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ART. VII.-DR. CARTWRIGHT ON THE NEGRO-REVIEWED.

(We resume and conclude the discussion of the subject from page 250 of April number.-Editor.)

In the second century there was a set of Gnostic Christians called Ophites or Serpentinians, of whom it is said that they were so called for the veneration they had for the serpent that tempted Eve, and the worship paid to a real serpent. They pretended that the serpent was Jesus Christ, and that he taught men the knowledge of good and evil. -Buck's Theol. Dict.

Not to multiply quotations, it may be concluded that the white race may well contest the negro's title to the name of Nachash, so far as his claim depends on the fact of serpent-worship. To the many facts adduced by Mr. Waples,* to rebut the evidence of a peculiar influence of the serpent over negroes, Dr. Cartwright replies:

The only objection to Mr. Waples' publication is that he did not tell the whole truth in regard to the ancient serpent-worshipers. The whole truth makes them black men, with not greater exceptions of white serpent-worshipers than among the moderns. The serpent-worshipers among the moderns are black men, intermixed with a few whites as of old.-Sunday Delta, March 17, 1861.

If so, the writers above quoted indicate the astonishing fact that the inhabitants of the earth "almost everywhere," have been black men intermixed with a few whites. Surely the Greeks and Romans, the Germans and Britons, given to Druidical worship, were not black men. The supposition that the Anglo-Saxons descended from negro ancestors would be quite as open to objection, on ethnological principles, as the theory that the negroes descended from Adam.

Dr. Cartwright has since receded from his original position so far as to recognize other objects of nigritian worship besides the serpent, insisting, however, that "the principal fetich among the negroes is the serpent," and that "the other fetiches are all inferior to the serpent," which is "worshiped as the very God in bodily presence."+ It has already been shown, by the testimony of Mr. Bowen, that the serpent, far from being esteemed "the very God in bodily presence," is removed two degrees below that dignity. It is not even an orisha, or idol, but only a symbol. But admitting that it is otherwise, Dr. Cartwright's theory demands the belief that Adam called the negro nachash, "serpent," because the serpent would be the principal fetich of the negro, which seems a very inadequate reason for impoverishing the Adamic nomenclature so much as to give the same name to a human being and a snake. But, relaxing still farther his grasp on this reason for the name nachash, and shifting to the proposition that "the negro is the slave of the white man by virtue of a physical law," Dr. Cartwright adds:

The same physical law (when released from his natural subjectivity to the some other white man) causes him to fall under the influence of the serpent, or object of feticism, as that of the whiskey bottle, thus making him a slave of either the white man or Satan, or some evil influence represented under that name.-Sunday Delta, March 17, 1861.

*Sunday Delta, Feb. 17, 1861.

† Sunday Delta, March 17, 1861.

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It is difficult to supply the connection between devotion to the serpent and to the whiskey bottle, except by reference to the worm still, or serpentine, through which the whiskey is distilled, but the fact is too notorious for contradicition that the white race offer a formidable rivalry to the black in the fetichism of the whiskey bottle. If Dr. Cartwright intends only to show that servitude has converted the nigritian race from the darkest form of paganism, and greatly elevated them, intellectually and morally, and that their continued servitude tends to a still greater improvement, his facts cannot be truthfully denied. If from these facts he deduces an extra-scriptural argument in favor of slavery, the deduction is legitimate and of vast importance. If he would go farther, and show that the Creator has given the negro a nature suiting him to the servitude to which it is revealed that he should be subjected; this, also, is proper as a corroboration of Bible truth. If he would go still farther, and show that the negro is, by nature, “the slave of some Satanic influence," "a slave of Satan, or some evil influence represented under that name," he may find abundant proof of it in the word of God. The Greek word doulos, rendered "servant" in the received translation, means properly "slave." Then, on the authority of Jesus and his Apostles, it may be asserted that the negro, by nature, "is the slave of sin,' ," and under the power, dominion, authority, of Satan.† But their statements are not admissible in proof of the subjectivity of the negro to Satanic influence, except in corroborative connection with the doctrine enunciated by Paul to the Athenians, that God "made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." If the word "men" is here used "in its original Hebrew sense," as explained by Dr. Cartwright; in other words, if negroes are not, equally with whites, descendants of Adam, the Holy Scriptures furnish no evidence that negroes are under Satanic influence, for all that is said of man's slavery to sin, and subjection to the power of Satan, is predicated of the descendants of Adam. however, the Apostle intended, as he evidently did, that both whites and negroes were made of one blood; the most that can be said as to the subjectivity of negroes to evil influences is, that they are "by nature the children of wrath, even as others," and walk "according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience."§

