On the Diversity of Origin of the Human Races [pp. 603-642]

1850.] On the Diversity of Origin of the Human Race. 623
suggest a reason of sufficient magnitude to justify it,-according to the requirement of the great Roman critic, " Nec Deuis
intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit." And is not such an
occasion suggested by the previous stages of human history? If
the first great experiment with man of 1600 years resulted in
"a change in the order of things," such that the race of man
was exterminated by a universal deluge, is it against analogy
to suppose, that when God saw the rise of a new empire of
universal wickedness and violence, he should break up the
powerful combination by which its consummation was sought,
by another change, implying no specific departure from the
type of the race, but simply a confusion of their language, and
a dispersion of the several branches, by means of such diversities as would effectually secure its end? Was not the separation and preservation of a seed to serve him and to be the depositories of his truth and his church, an event of sufficient
importance, to justify such a dispersion, by any agency that
did not infringe upon the humanity of the races? Is there
any thing in the fact, admitting it to be supernatural, that is
contradicted by the clear analogies of creation and providence;
and admitting that it does transcend in magnitude any other
divine interposition, or change in the history of the race, is
there any thing in it impossible, or even so improbable, as to
compel us to reject a well attested Revelation as urtrue, merely because it teaches the doctrine in question. If God by the
prophetic lips of Noah in the combined patriarchal characters
as King and prophet of his race, forejudged one portion of his
offspring to be not only the depository of his truth, but to de
velope that type of humanity which was to enshrine the glory of
the Godhead, and another to sway the sceptre of ultimate dominion, and doom a third, for the guilt and shame of its head, to
long degradation and servitude to its brethren, is there any thing
out of the common analogy of Providence, if he who is wise
in counsel, and wonderful in working, should write his decree
in'the physical constitution of the respective races,-if he should
clothe the one in the outward symbols of its glory as the ancestry of the Messiah, and invest the others in the public
badges of imperial dominion on the one hand, and of degradea tion, inferiority and subjection on the other. Who does not