of us. For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain, also, of your own poets have said, 'For we are also his offspring.""

Physiologists have found difficulty with the wonderful diversities among the nations, of external shape, color, and so forth; and certainly no theory of physical development, or atmospheric influence, has yet availed for their full explanation. But the diversities in a single family, the fair, the dark, the brown, the red, the blue-eyed, the hazel and gray-eyed, are as inexplicable as the more general diversities of the race. It is well known that the varieties form a scale between two extremes, blending insensibly into one another, and that all belong to a single species, with its fixed limits and indelible marks, and that between all men and the inferior animals, there yawns a wide and impassable chasm. Those who defend the unity of the race on physiological grounds, have made a great mistake in admitting that they are bound to account for its varieties, for the causes of these may lie back of all outward or tangible phenomena, and lurk in the interior essence and constitution of man. Nay, it is conceivable that provision for just such varieties was made in the first human pair, or by some subsequent break, change, or new direction of the constitutional forces. It is unphilosophical to deny a fact fully established, even if we cannot account for its existence, or explain the rationale of its production. There is a limit at which all science is compelled to pause, and own the inscrutable mystery beyond! After all, the great mystery here is not that all men are derived from one human family or pair; for this is just as conceivable as any kind of descent from man to man, or of any kind of diversity in a single household, but that they and all things, with their boundless variety, are derived from one God! How the One becomes the two, the three, the many, the all, or, if the expression be preferred, the One creates the many, the all, is the mystery of mysteries. Even the development-theory of Oken and Goethé, now pretty much extinguished, only pushes the difficulty further back. Agassiz's hypothetical ova, from which, by an amazing stretch of philosophic fancy, the learned professor imagines the primitive earth to have been sown, and from which, by some inscrutable process which he does not venture to explain, may have sprung full-grown races, occupying different spheres as distinct and independent as the fauna of the different zones, leaves the subject, to say the least of it, in a darkness as profound as ever. Nay, it vastly increases the difficulty of the case, involving not only an inscrutable enigma, but what to many must seem a natural impossibility.

All that can be said upon the subject is, that we are the divine offspring; and when we have said this, we have uttered one of the most sublime and thrilling truths. We have said, in a word, that God is in man, and man in God, by a mystic bond; that the human has its root, nay, its essential life, in the Divine. And thus resembling Him, we resemble one another. "The Lord looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men. From the place of his habitation he looketh upon all the inhabitants of the earth. He fashioneth their hearts alike."

Let no one call this Transcendentalism, or Pantheism. It is neither, unless we admit that in this view we transcend the outward and perishable, and reach the inward and immortal. Pantheism first denies the personality of God, and then the personality of man. We maintain both. The Bible teaches both. God, though an indivisible unit, is a conscious Intelligence, who manifests himself to us in a threefold, but indivisible personality, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; so that we know him as the Fount of being and blessedness, the Creator, Redeemer, and Quickener. So also each man, though springing from God, is a conscious intelligence. Yet man lives in God as the very foundation of his being, and hangs upon him each moment for life and all things. Without God, man is nothing. God is "all, and in all." We are his offspring-as it were, an outshoot from the Deity. Even when we hang withered on our stem, we hang upon him. We cannot go from his Spirit, we cannot flee from his presence. If you prefer to say that God created or made man, you will allow that such terms cannot be used in any gross or mechanical sense. Surely no thoughtful person can imagine that man is fabricated or manufactured, like an edifice, or web of human handicraft, by an outward and merely mechanical process; for though the body is of matter, matter itself has sprung from God, and the soul is the special and direct communication, outbreath, or as we say, inspiration of the Infinite soul. Man is "made in the image of God;" and "the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding." In his higher nature, man is not mechanical, but vital; not material, but spiritual; not phenomenal and transient, but essential and permanent. He lives-lives in God-lives forever. God, as a spirit, is a voluntary cause. Man, too, is a voluntary cause. God lives not by bread, but by thought, by volition, by affection and eternal blessedness. Man lives not by bread alone, but by thought, by love, by purity and everlasting joy.

Here, then, is the central unity of God, of nature, of science, and of man. In which great truth is involved the question of the actual or historical unity of the race. As linked

It

with the idea of God, and of the universe, this is the question of questions. It implies all others, embraces all others. involves the character, the duty, and the destiny of us all.

We have affirmed it dogmatically. We have also affirmed it, as we affirm the actual physiological or natural descent of all men, from a single primitive pair, on the express authority of the Sacred Scripture. It is clear enough from this source, that we all bear the image of the first Adam, and that all descend from him by natural generation. As he was, so are we, in all essential things. If by nature he belonged to God, so do we. If by sin he fell from God, so have we fallen. If he died, so must we. If he was saved by a return to God, so shall we by a similar return. We came from the Father of Spirits, and thither must go back, in order to be happy for

ever.

But this subject may be discussed inductively, and the unity of the race, in its higher and more spiritual relations, proved from fact and observation, to which task we give the remaining part of this disquisition. It is one of profound interest, and great practical value.

We maintain, then, that all men, in higher or lower degree, bear unequivocal marks of a common nature and a common origin. As a matter of fact, it is ascertained, that "as in water face answers to face, so the heart of man to man." Thought answers to thought, conscience to conscience, feeling to feeling, the world over. A strange bond unites us all. Willing or unwilling, we respond to the race.

