455 
that they had other progenitors than the Caucasian Adam ? 
The time that elapsed between Adam and the exodus, or, 
more properly speaking, between the dispersion and the 
exodus, is altogether too short to account for a change so 
decided and fixed as that between the Caucasian and the 
Negro. Prichard, who to the most extensive and accurate 
knowledge of the physical and moral attributes of the various 
races of mankind added a due reverence for the Scriptures, 
avows that the doctrine of unity of race in Adam, which he 
upholds, is incompatible with the chronology of the Bible. 
From which it follows that if the Scripture chronology is to be 
maintained, the doctrine of the unity of race must be given 
up. We prefer to retain the Scripture chronology, and adopt 
the alternative of the plurality of races, as the Scripture nar- 
rative is thereby preserved in its integrity, and, conceding to 
the savage another ancestry than that of Adames race, we 
escape all the difficulties which arise from the disputed ques- 
tion of the antiquity of man, and account for the existence of 
those inferior races which are abundantly proved by the 
geologist and archaeologist to have been inhabitants of Wes- 
tern Europe before the immigration of the sons of Japhet, 
after the dispersion at Shinar. 
The authenticity of the Bible ought not to be permitted to 
rest on the untenable proposition that Africa became peopled 
with negro descendants of Caucasian Adam in the brief space 
of time that elapsed between the dispersion and the exodus ; 
nor on the assumption that when the Israelite encountered the 
negro in Egypt in the days of Joseph, or when the sons of 
Japhet, carrying out their destiny of multiplying and re- 
plenishing the earth, encountered the aboriginal savage in 
Europe, or, at a later period, in America and Australia, they 
came face to face with members of their own family, whose 
forefathers had emigrated to those regions at an earlier period, 
and had forgotten their lineage, discarded their language, and 
had become transformed, not only in features and complexion, 
but in moral capacity and anatomical configuration. It would 
be difficult to avoid the further step, that, unless the laws of 
nature are changed, a similar change may be looked for in 
our own descendants after the residence of a few hundred 
years in Africa, America, or Australia. Profane history and 
the Brahminic vedas tell the same story as the Bible, that the 
Caucasian Greek, Hindoo, and Hebrew were, in the days of 
Abraham and Moses, physically and intellectually the equals 
of the highest specimens of modern Caucasians. And what 
reason can be suggested why the descendants of an early 
Caucasian emigrant should have become degraded to savages, 
