                                        St. Lotus, oth Nov. 1854.

Gentlemev,
        Tho manuscript of the Introductory is subject at any time to your order.   The Ad-
dress was delivered with the hope  that it would be of  some service to the Medical Class,
and I comply with pleasure with the request to permit its publication.
    Accept for yourselves, and tender to tho Class my sincerest assurance of regards,
                                                                 M. L. LINTON.
McSSni. A. MOHTOOMERY,
       John LeBrecht,
       Q. Moreau Holt. 
ADDRESS.
Gentlemen of the Medical  Class :
   The natural  history  of mankind is  intimately connected with the
studies of the  physician.  The origin   of  the human species;  the
changes which it has undergone mentally and physically in  the course
of ages, and the causes which have produced these changes, are topics
of interest to the non-medical as well as the  medical public; and the
discussion of them on this occasion will, I hope, be acceptable to those
here assembled to hear  an introductory lecture.
   Whence are we ?   Are the millions of human beings who now peo-
ple the earth, the descendants of one primeval pair;  or are they the
hybrid offspring of different species of a genus man,  created at  divers
points and sundry times on the various continents and  islands of our
globe ?
   Is the  old doctrine true, that all earth's denizens are  the  children of
Adam and Eve,  or is it  but a remnant of superstition  and a mark of
old fogyism ?   Has every country had  its Adam  and  Eve, as young
philosophy pretends in these latter days ?  Is  this old and universal
belief—the faith of Christians, Jews, Mahomedans and  even Pagans—
the faith  of all ages reaching back to  the first records of  history and the
earliest whisperings of tradition, and forward to the middle of the nine-
teenth century ; is this consent of  nations  and  ages  founded in truth,
or is it to pass away as the baseless fabric of a vision, to  make room for
the daring speculations of a few modern freethinkers ?
   I believe in the old and universal doctrine,  that all mankind have
descended from one pair, as related in our earliest history ;  and I shall
proceed briefly  to examine it, and the speculations to which it is op-
posed, by the  light of reason.  Of course, all who believe  the Penta-
teuch, believe  also the doctrine of the unity of the human  race.   But
I do aot  propose to examine the question theologically; I wish only to
estimate  the bearings of  science upon it; to meet the  objector on the
ground  chosen by  himself.   It is  contended by the  advocates of a
plurality  of origins,  of multitudinous Adams and Eves,  that men are
too different in color, in form, in  language and locality, to have de-
scended  from one pair.   It is contended by them, that the diflferences
observed  amongst nations and races,  are  specific differences;  that 
4
there are  many different species of mankind.  On the other hand,  the
advocates of the old doctrine say, that all these  differences of color,
form, etc.,  are  but variations induced on one original type, by climate,
modes of living, and various other agencies.
   What is meant by the  term  species ?  It would be well to settle
the meaning of this  term,  before we enter  the discussion of the ques-
tion, as to whether  mankind  are  of different species or  but varieties
of one species.   We  say, in common parlance, that there  are  different
Rinds or species of  plants  and animals;, and we mean thereby, well
marked differences which no combination  of circumstances can change.
The oak is different  in kind or species from the willow; the rose from
the magnolia;  the beech from the walnut.  The  cat and dog are of
different species or kinds;  the turtledove differs  in species from the
albatross ;  the whale from  the shark.  There may be hybrids between
the more closely allied species or  kinds,  but these hybrids are them-
selves unfruitful, and thus  has nature provided a barrier against the
chaos which would  follow  the indefinite mingling and transmutation
of species.   Now there are evidently no such wide  and well marked
differences between men  as  those mentioned of plants and animals; and
those who contend that the Indian and the white  man are of different
species, rely upon  those slight differences which may evidently exist in
the same species.   If fruitfulness inter se be a proof of specific ideutity,
then, evidently, mankind are but one species;  but  if every philosopher
is  to use the term in  his own sense, regardless of the consent of mankind
and common usage,  then the  word ought to be erased from our lexi-
cons.   It  is a  remarkable  fact that those  who contend  that specific
differences exist amongst men, cannot agree about the number of the
species into which the human family is divided.   Now if these differ-
ences were well marked  and constant,  there could be no difficulty in
recognizing them.   There  is  no difficulty in fixing the specific bound-
aries  of plants and  animals;  nor  would there be  in doino- the same
with regard to  mankind, if there were  really different  species of  men.
Some, as Metzan, say there are but two species of men, the white and
the black; others,  as Desmoulins, divide  the human family into six-
teen species; Bory de St. Vincent, has fifteen species; Joquinot thinks
that there are three  species, and the authors of the "Types of Man-
kind," though they also contend that there are many species of human
beings, admit what it would be useless to deny, viz: that all the classi-
fications of authors are arbitrary.  But if men  really are of different
species, it  would certainly  not be  arbitrary to classify them as such.
These  classifications  are arbitrary  only  because  there  are no specific
♦ 
5
marks by which to make the necessary distinctions.  Color  will not do
for a distinctive mark, because there are a thousand shades  of color •
and the advocates for distinct species would  not  like to  have a thou-
sand of them.   If a shade of difference in color be taken as a mark
of difference in species, then  one sister will be  of a  different species
from another.   All  of us have  seen a blonde and a  brunette in the
same family.   If a difference  in  the  size of the head  be specific, tnen
two brothers  may belong to different  species.   If the  shape of the
face be specific,  we  may  find in one set  of children three or four
species.   I have seen in one family, the oval face of the Caucasian, the
high cheek bones of the  Mongolian, and  the median cheek bones of
the American.  I have seen  in one family, the features of the Greek
and the Egyptian. And yet young Philosophy would persuade us that
these differences, when observed on a large scale are specific; that men,
differing in color, and in the shape and  size of the head, cannot  have
descended from  one original pair that  lived  six thousand years ago;
that all the varied circumstances of  climate and  mode of living, the
ennobling power of  civilization and the  debasing tendencies of barbar-
ism, cannot, in thousands  of  years, have produced the varieties which
we see; when the fact is,  that many of the differences or varieties are
observed  in the same family of brothers and sisters.   From such facts
I should argue  thus : if  even slight differences  in color and size and
form may exist in the individuals of the same immediate paternity, it
may be supposed that great differences, in all these respects, will be
effected by  widely differing circumstances operating on the various de-
scending lines of  such a family in a  few thousand years.   It  would do
well enough to regard the Englishman  and  the  negro as specifically
different, were it not for the fact, that there is every intermediate shade.
The Frenchman is a shade darker than the Englishman;  is he of a dif-
ferent species  ?  The Spaniard is darker still; is he of a different species 2
The Berber is darker than the Spaniard.   How dark must we get be-
fore we stick  a pin,  and say, Ah, here  we must  end  one  species and
commence  another!   The Abyssinian is still  darker than the Berber;
and now we  are on the borders  of negro-land, and its sable  denizens
come next.   But the negro has  thick lips  and prognathous  jaws and
woolly hair :  so have many white persons.   And then, again, many  of
the blackest tribes have neither the thick lips, the projecting jaws, nor
the woolly  hair ; for example, the Kafirs and the Yolofs, the Mandingos
and many of the natives of Mozambique.  The fact is, that the differ-
ences in lips,  jaws, hair and  head of the  various nations of mankind,
shade off into  each other just as their colors do, and afford no gaps  to 
6
separate them into species :  and this is the reason why no two ethnolo-
gists agree as  to the number of species.  We have  cyanometers to
measure the differences in the color of the sky ;  perhaps we may yet
have  a melanometer, by the aid  of which our modern  philosophers
may measure  the shades of darkness  so  nicely as to determine the
exact boundaries of the species, from the fairest Caucasian to the black-
esj African.
