66 
OUR RACE AND ITS ORIGIN. 
puerile myths few vestiges of truth are to be traced, and 
those evidently drawn from the Bible, but nothing to 
invalidate the scriptural account of man's creation. That 
after all the grand convulsions which shattered our globe, 
and destroyed its earliest inhabitants had ceased, the 
Creator's fiat again renewed the surface of the earth with 
fresh forms of vegetation, and peopled it with new races of 
inhabitants, over which man, made in the Divine image, was 
called forth to preside. Thus he was the last formed being, 
infinitely superior to the rest of the creation, endowed 
with the distinguishing gifts of speech and reason, the 
Creator breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he 
became a living soul ; in token of his higher rank, he was 
appointed God's vicegerent on earth, the Lord of the Crea- 
tion, which power he still continues to wield. 
We learn, therefore, in opposition to the doctrine of pro- 
gressive advancement, that man was made perfect ; indeed, 
every species of animal is declared to have been so likewise 
from its creation, each after its kind, and therefore one could 
not have passed into another ; and experience proves That 
none have done so, for each order of creatures continues the 
same it ever was, and still retains all its peculiar and distinc- 
tive features. 
But this scriptural account does not at all invalidate the 
fact, that there is a certain amount of resemblance between 
the human frame and that of many creatures far lower in the 
scale of the creation ; as, for instance, Owen states that in 
the head of a codfish, ninety-five per cent, of its bones agree 
with those of the human skull, are found in the same places, 
and are called by the same names. It only amounts to this, 
that out of all the previous creations a superior being has 
been made whose admirably formed frame embraces some 
part of each, which in combination tends to render it the 
perfection of all preceding it, and a suitable receptacle for 
an immortal spirit. 
From this statement of the commencement of our race, 
we next proceed to consider its varieties which now people 
the world. 
