All these appear, at one time or other, to have approached more or less nearly to those countries which were more enlightened, and exhibit more or less of the knowledge existing there, according as they remained in the neighbourhood, or fixed their place of abode at a greater distance. The Thracians, who became the Gothic nation, are distinguished by Herodotus as of álavaTiCovтes. Their god Zalmoxis, according to him, had been in the service of Pythagoras, and had come among the Getes, to whom he taught this doctrine. They were the first of the heathen nations who were converted to Christianity. The Saxons also were descendants of Getes and Scythians who early enjoyed a better light. In regard to these migrating races, it may be remarked, that most of them have traditions of philosophic teachers rising up among them, whose doctrine may be traced more or less distinctly to the same source. These remarkable arrangements of Divine Providence, like others of a similar kind, appear to have been intended to afford to these nations an opportunity of benefitting by the inestimable treasures of which the Hebrews were made the stewards, and to prepare them for that more perfect form of truth which they afterwards adopted as their faith. CHAPTER III. ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. THERE origin of HERE are two suppositions on which it Alleged has been attempted to account for the philosophy. origin and spread of those opinions among the more civilized nations, which the Church has always regarded as the immediate gift of God, or as indirectly obtained from a sacred source. The one is that each nation of mankind, Invented. as it has emerged from barbarism, has invented a theology for itself. from anci nations. The other is that nations of vast antiquity Imported have, either by their own discovery or other- ent heathen wise, obtained knowledge on these subjects, and from them have been derived the religious opinions of more modern nations. savages The first of these notions depends upon Men not the assumption that men have emerged from originally. a state of brutal barbarism, and either tacitly or expressly adopts the base idea expressed Sat. 1. iii. by Horace : Prorepserunt primis animalia terris Mutum et turpe pecus. an idea which is in all probability due to the Egyptians, who created not only men, but even 100. Bk. v. 793. 819. Proved on ethnical grounds, that men have depraved. the gods themselves, from the mud of their Linquitur ut merito maternum nomen adepta Quare etiam atque etiam maternum nomen adepta The theory however—that the human race has emerged from a state of proper barbarism -may be safely considered as exploded, and that on purely scientific grounds. Researches into the physical history of man have gone hand-in-hand with investigations of his language at once extensive and minute, and both have tended to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, in the first place, that at least all those nations, with whose literature and religion we are best acquainted, must have had a common origin. But the same investigations also shew, that so far from having ascended in the course of ages from an almost brutal type to his present condition, the general course of things has been the reverse. The African nations may at present fairly be considered as occupying a lower grade of physical and moral condition than any of those nations have ever been known or even traditionally reported to have presented. But it has been shewn with regard to some, even of the African tribes, that they have sunk to this condition within historic times. Nat. Hist. p. 310, &c. The Bushmen, as has been fully establish- Prichard's ed, are the remains of Hottentot clans, who of Man, subsisted anciently, like all the tribes of Africa, chiefly by rearing sheep and cattle, but who have been reduced from the life of peaceful herdsmen to the condition of hunting and predatory savages. The cruelty and oppression of European colonists during successive ages, has been the main cause of this calamity. The original Hottentots before the settlement of the Dutch were a numerous and happy people, divided into tribes under the patriarchal government of chiefs or elders; they were brave in war, but they were gentle in their dispositions-humane and upright in their conduct. They were also far from deficient in intellect: their name for the Deity Prichard, is-The Beautiful. This people, deprived of their flocks and herds and hunted for their lives, have been gradually transformed from a mild, confiding race of shepherds, to fierce vindictive savages, under the name of Bushmen, on whom the P. 316. how pro further injury has been inflicted, of denying that they are of the Race Adamique! Now this process, which has been going on almost under our own eyes, is but a type of the history of so-called barbarous nations. Barbarism, Tribes who were either physically stronger or duced. more advanced in the use of arms, have constantly expelled others who were less so, from their homes, called forth into violent exercise the fierce and malignant passions of their nature, and driven them to contend with inhuman deprivations, till a course of ages has seen them transformed from human beings to savages, in whom the human nature is scarcely to be recognized. On philological Wherever ancient monuments remain to shew the earlier type of nations now both physically and morally debased, they invariably prove that that type approached a standard of the higher order. The result of investigation as to the langrounds. guages of mankind, of which the monuments are far more numerous and more ancient, has been to establish this principle still more strongly. The earlier forms of language, as far as the perfection of its artificial structure is concerned, are found to exhibit the higher type which more modern nations have in one sense depraved; the whole of the European family of languages have in this sense descended from |