   But if a shade of difference in color be specific, then one man may
belong to two species.   Let a northerner reside in  Cuba a year or two,
and expose himself  freely to the sun and he will  change his species.
We  have seen, that according  to  some of our modern classifications,
the members of the  same family are of different species ;  but the ab-
surdity of their  principles goes  even further  and  makes two or three
species of one individual.   The metaphysical scissors of Hudibras
                           " Could sever and divide,
               A hair 'twixt north and north-wst side."
but our modern savants can bisect all the intermediate degrees.  How
shall we account for all  the shades of difference in  mind and body that
we observe, in the human  family ?   Certainly  not by supposing that
they are the  hereditary traits of as many primeval pairs,  for we have
seen that  children differ from  their own parents; and we know that
various circumstances are capable of producing many of the observed
differences ; and we  do  not  know that  these circumstances are not ca-
pable of producing  all  of them.  We do  not  know that  climate, the
modes of  living, civilization  and barbarism, in short, all the influences,
moral and physical, which have operated on men from the flood to the
present day,  may not  have caused all the difference  we now behold.
Even if this be not a sufficient explanation, the doctrine of the unity of
our race will not be affected, for it is easier to suppose that God has
degraded men, and families, and races, in penalty for their crimes than
to suppose the  multitudinous creations involved  in the doctrine of a
plurality of species.
   We know that heat  tends to darken the skin.   This is one item of
knowledge with which we are all familiar.  But is it capable of chang-
ing the color  of the Caucasian into that  of the negro? This is the ques-
tion. I answer that it may do this in a long course of generations. Perhaps
in a few hundred years.  Life is short  and such a change requires a
long time, so that we cannot estimate it from actual observation.  Like
the growth of the oak it is so gradual that we  cannot  see  the  change
during a short period of observation.  From the cradle to the coffin of
even the  octogenarian but little change is observed in  objects  whose 
7
mutations are  tardy.  They appear the same in the evening as in the
morning of life. A small segment of a great circle appears as a straight
line.  Could we follow it  far  enough  the curve would  be  evident.
Facts go to prove that climate has changed the white to the black man.
Apriori, we would suppose this possible from our knowledge of the ef-
fects of heat, but facts are not wanting to show that the change has been
really effected.  I quote from Cardinal Wiseman a few of such facts.
   "All classes of men, Persians, Greeks, Tartars, Turks and Arabs, in a
few generations, without any intermarriagewith the Hindoos,  assume a
deep olive tint little  less dark than  the Negro,  which seems nataral to
the climate."   He is speaking of the climate of India.
   Again—"The  Portuguese natives  form unions  among themselves
alone; or if they can, with Europians, yet the Portuguese have during
three hundred years residence in India become as black as  Kafirs."   Now
facts of this  kind abound in works on the natural history of man.  The
whole evening would not suffice for the briefest rec;tal of them.   So
that it is certain that a white man may become  black.   We learn from
Pritchard, on competent_authority, that there is in India every shade of
color in the same race—that there are white Pariahs and black Brahmins,
and vice versa; so that the color does  not depend on the caste.  The
American Indians which are admitted to be one  race present also all tho
varieties of color.   For example the California Indians very much resem-
ble the negroes in color and features.  La Perouse compares them to the
negroes of the West Indies, whilst in the extreme north,  they are found
with fair complexions.   Captain Dixon says that the natives of Port Mul-
grave are so covered with paint that it is  difficult to determine what is
their color.  He adds  :' we persuaded one woman to wash her face and
hands and the alteration in  her appearance surprised us.  Her counte-
nance had all the cheerful glow of an English milk-maid, and the healthy
red which flushed her cheeks was 'even  beautifully contrasted with the
whiteness of her neck.   Her forehead was so remarkably clear  that the
translucent veins were seen ramifying in their minutest branches."  Mi.
Rollins says that their hair is of a chesnut color.  Speaking  of the ab-
origines of South  America, Mr. D'Orbigny  remarks, "  The Peruvian
differs more from the  Patagonian,  and a Patagonian from a  Guarani
than does a  Greek from an Ethiopian or a Mongole.  We could quote
numerous authors to prove that the natives of high mountainous districts
are whiter than those of the lowlands, in the  same latitude.   Differ-
ences in the degree of heat fully explain the phenomena.  It is a matter
of fact then, that the white man may become black.   It is a matter of
fact, that of the same race, some are white and others are black. 
                                8
  The earjiest records of history place man in Asia in the valley of the
Euphrates in the northern temperate zone.  Take a map in your hand.
Egypt is not far off; only a short distance to the southwest.  Thither-
ward a portion of the descendants of Noah, bent their march in the early
morning of the post-diluviau world.   They ascended the Nile to Nubia,
Abyssinia, and to the ardent regions  of tropical Africa; and still onward
beyond the Tropic of Cancer, to the Cape of Tempests. The first tropical
climate reached by man was that of Africa; and there where he has been
burned and  carbonized by the suns  of four thousand years  he is black-
est.  This seems to have been  the  land of Nod  to the descendants  of
Ham.   Starting southeastward from the plain of Shinar, other families
and tribes reached  Persia, Afghanistan, India,  Burmah,  Mallacca, and
the equinoctial line in the Islands of Sumatra, and Borneo.  Here again
in the tropical  region of southern India—in Malacca, in Sumatra, and the
other Tropical Islands of the south sea, we find  the  skin of the natives
deepening to the sable hue of Ethiopia.   They  are not yet so black,
as a general rule, as in Africa, where man found a hotter and dryer cli-
mate, and where he settled at an eariler day.  Man is cosmopolitan and
omnivorous—he can live every  where and subsist  on every variety  of
food.   He may be darkened  by a southern sun or  whitened by north-
ern frosts, but neither can arrest his march or oppose  insuperable  bar-
riers to his sovereignty or dominion. He subsists on the dainty fruits of the
glowing Islands of eternal summer, and reposes beneath the shades  of
umbrageous trees,  listening to the songs of rainbow colored birds.  He
cultivates  the fields of the temperate zones and with due forecaste  pro-
vides for the changing seasons.  He inhabits ice built villages on the
dreary coasts of Siberia,  and harpoons the whale, amid  the rigors and
storms of  the  Arctic seas.  His  civilization may languish and his  face
may blacken,  as he marches southward  to  the line.  His  civilization
may pause in  the  presence of the eternal snows  which bleach  him  to
whiteness, yet he,  universal  mau, in virtue of the mental and  physical
powers bestowed on him  by bis Maker, is lord and master of this lower
world.
