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though in poetical language, with no violation of scientific truth: 'He maketh the clouds his chariot. He walketh upon the wings of the wind' (Ps. civ. 3): and in another place; 'He made darkness His secret place; His pavilion round about Him were dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the highest gave Iis voice; hail-stones and coals of fire' (Ps. xviii. 11, 13)— and it is well known that hot thunderbolts sometimes now fall from heaven and not unaccompanied with hail, regarding which the science of the present day has an interesting theory.

Take up a volume of only one hundred years old which touches on any of these matters, and there is little doubt that you will detect some gross error which the progress of human knowledge has exploded. But in the Holy Scripture we have a book, of very great antiquity, still fresh. Apparent discrepancies invariably prove the germ of new agreements. A book, so written as to touch upon many subjects of human research, and without anticipating discoveries which man can make for himself, not to contradict them when made, is certainly a paragon of wisdom and knowledge of the highest order. That the Scriptures should stand thus pre-eminent through all ages, and that they should never be behind Science however advanced, producing, that is, nothing contradictory to Science from age to age, is sufficient to convince the most sceptical of their Divine origin.

CHAPTER III.

EXAMPLES, IN WHICH SCIENCE HAS BEEN DELIVERED FROM THE FALSE CONCLUSIONS OF SOME OF ITS VOTARIES, AND THEREBY SHOWN NOT TO BE AT VARIANCE WITH SCRIPTURE, AS THEY HAVE ALLEGED.

1. FROM the great diversities which exist among the tribes of men which at present inhabit the earth it has been boldly inferred by some writers,

All men of one

blood. that it is impossible that they can all have descended from common parents. The statements of Scripture, that Eve was the 'mother of all living' (Gen. iii. 20); that after the Deluge the earth was peopled by the descendants of one man, Noah (Gen. x. 32); and the declaration of St. Paul (Acts, xvii. 26). that God hath MADE OF ONE BLOOD all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,' are equally set aside as irreconcilable with the facts of nature. Thus the Word and Works of God have been driven once more into conflict, and upon entirely new ground.

(1). This apparent contradiction between Revelation and Nature has been examined by the late Dr. Prichard. His facts and arguments have been collected in his invaluable work on the Natural

History of Man. He takes no guide but the phenomena which the various tribes present, and which well-authenticated history furnishes. And he comes to the conclusion, that there are no permanent lines of demarcation separating the several tribes or nations; that all the diversities which exist are variable, and pass into each other by insensible gradations; that there is scarcely an instance in which the actual transition cannot be proved to have taken place; and that there is everything to lead us to infer, quite irrespectively of Scripture testimony, that all the families of the earth are descended from common parents, and that at no very distant epoch.

His language is too important not to be quoted. 'The sacred Scriptures,' he says, 'whose testimony is received by all men of unclouded minds with implicit and reverential assent, declare that it pleased the Almighty Creator to make of one blood all the nations of the earth, and that all mankind are the offspring of common parents. But there are writers in the present day, who maintain that this assertion does not comprehend the uncivilised inhabitants of remote regions; and that Negroes, Hottentots, Esquimaux, and Australians, are not, in fact, men in the full sense of that term, or beings endowed with like mental faculties with ourselves. Some of these writers contend, that the races above mentioned, and other rude and barbarous tribes, are inferior in their original endowments to the human family which supplied Europe and Asia with inhabitants-that they are organically different, and can never be raised to an equality, in moral and intellectual powers, with the offspring of that race

which displays, in the highest degree, all the attributes of humanity. They maintain that the ultimate lot of the ruder tribes is a state of perpetual servitude; and that if, in some instances, they should continue to repel the attempts of the civilised nations to subdue them, they will at length be rooted out and exterminated in every country on the shores of which Europeans shall

have set their feet.'

Although this question is one of which the decision is not a matter of indifference either to religion or humanity, yet he follows the strict rule of scientific scrutiny which requires that we should close our eyes against all presumptive and extrinsic evidence, and abstract our minds from all considerations not derived from the matters of fact which bear immediately on the question. The maxim we have to follow,' he says, ' in such controversies is, Fiat justitia, ruat cælum. What is actually true it is always most desirable to know, whatever consequences may arise from its admission.' Taking this course, he sums up the results of his able investigation thus:—

'In the ethnographical outline which I have now concluded, the facts have been very briefly stated, and it would be difficult to recapitulate them in a shorter compass. I shall merely point out some of the most obvious inferences. The differences of men are not distinguished from each other by stronglymarked, uniform, and permanent distinctions, as are the several species belonging to any given tribe of animals. All the diversities which exist are variable, and pass into each other by insensible gradations; and there is, moreover, scarcely an instance in which

the actual transition can not be proved to have taken place.'

And again, further on :- We contemplate among all the diversified tribes who are endowed with reason and speech the same internal feelings, appetences, aversions; the same inward convictions; the same sentiments of subjection to invisible powers, and, more or less fully developed, of accountableness or responsibility to unseen avengers of wrong and agents of retributive justice, from whose tribunal men cannot even by death escape. We find everywhere the same susceptibility, though not always in the same degree of forwardness or ripeness of improvement, of admitting the cultivation of these universal endowments, of opening the eyes of the mind to the more clear and luminous views which Christianity unfolds, of becoming moulded to the institutions of religion and of civilised life in a word, the same inward and mental nature is to be recognised in all the races of men. When we compare this fact with the observations which have been heretofore fully established as to the specific instincts and separate psychical endowments of all the distinct tribes of sentient beings in the universe, we are entitled to draw confidently the conclusion, that all human races are of one species and one family.'* So triumphantly is the Scripture account thus far verified by an impartial and independent appeal to facts.

It is difficult to understand how men can presume to contravene the distinct statements of Scripture on * Prichard's Natural History of Man, vol. i. p. 5 ; vol. ii. pp. 644, 713, 714.

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