, a
singular coincidence. It amounts, in short, to a presumptive
evidence, that a mysterious and very beautiful analogy
pervades throughout, and teaches us to look beyond natural
causes in attempting to account for effects apparently
interwoven in the plans of Omnipotence."[6]

In the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, twenty-sixth
verse, we find the following language: "And 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."[7] The Apostle Paul was a missionary. He was, at this
time, on a mission to the far-famed city of Athens,--"the eye of
Greece, and the fountain of learning and philosophy." He told the "men
of Athens," that, as he travelled through their beautiful city, he had
not been unmindful of its attractions; that he had not been
indifferent to the claims of its citizens to scholarship and culture,
and that among other things he noticed an altar erected to _an unknown
God_. He went on to remark, that, great as their city and nation were,
God, whose offspring they were, had created other nations, who lived
beyond their verdant hills and swelling rivers. And, moreover, that
God had created "all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of
the earth" out "of one blood." He called their attention to the
fact that God had fenced all the nations in by geographical
boundaries,--had fixed the limits of their habitation.

We find two leading thoughts in the twenty-sixth verse; viz., that
this passage establishes clearly and unmistakably the unity of
mankind, in that God created them of one blood; second, he hath
determined "the bounds of their habitation,"--hath located them
geographically. The language quoted is very explicit. "He hath
determined the bounds of their habitation," that is, "all the nations
of men.[8] We have, then, the fact, that there are different "nations
of men," and that they are all "of one blood," and, therefore, have a
common parent. This declaration was made by the Apostle Paul, an
inspired writer, a teacher of great erudition, and a scholar in both
the Hebrew and the Greek languages.

It should not be forgotten either, that in Paul's masterly discussion
of the doctrine of sin,--the fall of man,--he always refers to Adam as
the "one man" by whom sin came into the world.[9] His Epistle to the
Romans abounds in passages which prove ver