248 THE ABORIGINES OF NORTH AMERICA. 
generally less—to all the races of the earth. We hold that that revelation 
was given, in its perfect and written form, by Moses to the chosen people of 
God ; but we are not, therefore, necessarily to suppose that other peoples 
and nations were entirely unaware of the existence or the attributes of God. 
On the contrary, the Great Father of all did not leave them without all 
knowledge ; there was a tradition of some kind, and it is apparent that the 
remarkable traditions of these North American Indians were simply corrup- 
tions of that original revelation. I have said here before that I hold very 
firmly the doctrine that the primeval tradition was known to the ancestors 
of that race, and I hold this doctrine none the less firmly because the 
other day I saw, in a sceptical book which I looked into, the notion of the 
primeval tradition scouted as one which a sensible man would not entertain : 
now, when a sceptic, dealing with a proposition he is unable to refute, says 
“none but an idiot would hold it,” that seems to me a very strong argument 
in favour of its not being capable of refutation. We have, I think, often 
had pointed out to us here, the wonderful coincidence there is between the 
recorded tradition, as we have it in the Scriptures, and the form in which 
the original tradition has been handed down to different peoples in different 
parts of the world. These are very important facts, and I cannot see how 
any person before whom they are put can resist the conclusion that there 
must have been a real reason for the similarity found to exist between 
superstitions and traditions, such as the author of this paper has dealt with, 
and our own record. In point of fact I think that with regard to these, and 
not only these but a number of coincident traditions, one can scarcely 
resist the conclusion that all the races of man sprang from one family, and 
from one pair, as recorded in the Mosaic Scriptures, and that they have all 
retained, in some form or other, that Revelation which the Creator of All 
originally delivered to them. (Applause.) 
The Meeting was then adjourned. 