1. We discover the fact first in the universal possession of Reason: under which we include self-consciousness, the knowledge of our own mental acts, the power of introspection, of reflection, and combination, and especially the high capacity to form and receive universal truths. We suppose that the inferior animals, many of them at least, are capable, within slight limits, of a certain process of deduction. Dogs and elephants know their home, their master, their friends, and often take sagacious means to accomplish their ends; but we have no evidence that they possess the capacity to reflect upon their mental acts, or to form any conception of an abstract or general truth. This highest attribute of reason belongs only to man, angels, and God; and it is in this respect, especially, that men are to be considered as formed in the image of God. Now the rudest savage possesses the power of self-reflection; he can contemplate his own mental states; and so make himself double, that is, subject and object; he is conscious often, even in his deepest ignorance, of a strange feeling of wonder, as he listens to the beatings of his heart, looks up into the silent

heavens, or sees the vast horizon of being, by which he is encircled, extending further and further, as he advances into the illimitable depths. The rude Calmuc, or the besotted Hottentot, feels that he is separated from the inferior animals by an impassable limit. He is capable of introspection and combination, of adding thought to thought, of recognizing his own spiritual nature, and forming the conception of abstract and general truths. Cause, power, spirit, God, right, space, time, eternity, all can be conveyed to his mind. He thinks, he reasons, emerges from his superstitions, and exults in the belief of God, of the soul, of immortality. "Teacher," said some rude Peguans, worshipers of the mortal Budh, "what you say respecting the eternal God, must be true." "Ah, this is what I want," cried a thoughtful Hindoo, throwing away his instruments of self-inflicted torture, "and O, how superior to the teaching of the Shastres!" Among all nations, travelers and missionaries tell us, are found thoughtful persons, some of them of subtle intellect and far-reaching views, who, while they sometimes dispute the doctrines of the Bible, often end by admitting its elementary truths, those especially touching God and eternity; and even when they cannot reach this high theme, their minds float around it with a painful fascination.

A Hindoo lay upon his death-bed: As he saw himself about to plunge into the dread abyss, he cried out, "What will become of me?" "O," said a Brahmin, "you will inhabit another body." "And where," said he, "shall I go then?" "Into another," was the reply. "And where," said he, "shall I go then?" "Into another, and another, and thus on through millions of years." Darting along this immense period as if it were only an instant, he cried: "And where shall I go then?" There was no reply, and the quivering spirit passed into eternity. The Pantheism of India, monstrous as it is, after all, is a shadow of the sublime reality. There is something so connatural to the human mind in the idea of infinite cause, of boundless wisdom and eternal power, that nearly all reflective minds, even among the heathen, are instantly impressed with its awful grandeur and beauty. "Teacher," said a Burman, "You speak of the eternal God, who made the world; but who made God?" แ "God," was the reply, "is not made,-God is. God is cause, eternal cause, goodness and power. from eternity to eternity; all things are made by him, and hang upon him." The heathen was struck with the reply. He seemed astonished, was silent for a few minutes, and then replied, "Teacher, this is wonderful." After another pause, "Teacher, it must be so."

God is

When a Western missionary endeavored, in a somewhat

elaborate discourse, to prove to the wild Indians that there is a God who made the world, and all things therein, he was stopped short by one of their number, who said, "Don't preach to us about that: the winds, the waves, the storms, preach that to us better than you can. The forest, bending beneath the tempest, and the red lightning rending the rocks, declare to us the presence and power of the Eternal Spirit." Yes, the mind, in its natural and unperverted play, recognizes the truth of a su preme and eternal cause, and instinctively feels not only that there is a God, but a soul, and a soul-world. Certain French philosophers, on board ship with Napoleon on a starry night in the Mediterranean, were disputing the existence of an Almighty Ruler; Napoleon, who was pacing the deck near them, suddenly stopped, and pointing to the blazing vault above, said, in his quick, impressive way, "Gentlemen, you may talk as you please, but who made all that?"

What is this reason in man which recognizes the absolute, the unlimited, the everlasting? What is this wonderful power which makes him, in some sense, one with God, with the universe, and eternity;-which supplies even the rudest savage with the great primal truth of the universe, the essential and prolific germ of all other truths? The "inspiration of the Almighty," some would say, with a reverent awe, referring to the source whence it springs. "The Oversoul, the mystic and eternal oversoul, which links you, and me, and all men, and forms the thought of our thought, the feeling of our feeling, the life of our life," cries another, with a strange and dreamy Teutonic eloquence. Lucerna Dei, the Lamp of God, we respond, deriving our thought from the immortal Bacon, whose clear and reverent wisdom commends itself to all. The Lamp of God kindled at the central sun, and fed forever by an Almighty hand.

It seems to us that, by the possession of reason, and the capacity to know God, man, however ignorant in other respects, possesses the power of knowing all other things. He stands, so to speak, at the centre of being; so that if his vision were only pure enough and strong enough, he might glance through all the radii of existence, sweeping, in lines of light, into the infinite spaces. All things, according to Malebranche, one of the most devout and eloquent of the early French philosophers, are seen in God. As a metaphysical dogma, expressed in strictly logical forms, this may not be precisely true; but as a great and thrilling fact, in figurative and popular phrase, and with some slight modification of import, it harmonizes with Divine Revelation. Hence, the old divines, catching the idea from this source, were wont to pray, that we might "see light