Chapter I: Preliminary (2)

Many who deny the universal Fatherhood of God refuse to carry
their doctrine to its logical extreme. To be consistent they
should forbid the unconverted to offer the Lord’s Prayer or even
to pray at all. A mother who did not believe God to be the Father
of all actually said: “My children are not converted, and if I
were to teach them the Lord’s Prayer, I must teach them to say:
‘Our father who art in hell’; for they are only children of the
devil.” Papers on the question: Is God the Father of all Men? are
to be found in the Proceedings of the Baptist Congress,
1896:106-136. Among these the essay of F. H. Rowley asserts God’s
universal Fatherhood upon the grounds: 1. Man is created in the
image of God; 2. God’s fatherly treatment of man, especially in
the life of Christ among men; 3. God’s universal claim on man for
his filial love and trust; 4. Only God’s Fatherhood makes
incarnation possible, for this implies oneness of nature between
God and man. To these we may add: 5. The atoning death of Christ
could be efficacious only upon the ground of a common nature in
Christ and in humanity; and 6. The regenerating work of the Holy
Spirit is intelligible only as the restoration of a filial
relation which was native to man, but which his sin had put into
abeyance. For denial that God is Father to any but the regenerate,
see Candlish, Fatherhood of God; Wright, Fatherhood of God. For
advocacy of the universal Fatherhood, see Crawford, Fatherhood of
God; Lidgett, Fatherhood of God.

II. Unity of the Human Race.

(_a_) The Scriptures teach that the whole human race is descended from a single pair.

_Gen. 1:27, 28_—“_And God created man in his own image, in the
image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And
God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and
multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it_”; _2:7_—“_And
Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living
soul_”; _22_—“_and the rib, which Jehovah God had taken from the
man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man_”; _3:20_—“_And
the man called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of
all living_” = even Eve is traced back to Adam; _9:19_—“_These
three were the sons of Noah; and of these was the whole earth
overspread._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 110—“Logically, it seems
easier to account for the divergence of what was at first one,
than for the union of what was at first heterogeneous.”

(_b_) This truth lies at the foundation of Paul’s doctrine of the organic unity of mankind in the first transgression, and of the provision of salvation for the race in Christ.

_Rom. 5:12_—“_Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the
world, and death through sin; and so death passed unto all men,
for that all sinned_”; _19_—“_For as through the one man’s
disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the
obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous_”; _1 Cor.
15:21, 22_—“_For since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in
Christ shall all be made alive_”; _Heb. 2:16_—“_For verily not of
angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of
Abraham._” One of the most eminent ethnologists and
anthropologists, Prof. D. G. Brinton, said not long before his
death that all scientific research and teaching tended to the
conviction that mankind has descended from one pair.

(_c_) This descent of humanity from a single pair also constitutes the ground of man’s obligation of natural brotherhood to every member of the race.

_Acts 17:26_—“_he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all
the face of the earth_”—here the Rev. Vers. omits the word
“_blood_” (“_made of one blood_”—Auth. Vers.). The word to be
supplied is possibly “father,” but more probably “body”; _cf._
_Heb. 2:11_—“_for both he that sanctifieth and they that are
sanctified are all of one_ [father or body]: _for which cause he
is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, I will declare thy
name unto my brethren, In the midst of the congregation will I
sing thy praise._”

Winchell, in his Preadamites, has recently revived the theory
broached in 1655 by Peyrerius, that there were men before Adam:
“Adam is descended from a black race—not the black races from
Adam.” Adam is simply “the remotest ancestor to whom the Jews
could trace their lineage.... The derivation of Adam from an older
human stock is essentially the creation of Adam.” Winchell does
not deny the unity of the race, nor the retroactive effect of the
atonement upon those who lived before Adam; he simply denies that
Adam was the first man. 297—He “regards the Adamic stock as
derived from an older and humbler human type,” originally as low
in the scale as the present Australian savages.

Although this theory furnishes a plausible explanation of certain
Biblical facts, such as the marriage of Cain (_Gen. 4:17_), Cain’s
fear that men would slay him (_Gen. 4:14_), and the distinction
between “_the sons of God_” and “_the daughters of men_” (_Gen.
6:1, 2_), it treats the Mosaic narrative as legendary rather than
historical. Shem, Ham, and Japheth, it is intimated, may have
lived hundreds of years apart from one another (409). Upon this
view, Eve could not be “_the mother of all living_” (_Gen. 3:20_),
nor could the transgression of Adam be the cause and beginning of
condemnation to the whole race (_Rom. 5:12, 19_). As to Cain’s
fear of other families who might take vengeance upon him, we must
remember that we do not know how many children were born to Adam
between Cain and Abel, nor what the age of Cain and Abel was, nor
whether Cain feared only those that were then living. As to Cain’s
marriage, we must remember that even if Cain married into another
family, his wife, upon any hypothesis of the unity of the race,
must have been descended from some other original Cain that
married his sister.

See Keil and Delitzsch, Com. on Pentateuch, 1:116—“The marriage of
brothers and sisters was inevitable in the case of children of the
first man, in case the human race was actually to descend from a
single pair, and may therefore be justified, in the face of the
Mosaic prohibition of such marriages, on the ground that the sons
and daughters of Adam represented not merely the family but the
genus, and that it was not till after the rise of several families
that the bonds of fraternal and conjugal love became distinct from
one another and assumed fixed and mutually exclusive forms, the
violation of which is sin.” Prof. W. H. Green: “_Gen. 20:12_ shows
that Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister;...the regulations
subsequently ordained in the Mosaic law were not then in force.”
G. H. Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, has shown that marriage
between cousins is harmless where there is difference of
temperament between the parties. Modern palæontology makes it
probable that at the beginning of the race there was greater
differentiation of brothers and sisters in the same family than
obtains in later times. See Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:275. For criticism
of the doctrine that there were men before Adam, see Methodist
Quar. Rev., April, 1881:205-231; Presb. Rev., 1881:440-444.

