INTRODUCTION.
About the different colors of the human race.
The globe upon which we dwell is a small body compared with the sun, or with Jupiter, or Saturn; yet it contains many millions of inhabitants. The exact number can never be ascertained. The best estimates make the number between eight and nine hundred millions. This number is too great for a young mind to grasp. A better idea may be formed of it, by supposing the whole population of the globe to pass by you, one by one. How long would it take you to count them, at the rate of twenty thousand a day? More than one hundred and twenty years.
These inhabitants are scattered over every part of the earth, and are to be found in almost every island of the sea. They have penetrated into the frozen regions, where scarcely anything grows but moss; where fish, bears and reindeer are their only food; and where they are obliged to live in cabins under ground.
Vast as the number of the earth’s inhabitants is, and widely scattered as they are, yet they all sprung from one pair. This the scriptures tell us. About six thousand years ago, God created Adam and Eve in Asia, and from them all mankind have descended.
Do you ask how this can be? Do you say, that the inhabitants of different countries and climates differ much? They do indeed differ. They differ in respect to laws, and government, and manners, and dress, and language, and color. In this last respect, color, they differ almost more than in anything else.
Well, because they differ thus much, you think they could not all have descended from Adam and Eve? If they did not, then the Bible, so far, cannot be true. This would be a sad conclusion.
But, is such a conclusion necessary? Cannot we account for the differences which exist among different nations, upon the supposition that they all did descend from Adam and Eve?
Take the difference in color, which exists among different nations. This, perhaps, is the most difficult to be accounted for. A great variety of color may be noticed; but the various colors may, perhaps, be reduced to three—white, black and red. All the others may be supposed to be different shades of these.
Now, were Adam and Eve white, black or red? This we cannot ascertain. The late Dr. Dwight, I believe, supposed that they were red; but allow that they were white; by what process could their descendants have become some brown, some yellow, others red, and others still quite black?