78 GEOGRAPHICAL AND LOCAL 



as well as animals, that inhabit our globe, and 

 will account for many distinctions, which indi- 

 cate that such an individual belongs to such a 

 people. But these circumstances will not explain 

 and satisfactorily account for all the peculiar 

 characters that distinguish nations from each 

 other, without having recourse to the will of 

 a governing and all-directing POWER, influ- 

 encing circumstances that happen in the com- 

 mon course, and, according to the established 

 laws of nature, to answer the purposes of his 

 Providence. When he confounded the speech 

 and language of the descendants of Noah, con- 

 gregated at Babel, he first made a division of 

 mankind into nations ; "And from thence did 

 Jehovah scatter them abroad upon the face of all 

 the earth." The same Divine Power that effected 

 this distinction, which may be called the origin 

 of nationality, also decreed that nations should 

 be further separated by differences of form and 

 colour, as well as speech, which differences ori- 

 ginated not in any change operated miraculously, 

 but produced by second causes, under the direc- 

 tion of the FIRST. When we are told expressly 

 that " The hairs of our head are all numbered" 

 and that in God's " Book all our members are 

 written" we learn, what in common parlance we 

 acknowledge, that it is according to God's will 

 that we are made so and so. That persons, who, 

 in some one or other of their parts and organs, 