The Scripture statements are corroborated by considerations drawn from history and science. Four arguments may be briefly mentioned:

1. The argument from history.

So far as the history of nations and tribes in both hemispheres can be traced, the evidence points to a common origin and ancestry in central Asia.

The European nations are acknowledged to have come, in successive
waves of migration, from Asia. Modern ethnologists generally agree
that the Indian races of America are derived from Mongoloid
sources in Eastern Asia, either through Polynesia or by way of the
Aleutian Islands. Bunsen, Philos. of Universal History, 2:112—the
Asiatic origin of all the North American Indians “is as fully
proved as the unity of family among themselves.” Mason, Origins of
Invention, 361—“Before the time of Columbus, the Polynesians made
canoe voyages from Tahiti to Hawaii, a distance of 2300 miles.”
Keane, Man Past and Present, 1-15, 349-440, treats of the American
Aborigines under two primitive types: Longheads from Europe and
Roundheads from Asia. The human race, he claims, originated in
Indomalaysia and spread thence by migration over the globe. The
world was peopled from one center by Pleistocene man. The primary
groups were evolved each in its special habitat, but all sprang
from a Pleiocene precursor 100,000 years ago. W. T. Lopp,
missionary to the Eskimos, at Port Clarence, Alaska, on the
American side of Bering Strait, writes under date of August 31,
1892: “No thaws during the winter, and ice blocked in the Strait.
This has always been doubted by whalers. Eskimos have told them
that they sometimes crossed the Strait on ice, but they have never
believed them. Last February and March our Eskimos had a tobacco
famine. Two parties (five men) went with dogsleds to East Cape, on
the Siberian coast, and traded some beaver, otter and marten skins
for Russian tobacco, and returned safely. It is only during an
occasional winter that they can do this. But every summer they
make several trips in their big wolf-skin boats—forty feet long.
These observations may throw some light upon the origin of the
prehistoric races of America.”

Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1:48—“The semi-civilized nations of Java
and Sumatra are found in possession of a civilization which at
first glance shows itself to have been borrowed from Hindu and
Moslem sources.” See also Sir Henry Rawlinson, quoted in Burgess,
Antiquity and Unity of the Race, 156, 157; Smyth, Unity of Human
Races, 223-236; Pickering, Races of Man, Introd., synopsis, and
page 316; Guyot, Earth and Man, 298-334; Quatrefages, Natural
History of Man, and Unité de l’Espèce Humaine; Godron, Unité de
l’Espèce Humaine, 2:412 _sq._ _Per contra_, however, see Prof. A.
H. Sayce: “The evidence is now all tending to show that the
districts in the neighborhood of the Baltic were those from which
the Aryan languages first radiated, and where the race or races
who spoke them originally dwelt. The Aryan invaders of
Northwestern India could only have been a late and distant
offshoot of the primitive stock, speedily absorbed into the
earlier population of the country as they advanced southward; and
to speak of ‘our Indian brethren’ is as absurd and false as to
claim relationship with the negroes of the United States because
they now use an Aryan language.” Scribner, Where Did Life Begin?
has lately adduced arguments to prove that life on the earth
originated at the North Pole, and Prof. Asa Gray favors this view;
see his Darwiniana, 205, and Scientific Papers, 2:152; so also
Warren, Paradise Found; and Wieland, in Am. Journal of Science,
Dec. 1903:401-430. Dr. J. L. Wortman, in Yale Alumni Weekly, Jan.
14, 1903:129—“The appearance of all these primates in North
America was very abrupt at the beginning of the second stage of
the Eocene. And it is a striking coincidence that approximately
the same forms appear in beds of exactly corresponding age in
Europe. Nor does this synchronism stop with the apes. It applies
to nearly all the other types of Eocene mammalia in the Northern
Hemisphere, and to the accompanying flora as well. These facts can
be explained only on the hypothesis that there was a common centre
from which these plants and animals were distributed. Considering
further that the present continental masses were essentially the
same in the Eocene time as now, and that the North Polar region
then enjoyed a subtropical climate, as is abundantly proved by
fossil plants, we are forced to the conclusion that this common
centre of dispersion lay approximately within the Arctic
Circle.... The origin of the human species did not take place on
the Western Hemisphere.”

2. The argument from language.

Comparative philology points to a common origin of all the more important languages, and furnishes no evidence that the less important are not also so derived.

On Sanskrit as a connecting link between the Indo-Germanic
languages, see Max Müller, Science of Language, 1:146-165,
326-342, who claims that all languages pass through the three
stages: monosyllabic, agglutinative, inflectional; and that
nothing necessitates the admission of different independent
beginnings for either the material or the formal elements of the
Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech. The changes of
language are often rapid. Latin becomes the Romance languages, and
Saxon and Norman are united into English, in three centuries. The
Chinese may have departed from their primitive abodes while their
language was yet monosyllabic.

G. J. Romanes, Life and Letters, 195—“Children are the
constructors of all _languages_, as distinguished from
_language_.” Instance Helen Keller’s sudden acquisition of
language, uttering publicly a long piece only three weeks after
she first began to imitate the motions of the lips. G. F. Wright,
Man and the Glacial Period, 242-301—“Recent investigations show
that children, when from any cause isolated at an early age, will
often produce at once a language _de novo_. Thus it would appear
by no means improbable that various languages in America, and
perhaps the earliest languages of the world, may have arisen in a
short time where conditions were such that a family of small
children could have maintained existence when for any cause
deprived of parental and other fostering care.... Two or three
thousand years of prehistoric time is perhaps all that would be
required to produce the diversification of languages which appears
at the dawn of history.... The prehistoric stage of Europe ended
less than a thousand years before the Christian Era.” In a people
whose speech has not been fixed by being committed to writing,
baby-talk is a great source of linguistic corruption, and the
changes are exceedingly rapid. Humboldt took down the vocabulary
of a South American tribe, and after fifteen years of absence
found their speech so changed as to seem a different language.

