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image, aud of one blood; and thereupon, when they had fallen, he of-
fered to them a common salvation, through his only begotten Son,
made manifest in their common nature!                4L
  Most pregnant and most practical, is this great truth. A common
origin and a common nature must, in common circumstances, produce
a common development and a common destiny. That the develop-
ment and the destiny of every portion of our race have not been in all
respects similar, is therefore to be attributed to the diverse circum-
stances which have attended the career of the different parts of it.
There was in all the same original capacity to be elevated with the
highest-the same original liability to be sunken with the lowest. A
long course of fortunate events may develope a condition of greatness
and glory, while a long course of misfortune may produce a terrible
degradation. But the loftiest has no guarantee against decay, and
the lowest are still capable of being redeemed. Dangers common to
humanity forever impend over us, and glories forever beckon us to
arise from the dust. A bond of common brotherhood unites every
portion of the race; it is felt the most keenly by those who are the
most exalted; and, even in the most abject, its weak pulsations still
live to attest the depth of the truth, that our race is one. It is in
the life and doctrine of Jesus Christ that this profound instinct of
human nature finds itself exalted into one of the grandest truths of
religion, and invested with the peculiar sanction of heaven. In him,
the conception of this universal brotherhood, which nature teaches-
and all knowledge fortifies becomes a precious, living truth.
  The reality ot immense diversities in the condition, development,
character, and destiny of different portions of our race, must be ac-
cepted as a truth, even more obvious than its unity. Those diversi-
ties seem to extend to every thing that is consistent with the idea of
that unity. Nothing but that impassable barrier, is proof against the
force and variety of their manifestations. They have had their origin
at a very early period of the existence of the race. The most power-
ful causes, physical, social, and moral, have conspired to produce and
to perpetuate them. We cannot hesitate to pronounce these causes,
in many respects constant, and their effects established. And these
effects become causes themselves, of many subsequent events in the
fate of nations, and produce consequences the most momentous and
enduring. It is easy to comprehend that a race originally one, must
have passed through circumstances very different as to different por-
tions of it, and that these circumstances, whatever they may have
been, must have operated with a constant and immense force, to pro-
duce such differences in their physical and moral condition as we find
exhibited all over the earth. And it is not more difficult to perceive,
that these differences, when established, become the fruitful source of