   From Burmah, following the  shores of the sea of China north-west-
ward; the shores of the blue sea, the yellow sea, the sea of Core;;,  man
finally reached America by the  straits of Berhing, and *pi\  ad from the
ice-bound regions  of  the north, across the entire  hemisphere, to the
snow invested islands of the land of lire.   Here, too, we find him  vary-
ing iu color, and this variation influenced by climate.  If  the  tropical
Indian is not as black as the tropical African,  may it not  be   because
tho former has not been so long subjected to these climatic influences 
9
as the latter.  Let us return to the banks of the Euphrates.  From this
cradle of mankind issued families  and clans,  not only to Africa and
Eastern Asia, but to northwestern Europe and  northeastern Asia: and
it is in these northern latitudes where man settled in  the earliest ages
that he  is whitest.
   I do not mean to assert that men are black or white, just in the de-
gree of their proximity to the equator or the poles ;  but I feel disposed
to say that such would be the case were all other things equal—as the
degree of altitude, the  dryness and moisture of the atmosphere, and in
general  everything that enters into the constitution  of  climate; the
length of residence, the isolation and mixture of races, <fcc.
   A moderately white race  may be inter-tropical, if it has occupied its
position  but a few hundred years; and a black colony may migrate
beyond  Cancer or Capricorn, and  remain  black for many hundreds of
years.  There is every variety of climate even  within  the  tropics; the
Andes are covered with everlasting snows  even under  the equator.
Islands  are moister than continents.  The following conclusions of
Pritchard seem to be fully justified  by the  immense array of facts
which he adduces.  "Thus,"  says he, "it is obvious that  the  inter-
tropical region of the earth is the principal seat of the black races of
men ; and the region remote from the tropics that of the white  races ;
.and that the climate approaching to the tropics are  inhabited by  races
which are neither of the darkest nor of the  fairest  complexion, but of
an intermediate one.   To this observation it may be added, that high
mountainous countries of great elevation  are  generally inhabited by
people of a lighter  color  than those where the level  is  low, such as
sandy or swampy plains  on  the sea coast.   *
In fact," continues the author, " if we divide Africa into three portions
we may define by the tropics the extent of the  black color of its inhab-
itants."
   The argument  that the  black man does not become white by long
residence in a cold clim;ite,  has no weight, even if true ; for it does not
follow that the absence of the sun should whiten a man whom its pres-
ence  has  blackened.   The  mere  absence  of that which  kills cannot
restore life.  Time and toil produce old age and decrepitude; but there
does not exist on this earth  a rejuvenescent fountain to bring him back
to the bright and  halcyon days of youth.   It  is easier to make  white
wool black, than to make black wool white.   But I am not certain that
climate may not change the  black man to the white one.   I  think that
our northern negroes are not  so dark  as  those of the south; and that
in a few centuries, those  of them  who reside in very cold countries will 
                                           10
           become passably white.   I think I may safely say, that they are not so
           dark here in Missouri as in Dahomey and  other parts of  Africa.   I
           made the remark only the other day of a very black woman, that she
           must have been born in  Guinea.   I was slightly mistaken, the mother
           of the woman had been  imported.  Why  should  color be regarded as
           a mark of specific difference in men, when it is known that the same
           species of other animals, as  the horse, the cow, the  dog, are of  all
           colors, from  the snowy white to  the deepest black;  and why should it
           be denied that climate affects the color of  man, when it is known that
           it affects  the color of all  other animals ?  But our  belief that all men
           have a common parentage, would  not  be  affected even  it  should  be
           demonstrated that climate has not produced  all the varieties of color
           which we see.   There seem to be now and then accidental productions
           of various colors.   We call them accidental, because we do not under-
           stand how they are effected.  Albinos or white children are often born
           of Mnek parents.  The reverse may sometimes happen, ind these acci-
           dental changes of color are often transmissable.   Our time is too short
           to permit even the mention of these accidental varieties of color and of
           form.  A family of Arabs residing in the valley of the Jordan, having
           the color and the hair and the  features  of negroes,  is described by a
           recent traveler;  and it  was ascertained  that it was  of the pure Ara-
           bian blood.
              The differences in organic form are as far from constituting marks of
           different  species as the  shades  of color.   Dr.  Morton  has defined a
           species to be " a primordial organic form": very well, I  accept the
           definition; but I say that there was but one primordial organic form,
           or, in other words, one  species; and to  assert that  there were more,
           would be to assume (not prove)  the doctrine of a plurality of species.
           It is true, we have the oval face, common amongst Caucasians, and the
           high  cheek bones and pyramidal  skulls, common to the  Mongolians,
           and the thick lips and prognathous jaws common to some of the black
           races ; but then there are all the intermediate forms.  Civilization and
           barbarism, have a great  deal to do with the size and  shape of the head
           and the cast of the features, as much perhaps as climate with the color
\           of the skin.  The brain is the organ of the mind, and  mental culture
           develops the brain.   Any organ not exercised suffers  emaciation.   The
           heads of savages should not then be as large as those of sa^es.  The
           Irish of Connaught, though  of the same race with  those  of Leinster,
           have many of them receding foreheads, prognathous jaws and thick lips,
           which can scarcely be made to stretch over thin projecting teeth, whilst
           their more  cultivated brethren  in the latter province  are  the finest 
11
specimens of humanity.  The natives of the South American  Andes,
who have occupied those highlands for centuries, have much larger
chests and lungs than those of the lowlands : the necessity of breath-
ing a rarer  atmosphere, is the cause of this apparently preternatural
development.   This  great  size of the chest might be regarded  as a
proof of specific difference, but for the fact that we are  acquainted with
the circumstances which cause it.   A philosopher  like Agassiz might
make of these  South-American highlands a distinct province,  having
its peculiar  species of men, its peculiar Flora and Fauna.  The  lact
that there are physical differences between wild and domesticated  ani-
mals of the same  species,  accords with  the views  here advocated in
regard to man.  The  horse,  the  hog,  the sheep, the cow, goat  and
many other animals,  were brought to  America  by   the  Spaniards.
These animals multiplied rapidly and great numbers of them ran wild.
It is known that  they are of the same  stock with the domesticated
animals,  and yet the differences between them  are so great that  they
might well be mistaken  for different species.  The wild boar and the
domesticated hog,  which are known to be of the  same species, differ
from each other more than the Caucasian and the African  Negro.  The
savage and  cultivated plants of the same species afford  differences quite
as great; but space  cannot b« afforded in an essay like the present for
analogical evidences.   The changes observed in man himself, show  that
he may present great diversites of color and form, and yet be of the
same species; and I merely allude, in passing,  to  the  fact, that similar
or greater  changes are observed in the  lower animals  and  in the vege-
table kingdom.
   The similarity of  the languages  of the various races  of mankind,
shows the  unity of  their origin.  At  first  sight  nothing  can  appear
more diverse than the English and French, the Greek and Latin, the
Sanscrit  and German: nothing more diverse than the various languages
of Asia  and America;  but a closer study has  shown  that in  both a
lexical and grammatical point of view, they are tolerably nearly allied.
