# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1856_S69
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. Seyffarth's Corrections, etc.             69

...in customary fashion different races of humankind, and from this assumed difference the conclusion is drawn that there must have been several different pairs of human ancestors — at least as many as there are now different principal races. One has remained in debt of the proof that the races are different genera, or even different species, of the human race, and yet by this conclusion — built upon an unfounded assertion and therefore untenable — people wished to overturn the truthfulness of God's Word in the history of creation and in the account of the Flood. But according to the findings of more recent natural science, one may not even assume different human species; it now counts as an established fact that the mating of animals of different species is either infertile, or produces only hybrids incapable of reproduction. The different races of mankind, however, are fertile with one another, and the individuals sprung from such mixtures are in turn fertile both with one another and with every other race. A conclusion ex analogia from animals to the animal life of man therefore yields that different races of mankind may not be assumed in the sense of different species, and nothing stands in the way of tracing the entire human race back to a single pair of parents. Through natural science, then, even for the unbeliever, it becomes probable what Holy Scripture reveals concerning the creation of the first human beings. — A second proof against the credibility of Holy Scripture seeks to do away with the creation of the creature out of nothing and substitutes for it the generatio aequivoca, that is, the first origin of organic bodies, without any creation by God, out of already existing matter through a combination of particular climatic and chemical conditions. How matters stand regarding the soundness of this proof against the Word of God we shall easily recognize if we go back to the origin of this teaching. Unbelief and fanaticism against God's Word would not allow the account of creation to be accepted, but rather set people thinking of means by which the testimony of God's Word might be weakened and put out of the way. A welcome foothold for this was given by the reproduction of certain kinds of animals and plants, namely infusoria and cryptogams. How, for instance, do little creatures get into the spinal-cord cavity, impenetrable to them and enclosed all around by bone? How does mold arise on ink, or in the midst of a loaf of bread, and so forth? They must, so the opponents conclude, necessarily arise there through peculiar chemical conditions. In this way people believed they had discovered the spontaneous generation of animals and plants, and now asserted, resting on this, the same for the first human beings and for all creation, through the generatio aequivoca. Human beings and the higher kinds of animals and plants were, after a single generatio aequivoca, allowed to propagate further by begetting and seed, but the lower kinds were held to continue