If,

Yes, "even as others," for these things apply to all; to the Ephesian Christians, whom Paul addressed, and even to the Apostle himself, for he says that, among the children of disobedience "we also had our conversation in times past, and were by nature the children of wrath, as others." All men are the slaves of sin and Satan, "the old serpent," until turned "from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God."¶

even

If the ignorance and superstition of the black races have been more

John viii., 34; Rom. vi., 16.

† Acts xxvi., 18.

Acts xvii., 26.

& Ephes. ii., 2.
|| Ephes. ii., 3.
Acts xxvi., 18.

gross, and if they have sunk to greater depths of sensuality and degradation, it may be attributed to an intellectual and moral inferiority, without giving any strength to Dr. Cartwright's nigritian theory of the temptation. And whether their superstition has or has not assumed more the form of serpent-worship than the ethnicism of the whites, the fact that serpent-worship has prevailed so extensively since the fall, instead of favoring his theory, is a potent argument against it. That Satan has so constantly made use of the serpent's form for the exercise of "Satanic influences," corroborates the statement of Moses that in that form he influenced Eve. But where is the corroboration of Dr. Cartwright's statement that he influenced Eve in the form of a negro gardener? Is an instance recorded in which he has chosen to be adored as a negro? Mr. Bowen conjectures that Brama was probably a negro; but if so, his apotheosis, like that of white heroes and sages, was not because of his color, but of his attributed wisdom or prowess. In this respect even Dr. Clarke's simian theory has the advantage; for, though the worship of apes has never prevailed to a great extent, we sometimes hear of

"Such Gods as he

Whom India serves-the monkey deity."*

but we never hear of negro-worshipers, except as that term is derisively applied to northern fanatics. Again, if nachash ought to have been translated "negro” in the English Bible, it ought to have been represented by the Greek equivalent of negro in the Septuagint version. And if the uninspired seventy fell into the error of rendering it "serpent" instead of "negro," the inspired Apostles, and the Son of God, who knows all things, ought to have corrected that important error, instead of leaving it to the erudition of "the great Hebrew scholar of the East, but now of the West, C. Blanchard Thompson," and his disciple, Dr. Cartwright, to discover the blunder. It has been seen that the Saviour and his Apostles spoke of Satan as "the Seprent," and not as the ape or negro.

It is obvious that the theory of Dr. Cartwright can derive no support from the word nachash. But Dr. Cartwright deduces another argument from the Hebrew words naphesh chaiyah, which, in King James' version of the Bible, are rendered "creature that hath life," "living creature," and "living soul."+ According to Dr. Cartwright, the correct translation is, "intellectual creatures with immortal souls." Concerning these words, in Genesis i., 24, he says:

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The last word means "living creature," and the word naphesh, which invests chaiyah, or living creature, with intellectuality and immortality, is not translated at all, either in the Douay Bible or that of King James. After the inferior races, or inferior naphesh chaiyah, were created, God said, "Let us make Adam (or a superior race of naphesh chaiyah) in our own image, and after our likeness, and let them have dominion over all things on earth;" including the negroes, of course. Chapter 2, verse 7, says, that Adam "became a living soul," became a naphesh chaiyah. We understand by living soul, a creature with intelligence and immortal mind. If the same words had been translated the same

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way in the twenty-fourth verse of the first chapter, we would have recognized two creations of intellectual and immortal beings at different times. But these words being merely rendered living creatures in the twenty-fourth verse, confounded the inferior nafesh chaiyah with the brutes mentioned in the same verse.-De Bow, vol. iv., p. 130. August, 1860.

Mr. Scull seems to concur in the opinion that the Hebrew has not always been correctly rendered; but his view is directly the reverse of Dr. Cartwright's. He holds that, in Genesis ii., 7, the words imply animal life only; and instead of "living soul," ought to be rendered "living creature," as in the first chapter. This issue must be settled ob by Hebrew scholars. To the mere English reader, however, it seems more probable that Mr. Scull is right. If naphesh chaiyah ought to be rendered "intellectual creatures with immortal souls," the Bible records the creation of such beings at three different times; the first from "the waters;"* the second and third from "the earth."+ Cannot Dr. Cartwright's alembic, of which the concurbit seems to be philosophic, and the head poetic, distill a theory from this to the effect that negroes were the first created; and that, owing to their aqueous origin, the race has always been "unstable as water?"