Zöckler, in Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie, 8:68 _sq._, denies
the progress from lower methods of speech to higher, and declares
the most highly developed inflectional languages to be the oldest
and most widespread. Inferior languages are a degeneration from a
higher state of culture. In the development of the Indo-Germanic
languages (such as the French and the English), we have instances
of change from more full and luxuriant expression to that which is
monosyllabic or agglutinative. The theory of Max Müller is also
opposed by Pott, Die Verschiedenheiten der menschlichen Rassen,
202, 242. Pott calls attention to the fact that the Australian
languages show unmistakable similarity to the languages of Eastern
and Southern Asia, although the physical characteristics of these
tribes are far different from the Asiatic.

On the old Egyptian language as a connecting link between the
Indo-European and the Semitic tongues, see Bunsen, Egypt’s Place,
1: preface, 10; also see Farrar, Origin of Language, 213. Like the
old Egyptian, the Berber and the Touareg are Semitic in parts of
their vocabulary, while yet they are Aryan in grammar. So the
Tibetan and Burmese stand between the Indo-European languages, on
the one hand, and the monosyllabic languages, as of China, on the
other. A French philologist claims now to have interpreted the
_Yh-King_, the oldest and most unintelligible monumental writing
of the Chinese, by regarding it as a corruption of the old
Assyrian or Accadian cuneiform characters, and as resembling the
syllabaries, vocabularies, and bilingual tablets in the ruined
libraries of Assyria and Babylon; see Terrien de Lacouperie, The
Oldest Book of the Chinese and its Authors, and The Languages of
China before the Chinese, 11, note; he holds to “the
non-indigenousness of the Chinese civilization and its derivation
from the old Chaldæo-Babylonian focus of culture by the medium of
Susiana.” See also Sayce, in Contemp. Rev., Jan. 1884:934-936;
also, The Monist, Oct. 1906:562-596, on The Ideograms of the
Chinese and the Central American Calendars. The evidence goes to
show that the Chinese came into China from Susiana in the 23d
century before Christ. Initial G wears down in time into a Y
sound. Many words which begin with Y in Chinese are found in
Accadian beginning with G, as Chinese Ye, “night,” is in Accadian
Ge, “night.” The order of development seems to be: 1. picture
writing; 2. syllabic writing; 3. alphabetic writing.

In a similar manner, there is evidence that the Pharaonic
Egyptians were immigrants from another land, namely, Babylonia.
Hommel derives the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians from the pictures
out of which the cuneiform characters developed, and he shows that
the elements of the Egyptian language itself are contained in that
mixed speech of Babylonia which originated in the fusion of
Sumerians and Semites. The Osiris of Egypt is the Asari of the
Sumerians. Burial in brick tombs in the first two Egyptian
dynasties is a survival from Babylonia, as are also the
seal-cylinders impressed on clay. On the relations between Aryan
and Semitic languages, see Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 55-61;
Murray, Origin and Growth of the Psalms, 7; Bib. Sac., 1870:162;
1876:352-380; 1879:674-706. See also Pezzi, Aryan Philology, 125;
Sayce, Principles of Comp. Philology, 132-174; Whitney, art. on
Comp. Philology in Encyc. Britannica, also Life and Growth of
Language, 269, and Study of Language, 307, 308—“Language affords
certain indications of doubtful value, which, taken along with
certain other ethnological considerations, also of questionable
pertinency, furnish ground for suspecting an ultimate
relationship.... That more thorough comprehension of the history
of Semitic speech will enable us to determine this ultimate
relationship, may perhaps be looked for with hope, though it is
not to be expected with confidence.” See also Smyth, Unity of
Human Races, 199-222; Smith’s Bib. Dict., art.: Confusion of
Tongues.

We regard the facts as, on the whole, favoring an opposite
conclusion from that in Hastings’s Bible Dictionary, art.: Flood:
“The diversity of the human race and of language alike makes it
improbable that men were derived from a single pair.” E. G.
Robinson: “The only trustworthy argument for the unity of the race
is derived from comparative philology. If it should be established
that one of the three families of speech was more ancient than the
others, and the source of the others, the argument would be
unanswerable. Coloration of the skin seems to lie back of climatic
influences. We believe in the unity of the race because in this
there are the fewest difficulties. We would not know how else to
interpret Paul in _Romans 5_.” Max Müller has said that the
fountain head of modern philology as of modern freedom and
international law is the change wrought by Christianity,
superseding the narrow national conception of patriotism by the
recognition of all the nations and races as members of one great
human family.

3. The argument from psychology.

The existence, among all families of mankind, of common mental and moral characteristics, as evinced in common maxims, tendencies and capacities, in the prevalence of similar traditions, and in the universal applicability of one philosophy and religion, is most easily explained upon the theory of a common origin.

Among the widely prevalent traditions may be mentioned the
tradition of the fashioning of the world and man, of a primeval
garden, of an original innocence and happiness, of a tree of
knowledge, of a serpent, of a temptation and fall, of a division
of time into weeks, of a flood, of sacrifice. It is possible, if
not probable, that certain myths, common to many nations, may have
been handed down from a time when the families of the race had not
yet separated. See Zöckler, in Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie,
8:71-90; Max Müller, Science of Language, 2:444-455; Prichard,
Nat. Hist. of Man, 2:657-714; Smyth, Unity of Human Races,
236-240; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:77-91; Gladstone, Juventus Mundi.

4. The argument from physiology.

A. It is the common judgment of comparative physiologists that man constitutes but a single species. The differences which exist between the various families of mankind are to be regarded as varieties of this species. In proof of these statements we urge: (_a_) The numberless intermediate gradations which connect the so-called races with each other. (_b_) The essential identity of all races in cranial, osteological, and dental characteristics. (_c_) The fertility of unions between individuals of the most diverse types, and the continuous fertility of the offspring of such unions.

