INTRODUCTION. 67 



requiring a lona succession of colonies for a distance of 8000 miles, 

 which must have left traces of tli. ir series of human waves in the 

 north, where the pressure must have been greatest ami the coloniza- 

 tion longest in duration ; but none such are found. 



It remiins to present the arguments in favor of an original differ- 

 ence of the human races, and their creation in several different cen- 

 tres ; in doing which we shall be obliged to draw on short treatises, 

 most of them recently published, as well as on a dissertation pub- 

 licly pronounced by the writer. 



Witli those who, like Prichard, believe thai the Mosaic account 

 of creation is a full and complete record, to be literally and strictly 

 interpreted, all argument is of course useless, notwithstanding the 

 nuraen hich may be pointed out in 



that record. Lord Bacon utti red a great truth, when he said. "The 

 union of religious and philosophical investigation is often detrimental 

 to the cause of truth." It is not Christian philosophy that would 

 have men shrink from the investigation of Nature, from fear of find- 

 ing a contradict. n the works and the word of God. When 

 rightly understood, they must harmonize. Nor can weassume that 

 human knowledge has us yet arrived at its maximum in the com- 

 prehension of the word any more than it has of the works of God. 



Professor Agassis* remarks that though the question is not at all 

 connected with religion, a entirely to natural history, still 



the theory of the diversity of origin of the human races does not 

 contradict the Mo d, which is best explained by referring it 



to the historical races. There is in u no account of the origin of 

 nations unknown to the ancients, as the Arctic nations, Japanese, 

 Chinese, Australians, Americans. We have a right to consider all 

 possible meanings of the text, and no one can object except those 

 "whose religion consists in a blind adoration of their own construc- 

 tion of the Bible." There is not a line in it which hints that the 

 differences in nations were introduced by the agency of time. All 

 its statements refer either to the general moral and spiritual unity 

 of man, (which no one denies,) or to the genealogy of a particu- 

 lar race. There is no evidence that the sacred writers considered 

 the colored races as descended from the same stock as them 

 This is a modern and human invention for political or other purpi 

 By taking into view these non-historic races, with no records, and 

 consequently umnentioned in the Bible, we greatly " lessen the per- 

 plexity of those who cannot conceive that the Bible is not a text- 

 book of natural history, and who would like to find there informa- 



* Christian Examiner, Boston, March and July, 1850. 



