She is proving more and more the omnipresent
action of the differences between races; how the more favoured race
(she cannot avoid using the epithet) exterminates the less favoured,
or at least expels it, and forces it, under penalty of death, to
adapt itself to new circumstances; and, in a word, that competition
between every race and every individual of that race, and reward
according to deserts, is (as far as we can see) an universal law of
living things. And she says--for the facts of history prove it--
that as it is among the races of plants and animals, so it has been
unto this day among the races of men.
The natural theology of the future must take count of these
tremendous and even painful facts: and she may take count of them.
For Scripture has taken count of them already. It talks
continually--it has been blamed for talking so much--of races, of
families; of their wars, their struggles, their exterminations; of
races favoured, of races rejected, of remnants being saved to
continue the race; of hereditary tendencies, hereditary excellences,
hereditary guilt. Its sense of the reality and importance of
descent is so intense, that it speaks of a whole tribe or a whole
family by the name of its common ancestor, and the whole nation of
the Jews is Israel, to the end. And if I be told this is true of
the Old Testament, but not of the New, I must answer: What! does
not St.
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