Huxley, Critiques and Addresses, 163—“It may be safely affirmed
that, even if the differences between men are specific, they are
so small that the assumption of more than one primitive stock for
all is altogether superfluous. We may admit that Negroes and
Australians are distinct species, yet be the strictest
monogenists, and even believe in Adam and Eve as the primeval
parents of mankind, _i. e._, on Darwin’s hypothesis”; Origin of
Species, 118—“I am one of those who believe that at present there
is no evidence whatever for saying that mankind sprang originally
from more than a single pair; I must say that I cannot see any
good ground whatever, or any tenable evidence, for believing that
there is more than one species of man.” Owen, quoted by Burgess,
Ant. and Unity of Race, 185—“Man forms but one species, and
differences are but indications of varieties. These variations
merge into each other by easy gradations.” Alex. von Humboldt:
“The different races of men are forms of one sole species,—they
are not different species of a genus.”

Quatrefages, in Revue d. deux Mondes, Dec. 1860:814—“If one places
himself exclusively upon the plane of the natural sciences, it is
impossible not to conclude in favor of the monogenist doctrine.”
Wagner, quoted in Bib. Sac., 19:607—“Species—the collective total
of individuals which are capable of producing one with another an
uninterruptedly fertile progeny.” Pickering, Races of Man,
316—“There is no middle ground between the admission of eleven
distinct species in the human family and their reduction to one.
The latter opinion implies a central point of origin.”

There is an impossibility of deciding how many races there are, if
we once allow that there are more than one. While Pickering would
say eleven, Agassiz says eight, Morton twenty-two, and Burke
sixty-five. Modern science all tends to the derivation of each
family from a single germ. Other common characteristics of all
races of men, in addition to those mentioned in the text, are the
duration of pregnancy, the normal temperature of the body, the
mean frequency of the pulse, the liability to the same diseases.
Meehan, State Botanist of Pennsylvania, maintains that hybrid
vegetable products are no more sterile than are ordinary plants
(Independent, Aug. 21, 1884).

E. B. Tylor, art.: Anthropology, in Encyc. Britannica: “On the
whole it may be asserted that the doctrine of the unity of mankind
now stands on a firmer basis than in previous ages.” Darwin,
Animals and Plants under Domestication, 1:39—“From the resemblance
in several countries of the half-domesticated dogs to the wild
species still living there, from the facility with which they can
be crossed together, from even half tamed animals being so much
valued by savages, and from the other circumstances previously
remarked on which favor domestication, it is highly probable that
the domestic dogs of the world have descended from two good
species of wolf (_viz._, _Canis lupus_ and _Canis latrans_), and
from two or three other doubtful species of wolves (namely, the
European, Indian and North American forms); from at least one or
two South American canine species; from several races or species
of the jackal; and perhaps from one or more extinct species.” Dr.
E. M. Moore tried unsuccessfully to produce offspring by pairing a
Newfoundland dog and a wolf-like dog from Canada. He only proved
anew the repugnance of even slightly separated species toward one
another.

B. Unity of species is presumptive evidence of unity of origin. Oneness of origin furnishes the simplest explanation of specific uniformity, if indeed the very conception of species does not imply the repetition and reproduction of a primordial type-idea impressed at its creation upon an individual empowered to transmit this type-idea to its successors.

Dana, quoted in Burgess, Antiq. and Unity of Race, 185, 186—“In
the ascending scale of animals, the number of species in any genus
diminishes as we rise, and should by analogy be smallest at the
head of the series. Among mammals, the higher genera have few
species, and the highest group next to man, the orang-outang, has
only eight, and these constitute but two genera. Analogy requires
that man should have preëminence and should constitute only one.”
194—“A species corresponds to a specific amount or condition of
concentrated force defined in the act or law of creation.... The
species in any particular case began its existence when the first
germ-cell or individual was created. When individuals multiply
from generation to generation, it is but a repetition of the
primordial type-idea.... The specific is based on a numerical
unity, the species being nothing else than an enlargement of the
individual.” For full statement of Dana’s view, see Bib. Sac., Oct
1857:862-866. On the idea of species, see also Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:63-74.

(_a_) To this view is opposed the theory, propounded by Agassiz, of different centres of creation, and of different types of humanity corresponding to the varying fauna and flora of each. But this theory makes the plural origin of man an exception in creation. Science points rather to a single origin of each species, whether vegetable or animal. If man be, as this theory grants, a single species, he should be, by the same rule, restricted to one continent in his origin. This theory, moreover, applies an unproved hypothesis with regard to the distribution of organized beings in general to the very being whose whole nature and history show conclusively that he is an exception to such a general rule, if one exists. Since man can adapt himself to all climes and conditions, the theory of separate centres of creation is, in his case, gratuitous and unnecessary.

Agassiz’s view was first published in an essay on the Provinces of
the Animal World, in Nott and Gliddon’s Types of Mankind, a book
gotten up in the interest of slavery. Agassiz held to eight
distinct centres of creation, and to eight corresponding types of
humanity—the Arctic, the Mongolian, the European, the American,
the Negro, the Hottentot, the Malay, the Australian. Agassiz
regarded Adam as the ancestor only of the white race, yet like
Peyrerius and Winchell be held that man in all his various races
constitutes but one species.

The whole tendency of recent science, however, has been adverse to
the doctrine of separate centres of creation, even in the case of
animal and vegetable life. In temperate North America there are
two hundred and seven species of quadrupeds, of which only eight,
and these polar animals, are found in the north of Europe or Asia.
If North America be an instance of a separate centre of creation
for its peculiar species, why should God create the same species
of man in eight different localities? This would make man an
exception in creation. There is, moreover, no need of creating man
in many separate localities; for, unlike the polar bears and the
Norwegian firs, which cannot live at the equator, man can adapt
himself to the most varied climates and conditions. For replies to
Agassiz, see Bib. Sac., 19:607-632; Princeton Rev., 1862:435-464.

