CHAPTER VIII.

HAVE THERE BEEN MORE ORIGINS THAN ONE FOR THE HUMAN RACE?-THE BIBLE DOCTRINE IN RELATION TO RECENT THEORIES.

As we go westward, we observe the light color predominate over the dark; and then again, when we come within the influence of damp from the sea air, we see the shade deepen into the general blackness of the coast population.-DR. LIVINGSTONE.

Ir is more than two hundred years (1655) since La Peyrère, basing his reasoning on the Scriptures, argued in favor of a plurality of origins for the human family. Taking the history of Cain for his guide, Gen. 4:16, 17, he maintained that there was a Non-Adamite race, the ancestors of the Gentiles; and that the Jews alone, of whose origin and history the Bible treats, were the descendants of Adam. La Peyrère was a theologian who vindicated as true all that is in the Bible; "and exhibited in his work," says Quatrefages, "a mixture of complete faith and free criticism;" but he found, in that age, no listeners. After his time there was a long silence, though possibly much thought on the subject, until Voltaire and Rousseau, seizing La Peyrère's arguments, wielded them against the Scriptures with the commanding brilliancy of their genius. The contest was soon transferred to the United States of America, where the reasoning of the French Encyclopædists was reproduced

with all that intensity of feeling and that variety of resource which the interests of the slavery question created. The Christianity and scholarship of America gave to the discussion a magnitude and influence which could not have been secured for it by the infidelity of France. Theologians became, unintentionally, earnest coadjutors with infidels and skeptics in the effort to establish a separate origin for the negro race. The question has of late lost much of its interest; because, on the one hand, the gigantic system of slavery in America has collapsed, and because, on the other, the most commonly accepted theories as to development and evolution include, in their basis, unity of origin or race. It may be of some advantage, however, to review briefly the present aspects of the question.

I. THE BIBLE DOCTRINE.

The Bible doctrine is distinctly stated. In the geologic fulness of time God "created man, male and female;" "Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." In the New Testament, unity of origin is taught by Jesus Christ himself. He reaffirms the Old Testament doctrine. Adam had said of Eve, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh." And Jesus, the second Adam, asserting the same truth, bound the Old to the New Testament, when he said: "But from the beginning of the creation

God made them male and female.

For this cause shall

a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife." Mark 10:6, 7. He abolished distinctions by his command, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Mark 16:15. Mark 16:15. "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" Rom. 5:12; God "commandeth all men everywhere to repent." Acts 17:30. The apostle Paul, in the centre of Athens, in the midst of matchless monuments of human skill, and confronting the learning and the pride which exalted the Athenian above every race in the world, boldly proclaimed to them the distasteful truth, that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Acts 17:26.

While these direct statements are accepted by Agassiz, and many others who hold fast and defend the Scriptures, they regard them as expressing only what is applicable to the Jewish and Caucasian race; and they, at the same time, insist that God created other races in separate zoological provinces. Strangely enough, while they advocate diversity of origin, they no less earnestly advocate unity of species; and thus they satisfy, as they suppose, the declaration of the apostle, that "all are of one blood." The facts on which different theories have been framed are so numerous and so varied, that they would require the fullest examination, were it not that the controversy has of late changed its character. The past has its series of testimonies in the skulls of long-buried races

and the present makes its evidence commensurate with the inhabitants of the world.

Omitting, in the meantime, the first, let us note some

The world is its basis; There is not a continent

of the facts in the second series. the human race is the subject. which the merchant or the missionary has not traversed; not a hill-tribe has been left unnoted, nor an island unexplored. Vast groups attract attention, and subordinate varieties intensify the interest. There are universallyaccepted race distinctions—as in the Caucasian, with his fair skin, dark and curling or flowing hair, and ample brow; in the Mongolian, with his receding forehead, obliquely-set eyes, projecting chin, thin long black hair, and sallow skin fitting tightly like parchment to the cheek-bone; in the Ethiopian or Negro, with dark skin, woolly hair, prominent cheek-bones, and thick lips; in the Malay, with his reddish-brown color, lank black hair, square skull, and low forehead; and in the American, with his brown complexion, sunken eye, and swollen cheek-bone. Minuter peculiarities are recognizablefrom the Patagonian, with his commanding figure, in the southern projection of one continent, America, to the Bosjesman, with his shrunken and shrivelled frame, in the southern projection of another continent, Africa; from the diminutive Esquimaux, seated in his ice-built home-his crystal palace, with its door of snow-or setting out in eager hunting or fishing enterprise in a temperature cold enough to make mercury freeze-to the Indian in the steaming jungle of the Carnatic, or the African lounging in the shade of rock or sallying forth

with light step in easy enjoyment of an atmosphere hot enough to make ether boil. We see man subsisting on every form of food-from the cooling fruits which the tropics provide for the savage, to the scant shell-fish of southern and the coarse oil of northern tribes; and we see every mode of life-from the huntsman, penetrating the forest or scouring the plain, to the artisan in civilized communities, toiling dust-covered and scorched with furnace-heat amid the ceaseless clank of machinery-and from the herdsman, contemplatively following his flocks or watching the stars on which Chaldean Shepherds loved long ago to gaze, to the philosopher, apart and alone, grappling with profoundest problems, or the scientific student, rejoicing in some discovered application which may benefit thousands of his fellow-men. These are but glimpses of many facts which every one acknowledges, and the question to be determined is, Are all these compatible with descent from one pair, Adam and Eve; or must we infer diversity of origin in zoological centres ?

II. THE THEORY OF DIVERSITY OF ORIGIN.

Skeptics who at one time reasoned in favor of a pluality of origins in opposition to the Bible, have abandoned their theory, and adopted as its substitute development or evolution from one or more life-germs. We have therefore to do only with those who, holding the Bible in common with ourselves, defend diversity of origin, or a belief in several centres for the human family.

"The circumstance," says Agassiz, "that wherever