This close resemblance of language is irreconcileable with  the doctrine
that men have been created at different points,  and have had for thou-
sands of years no communication with each other.   It  points to a com-
mon origin for the entire race.  Our native American Indians,  it has
been  concluded, were  created on this continent, and had no intercourse
with other races until after the discovery of the new world by Colum-
bus.  This  supposition is shown to be false  by the similarity of their
languages with those of eastern Asiatics.   The indefatigable missionary
Father de Smedt,  has shown  that a vast number of Indian words are 
                                12
common to them and the Coriaks, and other tribes be}rond the Straits
of Berhing.   I could give a long  list of them from Father de Smedt's
essay, wre it necessary.   Now, it cannot have  been by accident, that
the same arbitrary signs of things were adopted by tribes  between
which there had been no communication.  Agassiz has remarked, that
it is natural for man  to  speak, and that different tribes speaking the
same  language  is no more evidence of any intercourse, than the fact
that animals making certain similar sounds common to their genus or
species, is a proof of previous communication  with each other.   This is
evidently a false view.  The natural expressions of the passions might
be the same in different tribes of men without previous communication
just as with  animals—not so such arbitrary signs as a spoken or writ-
ten language.   Nature does not dictate whether  we shall call a human
being man with English,  or homo with the Latins, or homme with the
French, or mensch with the Germans; or whether we shall call an in-
fant, bambino, kind, or papoose.   All these names are arbitrary; one is
as natural as another;  and when  we find different tribes agreeing  in
these arbitrary signs, it is  proof  positive  that at least they have had
intercourse with  each  other.   The decision   of the  Academy of St.
Petersburg on  this subject, after  long researches, was this, " that all
languages are to be considered as  dialects of one now lost."
  The conclusion of Klaproth was about the same, notwithstanding his
disbelief of the Mosaic account  of the confusion  of tongues at Babel.
Schlegel, Baron W. Humboldt,  Herder and a  host  of others  celebra-
ted authorities might be quoted in support of  this view.   Herder says,
"there is, if we deeply examine the subject, really but one alphabet in
the world."  The same author remarks,  " that from the examination of
languages the separation amongst  mankind is  shown to have been vio-
lent ;—not indeed that they voluntarily  changed their language; but
that they were rudely and suddenly divided from one another."  Cardi-
nal Wiseman eloquently compares the languages of the world to those
grouped, but disunited masses which geologists  consider the  ruins  of
former mountains, the similarity  of their veins and tallies showing
that they were  originally united, and  the roughness and  abruptness
of their outlines, that they had been rent assunder by some violent con-
vulsion.
  The  arts  and sciences indicate  the  common  origin of mankind.
They have travelled with the wise  men from the same land of man's ear-
liest traditions.   The <-oths, received the  light of civilization  from Italy.
Pome, borrowed her laws and her  literature  from Athens ; and even
Greece,  was barbarian until Cadmus arrived with his Phenician letters. 
                                13
The Orient is the source as well of knowledge as  of nations.   All  the
early histories and traditions, the abiding records and the dim recollec-
tions of mankind point to this  community of their origin.  The Phe-
necian, Sanconiathan, after Moses, the  most ancient historian, speaks in
the fragments that remain of his writings, of the first pair from which de-
scended the entire human race; of the garden of Eden, of the Serpent and
of the general Deluge.  Berosus, the  historian of Babylon agrees with
the Jewish lawgiver in his  account of Adam and his fall, of the Ark,
and the Flood;  and Josephus,  who has preserved these fragments of
Berosus, affirms that this historian mentions  the descendants of Noah,
with their respective  ages* down  to the time of Nabonassur,  king of
Babylon.   The Zendavista of the Persians contains an account of  one
human pair placed in a garden, the parents  of the human race.   Ac-
cording to a  profound  Hebrew scholar, and philosopher, the Abbe Du
Rocher, the histories of Egypt, by Manetha, Herodotus, andEratastuenes,
are but echos of the Bible from Noah, down to the date of the Babylo-
nian captivity, and these histories are  but the facts of the sacred history
altered and mixed up with -am enormous amount of fable and false  tra-
ditions.   The same remarks apply according to the learned Duclot, to
Chinese history.  It  places  the  deluge under the reign  of Yao,  and
represents'it as covering the tops of the highest mountains, and speaks
of their Peyrum, a mortal  favored by God, who was saved in  a  bark
from the general inundation.  The Hindoo, fehaster, gives  an account of
the first man and woman.   In  the ancient records of the  Mexicans, we
find an account of the deluge which destroyed all the human  race but
one family.
   Leaving history  and writen  fable,  we find that  the barbarian  and
savage who  have no  permanent records,  possess traditions evidently
drawn from that earliest of all histories, the Pentateuch.  The savages of
our  own  wilderness as well as the wandering Tartar  of  Asia, believe
that all mankind are brethren,  and speak of  the first pair from which
they have descended.  In this agree the Blackfeet and Flatheads, of the
Rocky Mountains,  and tb.3 Budhist wanderer  on the desert of Gobi.
   If then, mankind has descended from a plurality of origins, all the his-
tories and traditions of the  world are wrong, and  only a few modern
philosophers are right.  This is  impossible;  for there is no  possible
way of accounting for this universal agreement except by the admission
of the fact, that mankind descended from a common  source.  All the
people of the earth must have had the same  origin  in  order to possess
the  same  traditions.   Did they all without knowing anything ot each
other invent  the same  story ?   This is very clearly impossible.  All the 
14
facts of sience, all the traditions of men bearing on this question accord
tfith the doctrine advanced by St. Paul, in his discourse before the Are-
opagus at Athens, namely that the Creator hath made of one blood, all
mankind.  All that the nations of the earth have to do, in order to be
convinced of this truth is to become  acquainted with each other.   Na-
tions, and tribes, and races, and tongues; whether languishing  beneath
equatorial fervors or shivering amidst Siberian  snows;  whether civilized
or  savage, have  only  to  meet and  set  down together, and compare
notes to become  convinced that they are the children  of the same pa-
rents.   Thus the brothers  and sisters of one household  who have been
lono; separated, who have  not seen nor perhaps heard  of each other for
a quarter of a century, may not be able to recognise one another at first
sight.  Vast changes will have taken place in their appearances.  One may
have been darkened by a southern sun; another's  brow  may be deeply
furrowed  with care  as  well as time;  the visage  of  another  may be
hardened and brutified by crime and his body covered with rags.   Emaci-
ated and miserable, some of them may be glad to eat the crumbs that
fall from the tables of opulence  and seek the companionship of  dogs.
Others may be blessed with all the advantages of civilization, may fare
sumptuously every day, be clothed in purple  and fine linen and  wear
the aspect of refinement and joy.  Let them by chance meet again.  They
will not think  of claiming  kin with each other.  They will  perhaps
at first look at one another as belonging  to different species; but  let them
only sit down and talk together an hour.  Each one will tell the same
story of parents and of home; of the brave  old  oak or umbrageous
beach or willow  under which he  rested at noontide ; of the rivulet in
which he bathed; of the  fields and woodlands through which he wan-
dered; of the hills he climbed, and in  general of the cherished though
perhaps fading memories of childhood,  and long before the conversation
of  an  hour has ended their hearts will warm as the conviction flashes
on their minds, that they  are brethren.
   The unity of  our race is shown as well by the moral and intellectual
as by  the physical constitution of various  tribes. All have the same feel-
ings, and desires, the same  hopes and fears, and in a degree the same
joys and sorrows; all are operated upon by the same motives;  all have
an idea of a Creator, of right and wrong, of rewards and punishments;
all have the same mental  faculties;  and the degree of difference in the
power of these  faculties in different races is  not greater than is some-
 times found in the members of tho  same  family.  We Caucasians as
 we term  ourselves, boast of a high order of  intelligence; most people
 have a high opinion of themselves; but are we superior to some of the 
15
Mongolian  tribes ?  Can we boast greater generals than Atilla  and
Tamerlane, or braver  men  than the  Magyars, or more stirring orators
than Kossuth ?