(_b_) It is objected, moreover, that the diversities of size, color, and physical conformation, among the various families of mankind, are inconsistent with the theory of a common origin. But we reply that these diversities are of a superficial character, and can be accounted for by corresponding diversities of condition and environment. Changes which have been observed and recorded within historic times show that the differences alluded to may be the result of slowly accumulated divergences from one and the same original and ancestral type. The difficulty in the case, moreover, is greatly relieved when we remember (1) that the period during which these divergences have arisen is by no means limited to six thousand years (see note on the antiquity of the race, pages 224-226); and (2) that, since species in general exhibit their greatest power of divergence into varieties immediately after their first introduction, all the varieties of the human species may have presented themselves in man’s earliest history.

Instances of physiological change as the result of new conditions:
The Irish driven by the English two centuries ago from Armagh and
the south of Down, have become prognathous like the Australians.
The inhabitants of New England have descended from the English,
yet they have already a physical type of their own. The Indians of
North America, or at least certain tribes of them, have
permanently altered the shape of the skull by bandaging the head
in infancy. The Sikhs of India, since the establishment of Bába
Nának’s religion (1500 A. D.) and their consequent advance in
civilization, have changed to a longer head and more regular
features, so that they are now distinguished greatly from their
neighbors, the Afghans, Tibetans, Hindus. The Ostiak savages have
become the Magyar nobility of Hungary. The Turks in Europe are, in
cranial shape, greatly in advance of the Turks in Asia from whom
they descended. The Jews are confessedly of one ancestry; yet we
have among them the light-haired Jews of Poland, the dark Jews of
Spain, and the Ethiopian Jews of the Nile Valley. The Portuguese
who settled in the East Indies in the 16th century are now as dark
in complexion as the Hindus themselves. Africans become lighter in
complexion as they go up from the alluvial river-banks to higher
land, or from the coast; and on the contrary the coast tribes
which drive out the negroes of the interior and take their
territory end by becoming negroes themselves. See, for many of the
above facts, Burgess, Antiquity and Unity of the Race, 195-202.

The law of originally greater plasticity, mentioned in the text,
was first hinted by Hall, the palæontologist of New York. It is
accepted and defined by Dawson, Story of the Earth and Man, 360—“A
new law is coming into view: that species when first introduced
have an innate power of expansion, which enables them rapidly to
extend themselves to the limit of their geographical range, and
also to reach the limit of their divergence into races. This limit
once reached, these races run on in parallel lines until they one
by one run out and disappear. According to this law the most
aberrant races of men might be developed in a few centuries, after
which divergence would cease, and the several lines of variation
would remain permanent, at least so long as the conditions under
which they originated remained.” See the similar view of Von Baer
in Schmid, Theories of Darwin, 55, note. Joseph Cook: Variability
is a lessening quantity; the tendency to change is greatest at the
first, but, like the rate of motion of a stone thrown upward, it
lessens every moment after. Ruskin, Seven Lamps, 125—“The life of
a nation is usually, like the flow of a lava-stream, first bright
and fierce, then languid and covered, at last advancing only by
the tumbling over and over of its frozen blocks.” Renouf, Hibbert
Lectures, 54—“The further back we go into antiquity, the more
closely does the Egyptian type approach the European.” Rawlinson
says that negroes are not represented in the Egyptian monuments
before 1500 B. C. The influence of climate is very great,
especially in the savage state.

In May, 1891, there died in San Francisco the son of an
interpreter at the Merchants’ Exchange. He was 21 years of age.
Three years before his death his clear skin was his chief claim to
manly beauty. He was attacked by “Addison’s disease,” a gradual
darkening of the color of the surface of the body. At the time of
his death his skin was as dark as that of a full-blooded negro.
His name was George L. Sturtevant. Ratzel, History of Mankind,
1:9, 10—As there is only one species of man, “the reunion into one
real whole of the parts which have diverged after the fashion of
sports” is said to be “the unconscious ultimate aim of all the
movements” which have taken place since man began his wanderings.
“With Humboldt we can only hold fast to the external unity of the
race.” See Sir Wm. Hunter, The Indian Empire, 223, 410; Encyc.
Britannica, 12:808; 20:110; Zöckler, Urgeschichte, 109-132, and in
Jahrbuch für deutsche Theologie, 8:51-71; Prichard, Researches,
5:547-552, and Nat. Hist. of Man, 2:644-656; Duke of Argyll,
Primeval Man, 96-108; Smith, Unity of Human Races, 255-283;
Morris, Conflict of Science and Religion, 325-385; Rawlinson, in
Journ. Christ. Philosophy, April, 1883:359.

III. Essential Elements of Human Nature.

1. The Dichotomous Theory.

Man has a two-fold nature,—on the one hand material, on the other hand immaterial. He consists of body, and of spirit, or soul. That there are two, and only two, elements in man’s being, is a fact to which consciousness testifies. This testimony is confirmed by Scripture, in which the prevailing representation of man’s constitution is that of dichotomy.

Dichotomous, from δίχα, “in two,” and τέμνω, “to cut,” = composed
of two parts. Man is as conscious that his immaterial part is a
unity, as that his body is a unity. He knows two, and only two,
parts of his being—body and soul. So man is the true Janus
(Martensen), Mr. Facing-both-ways (Bunyan). That the Scriptures
favor dichotomy will appear by considering:

(_a_) The record of man’s creation (Gen. 2:7), in which, as a result of the inbreathing of the divine Spirit, the body becomes possessed and vitalized by a single principle—the living soul.

_Gen. 2:7_—“_And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground,
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became
a living soul_”—here it is not said that man was first a living
soul, and that then God breathed into him a spirit; but that God
inbreathed spirit, and man became a living soul = God’s life took
possession of clay, and as a result, man had a soul. _Cf._ _Job
27:3_—“_for my life is yet whole in me, And the spirit of God is
in my nostrils_”; _32:8_—“_there is a spirit in man, And the
breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding_”; _33:4_—“_The
Spirit of God hath made me, And the breath of the Almighty giveth
me life._”

(_b_) Passages in which the human soul, or spirit, is distinguished, both from the divine Spirit from whom it proceeded, and from the body which it inhabits.