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In the twenty-fourth verse of the first chapter of Genesis, the words "cattle," "creeping thing" and "beast," appear to be in apposition with the words "living creature," not expressing something additional, but designating the class of creatures alluded to, as though it were written, "namely, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth." This construction is confirmed by the entire context, for, in every other instance Moses records, first, the decree of God, and next, the exercise of his creative energy in pursuance of the decree, and the statement of the latter follows the statement of the former, without addition or diminution. Thus, what "God made," is exactly what "God said, Let there be." In the twentieth and twenty-first verses mention is made of naphesh chaiyah, translated first "creature that hath life," and then "living creature." It is evident that they were not intellectual creatures with immortal souls, but aquatic animals, for, in blessing them and the fowls that were created with them, the Almighty said, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth." To support his theory it devolves on Dr. Cartwright to prove that there are races of intellectual creatures with immortal souls inhabiting "the waters in the seas." Barnum's mermaid will not avail him, for that, unfortunately, is very dead, having died once in the monkey that furnished her a head, and once in the fish that complimented her with a tail. Hence her intellectuality cannot be established. If the naphesh chaiyah here mentioned were not intellectual creatures with immortal souls, neither were those mentioned in the twenty-fourth verse, and Dr. Cartwright's proposed translation is incorThere, as in the other instances, the things made are neither more nor less than the things whose creation was decreed; that is, the

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"living creatures" of the decree were not intellectual creatures with immortal souls, but cattle, beasts, and creeping things. Thus falls to the ground Dr. Cartwright's proof that the Bible "positively affirms that there were, at least, two races of intellectual creatures with immortal souls, created at different times." A part of the superstructure, built on this sandy foundation, remains to be noticed.

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In Genesis, Shem, Ham and Japheth are called "the generations of Noah," and "the sons of Noah." In the same book are enumerated "the generations of the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth." It is said, "Ham is the father of Canaan," that unto Shem, Ham and Japheth "were born sons," and these sons are then enumerated by name, after which it is said, "These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations."t Here the words "families," "generations," etc., are applied in the same manner to Noah and his sons. He was their father and they his sons in the same sense in which Ham was the father of Canaan, and Canaan the son of Ham. But, concerning "Cush, Misraim, Phut, and Canaan," Dr. Cartwright says:

It is evident that Ham was not their natural father, or they his natural children, because some of them were plural.-De Bow, vol. fv., p. 134. August, 1860.

The reason is inadequate. As a name with a plural termination, such as Andrews, Hemans, Matthews, Peters, etc., etc., is now frequently given to an individual, so was it done among the Hebrews. For example, there was Eliakim, the son of Josiah, whose name the King of Egypt turned to Jehoiakim, still preserving the plural termination. But if Mizraim was the name of a tribe, they may still have been the children of Ham, as the Jews are "the children of Israel," and Ham their father, as Shem was "the father of all the children of Eber," that is the Hebrews. But if Ham was not literally the father of Cush, Misraim, Phut, and Canaan, in what sense was he their father? Dr. Cartwright answers:

The word father is evidently used in the sense that the Catholics apply it to the Pope; papa or father meaning a head man, manager, or overseer of the nachash race, domesticated in Noah's house. There were four tribes or species under his direction-Cush, Misraim, Phut, and Canaan, called the sons of Ham.-De Bow, vol. iv., p. 134. August, 1860.

By parity of reason, Japheth and Shem were also overseers of the nachash race; and there were seven tribes or species under the direction of the former, and five under the direction of the latter. Thus Noah ferried over from the antediluvian to the postdiluvian shore three overseers, and only sixteen slaves, unless "some of them were plural." Certainly the overseers were very inefficient if the best of them could only manage seven negroes. But they were not so properly overseers as "drivers," for Noah is called their father, that is, their papa, Pope,

* De Bow, vol. iv., 129. August, 1860.

†Gen. vii., 13; ix., 18, 19; x., 1, 2, 6, 21, 22, 31, 32.

II. Kings xviii., 18; xxili, 34; II. Chron. xxxvi., 4. §Gen. x., 21.

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