  But let us  look for a moment at what is generally  regarded as the
lowest class of human  beings, the Hottentots  and Bushmen.  These
have been compared to the baboon  and chimpanze, especially by the
English land pirates, who drove them from their homes and oppressed
them. Yet these poor  Hottentots are capable of civilization.  They have
hearts and heads, feelings and intellects, like other men. The voyager,
Kolben says, that "they make the most faithful servants in the world;"
and he goes on to state that " they are honest and humane, and by no
means deficient in intellect; that he had known many of them  who
spoke several modern languages to perfection, and that they are even em-
ployed by Europeans, in affairs requiring judgment and capacity."  He
says that they are very fond of brandy and tobacco;  but it is said that
some Caucasians are  fond of these: that even  Anglo-Saxons, some-
times indulge in them. This, therefore, is no mark of specific difference.
Civilization and Christianity make of  even the Hottentots, a great and
powerful people, distinguished for every thing that  confers honor and
glory upon a  nation.   Is  such an  anticipation not reasonable ?  The
descendants of  a tribe  that lived in  squalid  misery and  solitary dens,
amidst the morasses of  the Vistula, have built St.  Petersburg, and
Moscow, and rank in arts and in arms with the most powerful  and pol-
ished nations of the globe.  The descendants of this  tribe now guard
Cronstadt and  Sebastopol!
   The posterity of cannibals may feed on  earth's  choicest dainties—
civilized man may sink to the condition of brutes, and the companion-
ship of kangaroos ; the Bushman and the Australian, may arise to the
level of the favored children of fortune.  Dr. Good speaks of the city of
Timbuctoo, in Africa,  as one of the wealthiest, most populous, and best
governed  cities of the world ; and further  remarks, that it is possible
that at the very period in which our own ancestors as described by Julius
Csesar, were  naked and smeared over  with  paint, or  merely clothed
with the skins of wild beasts and living in huts, the black kingdom of
Bambarra, of which Timbuctoo, is the capital, was as completely estab-
lished and as  flourishing as at the present moment.   The doctor goes
on to mention  the names of negroes who have been members of the
Academy of  Paris, who have received the degree of doctor of philoso-
phy from  the  University of Wurtemburg, and whose taste and genius
have enriched the polite literature of even England.   From such facts
as these, and their  name is  legion, may we not reasonably conclude with 
16
  the  quaint  old  orator quoted by Dr. Good, that  the  negro like the
  white man is still God's image, though carved in ebony?
    But the monuments of Egypt! Turn we our attention  to this morning
  land of earth and its history.  It is asserted by some modern writers that
  negroes were painted on  these monuments as early as the date assigned
  to the flood.  If this  be even an approximation to, the  truth, then I
  should  be disposed to invoke another  cause, in addition  to climate,
  to explain the fact.  If  negroes exited but a very short time after tho
  flood, I should attribute  their color and conformation to a supernatural
  cause; not that  I would  deny the  powerful  influences  of climate and
  civilization,  but  a hundred or even  two hundred  years  of heat and
  barbarism appear to me  to be too short a time for the conversion of a
  white man into a negro.  This may be, or rather may have bee;;, possi-
  ble, but it is not easily believed; and, as already remarked, if negroes can
  be shown'to have existed with the present color and features two thou-
* sand years before  Christ, I should, attribute  the  fact more  to  super-
  natural than to.natural causes.   I should attribute  it to  the curse  of
  Noah, pronounced  upun the descedants of Ham,  and  which doomed
  them to bo the servants  of servants.  I know that in there  hyper-phi-
  losophic days it is  regarded as rather unscientific and  hardly in good
  taste, to aLtributo any thing to  suj ernatural causes.   But the fact is, that
  we cannot get along without  such causes.  We caiuiut even  get a start
  without the.):.  Theatomsofwhichthematerialunivor.se  is   .~ p -  h
  the sun and stars,  the vegetable and auimal kingdoms, and we our-
  selves were  ushered into existence by some supernatural cause.  Even.
  our plurality philosophers have to admit  this. They are not quite pre-
  pared to assert the eternity of matter, and to attribute  all  its present
  forms to the fortuitous conjunction of its vagabond atoms.   We are
  obliged to refer the  commencement of  all things to a miracle.  The
  creation of  man was a miracle, and we,  who  hold to the unity of the
  race, are under the necessity of invoking but one or at most two miracles'
  one for  the creation of the first man and  woman, and another for such
  changes in their posterity as climate and other natural causes mav not
  have  been sufficient to produce,  admitting for the sake  of argument
  such to exist: whilst those who  hold the plurality  doctrine and who
  assert that a miracle is " the silliest of all desperate suppositions," in-
  voke  ten times as many  miracles  as  we.   Some of them seem  to
  think that  there  were  a  hundred  or  so  of such miracles.   It  is
  strange that men of science and of  sense should thus contradict them-
  selves.  A miracle  is the "silliest of  all desperate  suppositions," when
  adduced in  support of unity, but you may introduce as many as vou 
17  *
please to prop up the plurality of origins.  Some modern ethnologists
seem  to think it  more  reasonable to conclude that  man was created
in Egypt, than that he migrated thither from the plains of Shinar; that
men like trees are confined to the soil of their origin, that they cannot
get from one island to another in sight of it; that certain sorts of men
belong to the fauna of certain districts as opossums do to the fauna of
Kentucky; and so they go on  peopling the islands and  continents by
what  they have already condemned as " the silliest of all desperate
suppositions."
  Now it was  certainly  not  difficult for the  descendants of one pair
to reach every part of the world.   Noah could have walked around it
nine times during the time he lived after the flood, at the majestic and
patriarchal rate of one mile and  a half per day.  Europe, Asia and Africa,
are united by land, and  America is separated from  Asia by the nar-
row straits of Behring; surely the  descendants of Noah, could easily
have reached all these places.  In what condition do our  opponents
suppose man to have been originally created ?  Was he created a savage
or a civilized being, an adult or an infant ?  The idea of peopling desert
continents and  islands with infants, incapable of self protection,  seems
not in accordance with sound reason.   Just think of a swarm of babies
alighting on an uninhabited  island ! Moreover it is not  in accordance
with our ideas of divine wisdom and goodness, that men should be cre-
ated in a savage state: then, the most  reasonable theory is, that  he
was ushered into existence, full grown and civilized.  Now, if "swarms of
men," as some say, have been created at various points all over the globe;
civilized, full grown men and women; is it not strange that none of these
swarms have left us any  record of the fact,  nor even a tradition of it %
There is no authentic history of but one such "swarm," and that swarm
consisted of one man and one woman. As according to the plurality doc-
trine, man is created on continents and islands as soon as they are fitted
for his abode, would it not be well for  a commission to be appointed to
watch some uninhabited island and test the doctrine; see how man is
created; see how the  " swarms" of men  make their advent.   I am
disposed to think that said swarms would neither fall from  the clouds nor
spring up from the earth, but arrive on steamboats, and that the afore-
said commission would find them speaking familiarly of most earthly
things; perhaps speaking of keows and to hum, and guessing shrewdly
on different  subjects, and  projecting tobacco juice all over their newly
found Eden.