_Num. 16:22_—“_O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh_”;
_Zech. 12:1_—“_Jehovah, who ... formeth the spirit of man within
him_”; _1 Cor. 2:11_—“_the spirit of the man which is in him ...
the Spirit of God_”; _Heb. 12:9_—“_the Father of spirits._” The
passages just mentioned distinguish the spirit of man from the
Spirit of God. The following distinguish the soul, or spirit, of
man from the body which it inhabits: _Gen, 35:18_—“_it came to
pass, as her soul was departing (for she died)_”; _1 K. 17:21_—“_O
Jehovah my God, I pray thee, let this child’s soul come into him
again_”; _Eccl. 12:7_—“_the dust returneth to the earth as it was,
and the spirit returneth unto God who gave it_”; _James
2:26_—“_the body apart from the spirit is dead._” The first class
of passages refutes pantheism; the second refutes materialism.

(_c_) The interchangeable use of the terms “soul” and “spirit.”

_Gen. 41:8_—“_his spirit was troubled_”; _cf._ _Ps. 42:6_—“_my
soul is cast down within me._” _John 12:27_—“_Now is my soul
troubled_”; _cf._ _13:21_—“_he was troubled in the spirit._” _Mat.
20:28_—“_to give his life (ψυχήν) a ransom for many_”; _cf._
_27:50_—“_yielded up his spirit (πνεῦμα)._” _Heb. 12:23_—“_spirits
of just men made perfect_”; _cf._ _Rev. 6:9_—“_I saw underneath
the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of
God._” In these passages “_spirit_” and “_soul_” seem to be used
interchangeably.

(_d_) The mention of body and soul (or spirit) as together constituting the whole man.

_Mat 10:28_—“_able to destroy both soul and body in hell_”; _1
Cor. 5:3_—“_absent in body but present in spirit_”; _3 John 2_—“_I
pray that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul
prospereth._” These texts imply that body and soul (or spirit)
together constitute the whole man.

For advocacy of the dichotomous theory, see Goodwin, in Journ.
Society Bib. Exegesis, 1881:73-86; Godet, Bib. Studies of the O.
T., 32; Oehler, Theology of the O. T., 1:219; Hahn, Bib. Theol. N.
T., 390 _sq._; Schmid, Bib. Theology N. T., 503; Weiss, Bib.
Theology N. T., 214; Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 112, 113;
Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:294-298; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 1:549; 3:249;
Harless, Com. on Eph., 4:23, and Christian Ethics, 22; Thomasius,
Christi Person und Werk. 1:164-168; Hodge, in Princeton Review,
1865:116, and Systematic Theol., 2:47-51; Ebrard, Dogmatik,
1:261-263; Wm. H. Hodge, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Apl. 1897.

2. The Trichotomous Theory.

Side by side with this common representation of human nature as consisting of two parts, are found passages which at first sight appear to favor trichotomy. It must be acknowledged that πνεῦμα (spirit) and ψυχή (soul), although often used interchangeably, and always designating the same indivisible substance, are sometimes employed as contrasted terms.

In this more accurate use, ψυχή denotes man’s immaterial part in its inferior powers and activities;—as ψυχή, man is a conscious individual, and, in common with the brute creation, has an animal life, together with appetite, imagination, memory, understanding. Πνεῦμα, on the other hand, denotes man’s immaterial part in its higher capacities and faculties;—as πνεῦμα, man is a being related to God, and possessing powers of reason, conscience, and free will, which difference him from the brute creation and constitute him responsible and immortal.

In the following texts, spirit and soul are distinguished from
each other: _1 Thess. 5:23_—“_And the God of peace himself
sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be
preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ_”; _Heb. 4:12_—“_For the word of God is living, and active,
and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the
dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick
to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart._” Compare _1
Cor. 2:14_—“_Now the natural_ [Gr. “_psychical_”] _man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God_”; _15:44_—“_It is sown a
natural_ [Gr. “_psychical_”] _body; it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural_ [Gr. “psychical”] _body, there is also a
spiritual body_”; _Eph. 4:23_—“_that ye be renewed in the spirit
of your mind_”; _Jude 19_—“_sensual_ [Gr. “_psychical_”], _having
not the Spirit._”

For the proper interpretation of these texts, see note on the next
page. Among those who cite them as proofs of the trichotomous
theory (trichotomous, from τρίχα, “in three parts,” and τέμνω, “to
cut,” = composed of three parts, _i. e._, spirit, soul, and body)
may be mentioned Olshausen, Opuscula, 134, and Com. on _1 Thess.,
5:23_; Beck, Biblische Seelenlehre, 81; Delitzsch, Biblical
Psychology, 117, 118; Göschel, in Herzog, Realencyclopädie, art.:
Seele; also, art. by Auberlen: Geist des Menschen; Cremer, N. T.
Lexicon, on πνεῦμα and ψυχή; Usteri, Paulin. Lehrbegriff, 384
_sq._; Neander, Planting and Training, 394; Van Oosterzee,
Christian Dogmatics, 365, 366; Boardman, in Bap. Quarterly, 1:177,
325, 428; Heard, Tripartite Nature of Man, 62-114; Ellicott,
Destiny of the Creature, 106-125.

The element of truth in trichotomy is simply this, that man has a triplicity of endowment, in virtue of which the single soul has relations to matter, to self, and to God. The trichotomous theory, however, as it is ordinarily defined, endangers the unity and immateriality of our higher nature, by holding that man consists of three _substances_, or three component _parts_—body, soul and spirit—and that soul and spirit are as distinct from each other as are soul and body.

