First Things - 1855 Author:Gardiner Spring Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. nf tjjt luntati Earr. proceed, as we intimated in the last chapter, to call the attention of the reader to the question of the unity of the human... more » race. Whether the first man spoken of by Moses, was literally the first man, and the parent of the entire race of human beings, is an inquiry to which different answers have for the most part been given, as different authors have been believers, or disbelievers, in a supernatural revelation. Where the subject is investigated simply by the phenomena of nature and the lights of science, there indeed are those who have come to the conclusion, that all mankind are not the descendants of one common pair. Men imbued with Christian truth do not complain of these philosophical inquiries ; for they are more and more satisfied that on this subject, as well as every other, the works and the word of God, when both are known and understood, are perfectly harmonious. The greatest naturalists in all ages, however diversified may have been their views in regard to Christianity, regarded all the races of men as composed of one species. "We are not a little surprised, therefore, when we find men who express their unhesitating confidence in the Scriptures, advocating the doctrine of a plurality of races, as has been recently done by two authors of eminence in our own country .f One of the writers here referred to affirms, that " the Mosaic history affords a fair, and very strong presumption, that man was divided into several species by the Creator." Pie expresses the belief that Adam and Eve were not the first and only created beings in the world ; that the race spoken of by Moses, of which Adam was the first, is simply the race to which the Scriptures have reference, and which were to be employed by God in the design of redeeming mercy....« less