   Leaving our scientific commission  with  their newly created swarm
of green-horns, let us return to the Nile.   Is it certain that those mon- 
18
uments, and paintings, and inscriptions, are as old as some' have thought?
Have the hieroglyphics been rightly interpreted in all instances? and do
they always tell the  truth, even when rightly interpreted ?—Egyptian
darkness shrouds these questions. At any rate the connoisseurs in Nilo*
tic lore differ vastly as to the dates of Egypt's dynasties and monuments.
Thus Bockh places Menes, the first Pharoah, 5702 years B. C; Bunsen
places him 3643 B. C, whilst Wilkerson, thinks that there is no evidence
for more than  about 2000 years.    A difference of more than  three
thousand years in their computations, shows  that there is no certainty
about these  ancient Egyptian  dates — some authors making Menes
older than Adam, and Egypt older  than the world, and others placing
both some hundreds of years posterior to the flood.  But, say the long
chronologists, there were 30 dynasties from Menes to the  time of the
historian Manetho, who records  them. Admit it—but, then,  according
to the authorities quoted by the Abbe Duclot, some of these dynasties
were simultaneous, one king and his viceroys making  up the list; as if
we should  enumerate the Lord Lieutenants of Ireland amongst  Eng-
lish monarchs, or call President Pierce and the various governors of the
States who are his cotemporaries, a dynasty: and then some of the dy-
nasties were very short; thus, Manetho's 7th dynasty consists of 70 kings,
each one reigning but a day, a dynasty of less than two months and a
half. Eusebius says there were five kings reigning each a half a month.
In the 14th dynasty there were 73  kings  who  reigned  two or  three
years each on  an average.  At this rate Manetho's  30  dynasties might
be gotten through within a  shorter time than even the short chron-
ologists  would require.
  The fate of the Zodiacs of Dendera and Esneh, will be that of many an
Egyptological speculation.  These Zodiacs were found upon the ceilings
of temples, and an enormous antiquity was allowed them.  It was con-
tended by some savans  that they were 3000,  and others that they were
17000 years old.  And people were frightened at the so termed discov.
ery, until Champollion,  the greatest Egyptologist of them all, demon-
strated  that one of the Zodiacs dates about the  commencement of  the
Christian era, and the other a hundred and forty years after.  A long bat-
tle was  fought by men of science and research over these Zodiacs, and  the
question as  perfectly settled in favor of the short chronologists.   Bear-
ing  indirectly on the subject of negro antiquity in  Egypt,  and directly
on the  age of its  monuments, I will here quote the highest authority
that of  Champollion himself.  It is from an original letter, which can be
seen entire in  the lectures of Wiseman.  Champollion says, " I have
demonstrated  that no Egyptian monument is really anterior to the year 
19
2,200  before  our era;"  again,  " the  monuments  of Egypt confirm
our sacred history;" it will require a "swarm" of ordinary Egyptologists
to invalidate such testimony as this.
   To weaken the testimony afforded by sacred history, in favor of  the
doctrine  of unity, that  history has itself been scouted as a book of fa-
bles.  The tactics of the pluralist are to show that the Bible is false in
some of its  statements, and consequently  unreliable on the  subject of
the origin  of  mankind.  They deny that there ever was an universal
deluge. We have seen, however,  that all nations believe that there was
such a deluge; all ancient history speaks of it; and the  deposit of ma-
rine shells even on the mountain  tops, and  the stratified structure of the
earth's crust, almost every where  found, prove that the whole globe has
been at one time or other under  water.  The granite heads of the tall-
est mountains  were heaved up from the level of the  plain by subter-
ranean fires, carrying with them the evidences of previous submergence.
The brightest  name that adorns the annals of natural science may be
quoted  in  favor of this  fact of Genesis.  Cuvier, in his essay on the
theory of the earth, fully endorses the Mosaic account of the flood.  He
says, " that there was such a flood, is established  by geology."   But,
urge opponents, the lives of men  were not as long as Genesis represents
them; they  think it impossible that men should have  lived  900 years.
Physicians can see no reason why they should not; and ancient profane
history attests the great longevity of the early inhabitants of the world.
Homer makes Nestor say, that  the  length of his life  was  nothing in
comparison with the lives of ancient heroes. According to Hesiod the  an-
cients lived  a thousand years.   Helen, the beautiful  but rather faithless
Helen, was  about a hundred years old at the battle of Troy, and yet her
husband was transported with joy at the idea of recovering her.  Now-
a-days elopements do not take place  at 90, nor  are  battles  fought for
centenarian dulcineas.  Now-a-days, when a young lady gets to be over
fifty or sixty years she is looked upon as rather old maidish.
   It is confidently asserted by the pluralists that man has been  a denizen
of the earth longer  than six or  seven thousand years; indeed some of
them say that he has inhabited the Mississippi valley one hundred and
fifty thousand years or more. Prove to me that man has been on the earth
a hundred thousand years, and I shall begin to believe the theory of La-
mark, that he sprang from the monkey; perhaps he might have been de-
veloped from an oyster in such a  length of time.  What has man been
about these hundred  thousand years?  It is only within  the last six or
seven thousand that we have any acoount of him.  All the things whioh
he has done, all the exploits he has performed, all the discoveries he has 
2(5
         made, have been accomplished very recently; many of them within the
         memory of the present generation. Was he asleep during the myriads
         of centuries that preceded the date of history ?   There is no evidence
         in nature or in history of this exaggerated antiquity of our race.  The
         fossils of man do not prove it; his bones, found beneath the bed of the
         river Soame, do not prove it, nor do human remains found in the allu-
         vium  of  the Mississippi.  Fossil trees have  been found in England
         fifteen feet under ground, along with medals of the time of Julius Caesar.
         But for these medals and  certain marks on trees, they would probably
         have been set down as fifty thousand years old.  We  know the date at
         which Herculaneum was destroyed.  In the course of seventeen hundred
         years it has been covered by  several layers of earth  and lava  to the
         depth of one hundred and seventy two feet; and yet the depth of the
         layers of  lava around ./Etna  is brought forward as proving that that
         mountain has been  sending forth its fires for unnumbered ages.
            It was  the fashion in the last century to consider the Pentateuch as
         a very recent book in comparison with the annals of China and of India.
         According to Chinese and Hindoo records, so it was said, these nations
t        had been in existence  untold  ages before Adam  dwelt in Eden.  But
         China and India are pretty much abandoned now—Egypt is the oldest
         country in the world now-a-days.  It is conceded on all hauds that In-
         dia and China are no older than  they ought to be.  But Egypt towers
         about a thousand years above the dawn of creation.  We see that the
         impugners of the Mosaic  account of the world, are being dragged to-
         wards the truth.  They took their stand in China as far as possible from
         the original seat of man's  cre?tion, and said here, and  not on the banks
         of the Euphrates was mau  found at the earle&t epochs ef the world.
         Forced from this position,  they took refuge in India, and gloated over
         the fables of the Brahmins, as to the  vast antiquity of  that  country.