The advocates of this view differ among themselves as to the
nature of the ψυχή and its relation to the other elements of our
being; some (as Delitzsch) holding that the ψυχή is an efflux of
the πνεῦμα, distinct in substance, but not in essence, even as the
divine Word is distinct from God, while yet he is God; others (as
Göschel) regarding the ψυχή, not as a distinct substance, but as a
resultant of the union of the πνεῦμα and the σῶμα. Still others
(as Cremer) hold the ψυχή to be the subject of the personal life
whose principle is the πνεῦμα. Heard, Tripartite Nature of Man,
103—“God is the Creator _ex traduce_ of the animal and
intellectual part of every man.... Not so with the spirit.... It
proceeds from God, not by creation, but by emanation.”

We regard the trichotomous theory as untenable, not only for the reasons already urged in proof of the dichotomous theory, but from the following additional considerations:

(_a_) Πνεῦμα, as well as ψυχή, is used of the brute creation.

_Eccl. 3:21_—“_Who knoweth the spirit of man, whether it goeth_
[marg. “_that goeth_”] _upward, and the spirit of the beast,
whether it goeth_ [marg. “_that goeth_”] _downward to the earth?_”
_Rev. 16:3_—“_And the second poured out his bowl into the sea; and
it became blood, as of a dead man; and every living soul died,
even the things that were in the sea_” = the fish.

(_b_) ψυχή is ascribed to Jehovah.

_Amos 6:8_—“_The Lord Jehovah hath sworn by himself_” (lit. “_by
his soul_”) LXX _42:1_—“_my chosen in whom my soul delighteth_”;
_Jer. 9:9_—“_Shall I not visit them for these things? saith
Jehovah; shall not my soul be avenged?_” _Heb. 10:38_—“_my
righteous one shall live by faith: And if he shrink back, my soul
hath no pleasure in him._”

(_c_) The disembodied dead are called ψυχαί.

_Rev. 6:9_—“_I saw underneath the altar the souls of them that had
been slain for the word of God_”; _cf._ _20:4_—“_souls of them
that had been beheaded._”

(_d_) The highest exercises of religion are attributed to the ψυχή.

_Mark 12:30_—“_thou shalt love the Lord thy God ... with all thy
soul_”; _Luke 1:46_—“_My soul doth magnify the Lord_”; _Heb. 6:18,
19_—“_the hope set before us: which we have as an anchor of the
soul_”; _James 1:21_—“_the implanted word, which is able to save
your souls._”

(_e_) To lose this ψυχή is to lose all.

_Mark 8:36, 37_—“_For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole
world, and forfeit his life_ [or “_soul_,” ψυχή]? _For what should
a man give in exchange for his life_ [or ‘_soul_,’ ψυχή]?”

(_f_) The passages chiefly relied upon as supporting trichotomy may be better explained upon the view already indicated, that soul and spirit are not two distinct substances or parts, but that they designate the immaterial principle from different points of view.

_1 Thess. 5:23_—“_may your spirit and soul and body be preserved
entire_” = not a scientific enumeration of the constituent parts
of human nature, but a comprehensive sketch of that nature in its
chief relations; compare _Mark 12:30_—“_thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind, and with all thy strength_”—where none would think of
finding proof of a fourfold division of human nature. On _1 Thess.
5:23_, see Riggenbach (in Lange’s Com.), and Commentary of Prof.
W. A. Stevens. _Heb. 4:12_—“_piercing even to the dividing of soul
and spirit, of both joints and marrow_” = not the dividing of soul
_from_ spirit, or of joints _from_ marrow, but rather the piercing
of the soul and of the spirit, even to their very joints and
marrow; _i. e._, to the very depths of the spiritual nature. On
_Heb. 4:12_, see Ebrard (in Olshausen’s Com.), and Lünemann (in
Meyer’s Com.); also Tholuck, Com. _in loco_. _Jude 19_—“_sensual,
having not the Spirit_” (ψυχικοί, πνεῦμα μὴ ἔχοντες)—even though
πνεῦμα = the human spirit, need not mean that there is no spirit
existing, but only that the spirit is torpid and inoperative—as we
say of a weak man: “he has no mind,” or of an unprincipled man:
“he has no conscience”; so Alford; see Nitzsch, Christian
Doctrine, 202. But πνεῦμα here probably = the divine πνεῦμα. Meyer
takes this view, and the Revised Version capitalizes the word
“_Spirit_.” See Goodwin, Soc. Bib. Exegesis, 1881:85—“The
distinction between ψυχή and πνεῦμα is a _functional_, and not a
_substantial_, distinction.” Moule, Outlines of Christian
Doctrine, 161, 162—“Soul = spirit organized, inseparably linked
with the body; spirit = man’s inner being considered as God’s
gift. Soul = man’s inner being viewed as his own; spirit = man’s
inner being viewed as from God. They are not separate elements.”
See Lightfoot, Essay on St. Paul and Seneca, appended to his Com.
on Philippians, on the influence of the ethical language of
Stoicism on the N. T. writers. Martineau, Seat of Authority,
39—“The difference between man and his companion creatures on this
earth is not that his instinctive life is less than theirs, for in
truth it goes far beyond them; but that in him it acts in the
presence and under the eye of other powers which transform it, and
by giving to it vision as well as light take its blindness away.
He is let into his own secrets.”

We conclude that the immaterial part of man, viewed as an individual and conscious life, capable of possessing and animating a physical organism, is called ψυχή; viewed as a rational and moral agent, susceptible of divine influence and indwelling, this same immaterial part is called πνεῦμα. The πνεῦμα, then, is man’s nature looking Godward, and capable of receiving and manifesting the Πνεῦμα ἅγιον; the ψυχή is man’s nature looking earthward, and touching the world of sense. The πνεῦμα is man’s higher part, as related to spiritual realities or as capable of such relation; the ψυχή is man’s higher part, as related to the body, or as capable of such relation. Man’s being is therefore not trichotomous but dichotomous, and his immaterial part, while possessing duality of powers, has unity of substance.

