Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity [pp. 250-294]

Apologetics.
the essential ethnological unity of the greatly diversified families of Southern, Western, and Central Africa.
In this stage of the research, the philological labours of our
able countryman, the Rev. J. Leighton Wilson, are deserving of
highly honourable mention, as resolving the problem in one
portion of the generalization just stated.
The next step in setting this great African family of languages into connection with a common origin for the human
race, brings us to the languages of Eastern Africa-Abyssinia,
Nubia and the Valley of the Nile, especially the Gheez, the
Galla, the Coptic and the Berber. It is now a settled point
among ethnologists of every class, (unless we except the pure
naturalists who class and affiliate families on purely anthropological grounds,) that these families of languages are all,
descended from an Asiatic stock. Bunsen, in a masterly and
extended report prevented to the British Association at Oxford,
in anticipation of the remaining volumes of his great work on
Egypt, argues this question out, and settles it, we think,
beyond farther dispute. The only question that can be raised
is, whether this class of African languages can be affiliated
certainly with those of Western, Southern, and Central Africa.
To this point Latham has directed special attention. "Unequivocal," says he, "as may be the Semitic elements of the
Berber, Coptic and Galla, their affinities with the tongues of
Western and Southern Africa are more so. I weigh my words
when I say not equally but more. Changing the expression,
for every foot of ground in advance which can be made towards
the Semitic tongues in one direction, the African ethnologist
can go a yard towards the Negro ones in the other."
The Gallas are, in fact, as nearly as possible, in every respect,
midway between these two extremes; passing on the one side
through the Abyssinian, the Nubian, the Berber and the Copt,
into the recognized Caucasian, in the mummies and paintings
of ancient Egypt; and on the other running into the Negro
type, as pure as it can be found in Senegal itself, in the
Negroes of Sennaar, on the very borders of Abyssinia. These
physical characteristics may be cited in confirmation of the
linguistic affiliation of Latham and Bunsen.
288
[APRIL