         Beaten on that  field they have fled  into  Egypt and taken their stand*
          not far from the country indicated by Moses as man's  earliest  home.
         They have been forced into  Egypt, the land trodden by the feet of
         Abraham and the  early patriarchs, and they will yet be beaten out of
          the valley of the Nile, and forced to take their  stand with the Jewish
          histortan, on  the plains of Shinar.  All of us  have heard of astro-
          nomical calculations and records made by Chinese and Hindoos, proving
          the  Pentateuch to be too recent.  But  these calculations turn out to
          have been  made backwards  instead of  forwards.  In the same way  I
          could prove the  clock on my mantle-piece to be a thousand  years old-
          The clock  struck yesterday at the same hour it did  to-day, and so on 
21
backward as far as you please.  The moon was in eclipse at a certain
past  time,  and at a certain  time beyond that again, and so on for a
million of years : this would do well enough if it was first proved that
there was a moon at so remote a time.
  Is it not  strange,  that if men have been so many hundreds of thou-
sands of years on the earth, and the Bible is so recent that no older
history can  be found ?  The Chinese have no older history than that of
Confucius,  who lived only 550 B. &• Berosus, the Chaldean historian,
flourished in the time of Alexander, 330 B.C.;  Herodotus, but  484,
B. C;  Sanconiathon,  about 1000  B. C, and the  Jewish historian at
least five hundred years earlier than this — the oldest  historian of  the
world, towering above all others, as Mont Blanc above the surrounding
Alps;  and yet  our  modern  scientific  dilletante  say, Oh,  he is too
young, his  history is too reeent, he makes the world and man entirely
too late for men of research; for us, ethnologists, ethnographists, geolo-
gists, paleontologists, who have studied eocene, miocene, and pliocene;
who have dug up encrinites, trilobites, gasteropods, cephalopods,  bra-
chiopods and pieropods; who have disentombed megalosaurians from
the oolite of  Normandy; thecodontosaurians from the dolmitic  con-
glomerate,  and rhyncosarians from the new red sandstone of Grinshill;
megalonyxes paleotherii geuglodons.  It is too recent, as shown by re-
searches in Egyptology, Indology, and Sinology.   We may live to see
Illinois bottomology brought forward to overturn the faith of mankind;
and Owl-Creek-valleyology; and  mummied  frogs, brought from the
marshes of our own State, to illustrate a course of infidel lectures on
Missouri swampology.   But, at any rate, it is urged, the Pentateuch
makes the  earth too young, if not its inhabitants.   Here, the objectors
are evidently going beyond their depth.  Science  does not enable  mor-
tal man to say how the world was created, or how long a time was
required for  the pristine arrangement of its component parts.   We
may theorise about the primal  condition of matter more or less plausi-
bly, but we cannot  grasp the miracle  and mystery of its existence.  It
appears reasonable  to conclude that the earth was at first in a fluid or
even  gaseous state;  on no  other  supposition can reason explain its
present rounded form and its depressed poles.  Here, Genesis, and,the
most popular theories of philosophers seem to harmonize:  Moses and
Humboldt  speak the same language.
   "In the beginning,  God created  the heavens and the earth; and the
earth was without form and void, and darkness rested upon the face of
the deep";  and  Humboldt says,  that it is  evident that the matter of
which our  planet and all others are composed, was, in the beginning, 
22
 dispersed  as * a  formless, cosmical  vapor throughout  the  regions of
 space.
   "God said, Let there be light, and there was light;"  and Humboldt
 says, that  the world of phenomena  and that which constitutes  their
 causal reality, are dependant on the propagation of light.
   Genesis represents light as existing before the sun and moon; Hum-
 boldt contends  for a  luminous ether existing  before  these  celestial
 bodies.  Genesis represents the creation of plants and the lower animals
 as preceding that of man; philosophers with one  accord testify to the
 truth of the assertion.   But, it is contended by many, that the six days
 of creation were six indefinitely long periods.  How do they know this ?
 They say, that animals and plants were entombed in the rocky layers
 of the earth's crust myriads of ages before the appearance of man on its
 surface.  How do they know this ?   Might not the six or seven thou-
 sand years, which have elapsed since  the creation of man, have sufficed
 for the deposition of all these strata with their contained animal and
 vegetable remains ?  How long a time was required for the  original
 cosmical vapor, formless and void, to condense and form a globe ? Is
 one  day too short ?  Admit this globe to have immediately become a
 blazing ball,  how long did it take to cool its granite surface, its vapor
 to condense into seas, loaded with the materials of earth's future strata?
 I see no reason why this might not have been done in a day  by intense
 natural causes.  This is not the fashionable view, but I cannot help it.
 How long a time was required to have a spot fit for the habitation of
 man ? It seems to me that six days were sufficient.  Philosophers  may
 take their time, they may add  six millions of  years, it don't  cost them
 anything.
  Theologians should be a little cautious in admitting these specula-
 tions of philosophers;  for the next theory in  fashion may be that the
 world was created in six seconds instead of six days, and certainly it is
 as reasonable to contract a day to a second as to dilate  it to a million
 of years.  And moreover, no one will dare deny that the Creator could
 have performed his work as well in six seconds as in six days.
  A more desperate supposition, a more reckless  interpretation of lan-
guage cannot be conceived, than  that the six days of Genesis may
mean six indefinitely long periods.   No body  ever thought of such an
interpretation until geologists pretended to have demonstrated that the
world is millions of ages old.   Regarding this  great age of the earth
as a  settled fact, frightened theologians, and non-infidel  geologists set
about reconciling GehesiB and geology ; and devised tho  theory of the
six long periods.  Let  us look  at this theory  for a moment. On the 
23
first  day according  to  Genesis, matter and light were  created.  Now
where can the human  mind find any data iu the bible or in geology,
in common sense or  even in fancy, by which to  determine how long a
time was required for matter and  light to be created ?  Science is per-
fectly ignorant on this point;  and to say that a  million or a thousand
years were employed in the  process, is a gratuitous and foolish con-
cession which geology  does  not  demand and cannot demand.  The
infidel and  honest  geologist, will think nothing the better of the bible
for such a concession as this.   On the second day, there was a division
of the  waters and the arrangement of the firmament.   Can human
science say  how long  a time was required for this ?   The third day
witnessed the separation of the land and the water; and  the  creation
of the vegetable kingdom.  Does geology furnish any data by which
the  length of time necessary for the work  of the third day to be per-
formed ?  No reasonable being will answer in the affirmative.  On the
fourth day the sun, moon  and stars were created.   How long a time
was required for this work  ?  The bible says one day—science cannot
tell—compromising  theologians say thousands  of years; but neither
reason nor science has  authorised any such compromise.   On  the fifth
day the fish and fowl—the inhabitants of the sea and the air—were cre-
ated.  Does geology or reason show that these were created an indefi-
nitely long  period  after the vegetable  kingdom ?  By no means,  for
animals, according to the reported facts, existed  simultaneously with, if
not  previous to, vegetables.  Geology wants no long period here.  One
day will answer all  the wants of geology,  and theologists may keep
their long  period to themselves.   On the sixth day the land animals
and man were created.  And here again neither reason nor the prob-
able time as shown by the strata of the earth, which elapsed  between
the  epoch of some of  the  sea and some of the  land animals,  indicates
that thousands of years transpired between  the operations  of these
days.   Fossil man has been found as well as fossil  fishes, and there is
no evinence that the latter were created untold ages before the former.