Man’s nature is not a three-storied house, but a two-storied
house, with windows in the upper story looking in two
directions—toward earth and toward heaven. The lower story is the
physical part of us—the body. But man’s “upper story” has two
aspects; there is an outlook toward things below, and a skylight
through which to see the stars. “Soul” says Hovey, “is spirit as
modified by union with the body.” Is man then the same in kind
with the brute, but different in degree? No, man is different in
kind, though possessed of certain powers which the brute has. The
frog is not a magnified sensitive-plant, though his nerves
automatically respond to irritation. The animal is different in
kind from the vegetable, though he has some of the same powers
which the vegetable has. God’s powers include man’s; but man is
not of the same substance with God, nor could man be enlarged or
developed into God. So man’s powers include those of the brute,
but the brute is not of the same substance with man, nor could he
be enlarged or developed into man.

Porter, Human Intellect, 39—“The spirit of man, in addition to its
higher endowments, may also possess the lower powers which
vitalize dead matter into a human body.” It does not follow that
the soul of the animal or plant is capable of man’s higher
functions or developments, or that the subjection of man’s spirit
to body, in the present life, disproves his immortality. Porter
continues: “That the soul begins to exist as a vital force, does
not require that it should always exist as such a force or in
connection with a material body. Should it require another such
body, it may have the power to create it for itself, as it has
formed the one it first inhabited; or it may have already formed
it, and may hold it ready for occupation and use as soon as it
sloughs off the one which connects it with the earth.”

Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 547—“Brutes may have organic life
and sensitivity, and yet remain submerged in nature. It is not
life and sensitivity that lift man above nature, but it is the
distinctive characteristic of personality.” Parkhurst, The Pattern
in the Mount, 17-30, on Prov. 20:27—“The spirit of man is the lamp
of Jehovah”—not necessarily lighted, but capable of being lighted,
and intended to be lighted, by the touch of the divine flame.
_Cf._ _Mat. 6:22, 23_—“_The lamp of the body.... If therefore the
light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness._”

Schleiermacher, Christliche Glaube, 2:487—“We think of the spirit
as soul, only when in the body, so that we cannot speak of an
immortality of the soul, in the proper sense, without bodily
life.” The doctrine of the spiritual body is therefore the
complement to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. A. A.
Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 221—“By soul we mean only one thing, _i.
e._, an incarnate spirit, a spirit with a body. Thus we never
speak of the souls of angels. They are pure spirits, having no
bodies.” Lisle, Evolution of Spiritual Man, 72—“The animal is the
foundation of the spiritual; it is what the cellar is to the
house; it is the base of supplies.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind,
371-378—“Trichotomy is absolutely untenable on grounds of
psychological science. Man’s reason, or the spirit that is in man,
is not to be regarded as a sort of Mansard roof, built on to one
building in a block, all the dwellings in which are otherwise
substantially alike.... On the contrary, in every set of
characteristics, from those called lowest to those pronounced
highest, the soul of man differences itself from the soul of any
species of animals.... The highest has also the lowest. All must
be assigned to one subject.”

This view of the soul and spirit as different aspects of the same spiritual principle furnishes a refutation of six important errors:

(_a_) That of the Gnostics, who held that the πνεῦμα is part of the divine essence, and therefore incapable of sin.

(_b_) That of the Apollinarians, who taught that Christ’s humanity embraced only σῶμα and ψυχή, while his divine nature furnished the πνεῦμα.

(_c_) That of the Semi-Pelagians, who excepted the human πνεῦμα from the dominion of original sin.

(_d_) That of Placeus, who held that only the πνεῦμα was directly created by God (see our section on Theories of Imputation).

(_e_) That of Julius Müller, who held that the ψυχή comes to us from Adam, but that our πνεῦμα was corrupted in a previous state of being (see page 490).

(_f_) That of the Annihilationists, who hold that man at his creation had a divine element breathed into him, which he lost by sin, and which he recovers only in regeneration; so that only when he has this πνεῦμα restored by virtue of his union with Christ does man become immortal, death being to the sinner a complete extinction of being.

Tacitus might almost be understood to be a trichotomist when he
writes: “Si ut sapientibus placuit, non extinguuntur cum corpora
_magnæ_ animæ.” Trichotomy allies itself readily with materialism.
Many trichotomists hold that man can exist without a πνεῦμα, but
that the σῶμα and the ψυχή by themselves are mere matter, and are
incapable of eternal existence. Trichotomy, however, when it
speaks of the πνεῦμα as the divine principle in man, seems to
savor of emanation or of pantheism. A modern English poet
describes the glad and winsome child as “A silver stream, Breaking
with laughter from the lake divine, Whence all things flow.”
Another poet, Robert Browning, in his Death in the Desert, 107,
describes body, soul, and spirit, as “What does, what knows, what
is—three souls, one man.”

The Eastern church generally held to trichotomy, and is best
represented by John of Damascus (11:12) who speaks of the soul as
the sensuous life-principle which takes up the spirit—the spirit
being an efflux from God. The Western church, on the other hand,
generally held to dichotomy, and is best represented by Anselm:
“Constat homo ex duabus naturis, ex natura animæ et ex natura
carnis.”

Luther has been quoted upon both sides of the controversy: by
Delitzsch, Bib. Psych., 460-462, as trichotomous, and as making
the Mosaic tabernacle with its three divisions an image of the
tripartite man. “The first division,” he says, “was called the
holy of holies, since God dwelt there, and there was no light
therein. The next was denominated the holy place, for within it
stood a candlestick with seven branches and lamps. The third was
called the atrium or court; this was under the broad heaven, and
was open to the light of the sun. A regenerate man is depicted in
this figure. His spirit is the holy of holies, God’s
dwelling-place, in the darkness of faith, without a light, for he
believes what he neither sees, nor feels, nor comprehends. The
_psyche_ of that man is the holy place, whose seven lights
represent the various powers of understanding, the perception and
knowledge of material and visible things. His body is the atrium
or court, which is open to everybody, so that all can see how he
acts and lives.”