Page:An essay on the origin and relative status of the white and colored races of mankind.djvu/13

 and every feature of his and their bodies, internally and externally, as I shall show hereafter, by merely saying that he would set a mark upon him to warn others not to slay him?

But as it is palpably evident that that mark was only intended for Cain's personal protection, so there is no evidence, whatever, that it was intended to affect his posterity: for if it had been so intended, the Creator would undoubtedly have made it manifest, as he has in other cases. Such as the curse which was pronounced upon Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden—and that of visiting tho sins of the Parents upon their children, unto the third and fourth generation, &c, and, moreover, if it were merely an artificial mark, it would not, by the laws of Nature, necessarily be inherited by Cain's posterity; and hence the futility of ascribing the origin of his black complexion, &c, to that cause. When the descent of the black man from Adam is questioned, then we are confronted, by those who advocate the unity of the races, with a quotation from St. Paul's sermon, when preaching to the Athenians on Mar's Hill, which they regard as proof from holy writ, of the Adamic lineality of his descent; viz: "He" (God,) "hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth; and hath determined the times before appointed: and the bounds of their habitation," &c, and which, by a perverted construction, it is gravely argued, establishes his geneology, as a lineal descendant from Adam: whereas, the only reasonable and consistent construction of that expression—"hath made of one blood, all nations of men," &c, is that it was intended to apply to the respective Nations, as individual Nations, and not to the whole number of the inhabitants of the Earth, in their popular or aggregate capacity—or, in other words; that each