Nothing is better calculated  to make  men lose all faith in revelation
than the twisting of it, by so called theologians to suit every new fan-
gled speculation of  philosophers.
   But to return—how long  a time has been requisite to deposite all
the strata from the granite upwards? No one can tell. I have suggested
that all the  deposits  containing vegetable and animal remains, may
have been formed in six or seven thousand years; because Genesis seems
to me to sssert it, and because geologists cannot disprove it.  An ocean
loaded  with the materials of which these strata are  composed, may 
24
have deposited layers a thousand feet thick in a year, for aught any one
knows.   But it is asked, why is man not found in these layers as well
as plants and  the  lower  animals, if  he was then on earth ?  Because
man does not  inhabit the ocean, and because  there were but  few men
even  on land, in  the first  years of the world; whereas, animals and
plants were created in myriads ; and of them a vast number inhabited
the ocean.
  To show how little agreement there  is  amongst geologists them-
selves, as to the time required for the formation of the aqueous  depo-
sits of the earths crust, I here  quote a passage from the report of a
committee  appointed by the French academy  to examine a geological
work by M. Andre.   The committee says, after noticing the many con-
tradictory theories on the subject, that " some of  the authors require
millions of years for the formation of the secondary  deposits,  whilst
others say they may be formed in one year."
  But, say the long chronologists, more than six thousand years are
required for the formation of deltas, as that  of the Nile for example.
This might be  true if the delta increased no  faster  in early, than in
recent times.   It is asserted by some that it has not increased percep-
tibly within the historic period—say that it increases none at all in one
year,  and then calculate  how long a time  has been  necessary for it to
attain its present size!  Evidently according  to this sort of reasoning
the delta is eternal.  But immediately  after the primitive separation of
land  and water, when the Nile was loaded with the detritus of the
Nubian  hills and the mountains of the moon; or after the flood,  when
a similar state of things existed, the delta may have been deposited in
a hundred  years, with almost its present limits.  So also of the allu-
vium of the'Mississippi and other rivers.
  But the  Falls of Niagara, amid their thunders and spray and  rain-
bows, have been thirty-six thousand years in cutting their escarpment
from Queenstown to  their present  site.  So it is said,  but it  is not
proved.   This would be true admitting that  the  Falls were originally
at Queenstown, and that  they have been wearing  their way up stream
at the rate of a foot a year.  But are these data certain ? Grant a logi-
cian his data, and he can prove what he pleases. In early times, when
the rocks were newly deposited and  soft, may not the mighty current
have cut them at the rate of three hundred yards in a year.
  Cuvier warns us over and  over, against the error of attempting to
explain the present condition of the earth by causes now in action.  "It
is in vain," says he,  " to  seek amidst the forces now acting on the sur-
face of the earth for causes sufficiently powerful to produce the revolu- 
25
tions and catastrophes of which its exterior bears traces."  The earth
seems comparatively quiet  now; it is enjoying a sort of Sabbath; but
who can estimate tlie changes which  might have taken place in a year
in the earlier epochs, when it was the sport of the two great revolution-
izing causes,  fire and water.  When the Andes,  the Alps, the  Hiraa-
layiau and Rocky Mountains, were being  upheaved, deluging conti-
nents ; when islands  were springing all  blazing from  the ocean, and
again sinking in its mysterious caverns; when volcanos were  rocking
the globe, and spouting forth their fires on  every side.   The earth can-
not be very old in its present  form, of land and ocean,  mountain and
plain.   Mr. Deluc has  shown that the  accumulation  of the  detritus
brought down by glaciers  is nearly constant  every year, and, that by
calculation, the deposit thus formed, cannot have required more than
live or six thousand years.   Dolomieu  comes to the same conclusion
from similar investigations;  and here, again, I  may mention  the au-
thority of Cuvier,  who  agrees with Dolomieu and  Deluc.  Dunes or
downes, as they are also called, which are  moving  sand banks, serve
also as chronometers of the earth.   These sand hills  first accumulate on
the seashore and then gradually invade the interior  lands under the in-
fluence of winds.  M. Bremontier has submitted these dunes to calcu-
lation.   He  found that they advanced from sixty to seventy-two feet a
year; and then, by measuring the entire space they had traveled, he
concluded that they cannot have commenced much more than four
thousand years ago.   Deluc had previously come to the same conclu-
sion, from measuring the sand-hills of Holland, where the dates of the
dykes enabled him to ascertain the rate of their  progress with  absolute
certainty.
   In passing over the various topics connected with the subject of my
lecture, I have been obliged to be very brief; I  have been obliged to
leave much unsaid that I  wished to say.   I  am not disposed to enter
the province of the theoiogian, but the  fact is, that the natural and
theological sciences are so intimately connected, that in discussing the
one the other is necessarily brought  into view.   Nature and revelation
have a common author, and  are consequently in  harmony with each
other.   Man may array them  in attitudes of hostility to each other, by
false and  distorted interpretation, and thus  injure the cause  of both.
Nature will  never contradict revelation.  Science will not curse  religion,
though adjured to do so by infidel philosophers.
   When the tents of Israel were pitched on the plains of Moab, Balak,
the son of Zippor, sent for Balaam, the son of Beor, to come and curse
the invaders; and he took  the soothsayer to the high places of Baal 
26
and built altars and offered sacrifices.  But all in vain, Balaam could
not curse whom God had blessed.   The enraged king then conducted
him  to the top of Pisgah, hoping  that the prophet would launch his
maledictions from thence.  But lo, Balaam blessed  the chosen people.
The  lofty top of Peor  was next tried; but there, in full view of the
God-guarded encampment,  the enraptured  seer   exclaimed,  "How
goodly are thy tents, oh Jacob, and thy tabernacles, oh Israel I"
  Thus has the Balak of modern  skepticism  called on the Balaam of
science to oppose, and condemn, and invalidate the facts and principles
of the bible.  Thus have  its  opposers  invoked the  records of nations,
and the monuments of nature to put down, eclipse and extinguish the
faith of Christendom and the world.  Science has been forced  upon the
tripod in China, in India and in Egypt;  but  her responses have  not
satisfied her torturers.  She has been tempted in the lonely wilderness,
and buffeted in the thoroughfares of civilizatton.  She has been trans-
ported to mountain tops, and the  pinnacles of temples and pyramids.
She has been forced to stand  amid  the silent grandeurs of fallen em-
pires;  to pore  over the dead  languages of crumbling columns and
obelisks; to unwrap the cerements of the grave from long buried gen-
erations; to count the successive seas of lava poured forth  by  Vesuvius
and ^Etna;  to note the march of cataracts amid their  thunders; to dig
the monsters of bygone ages-from their rocky tombs;  to sound  the
depths of earth's strata, and ocean's bosom; to  scan the  heavens and
grow dizzy in the  contemplation of their  vastness  and their wonders;
to measure time and  space, and  sink beneath the thought of their
infinitude.   But instead of cursing her heaven-born sister, Revelation,
she has intoned in  her honor a pean of praise  and benediction  to  be
chanted with increasing rapture throughout all coming time.