The seventh, eighth, and ninth verses of the eleventh chapter are not irrelevant:  “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.  So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off to build the city.  Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”

It was the wickedness of the people that caused the Lord to disperse them, to confound their speech, and bring to nought their haughty work.  Evidently this was the beginning of different families of men,—­different nationalities, and hence different languages.  In the ninth verse it reads, that “from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.”  There is no ambiguity about this language.  He did not only “confound their language,” but “scattered them from thence,” from Babel, “upon the face of all the earth.”  Here, then, are two very important facts:  their language was confused, and they were “scattered.”  They were not only “scattered,” they were “scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth.”  That is, they were dispersed very widely, sent into the various and remote parts of the earth; and their nationality received its being from the latitudes to which the divinely appointed wave of dispersion bore them; and their subsequent racial character was to borrow its tone and color from climateric influences.  Three great families, the Shemitic, Hamitic, and Japhetic, were suddenly built up.  Many other families, or tribes, sprang from these; but these were the three great heads of all subsequent races of men.

“That the three sons of Noah overspread and peopled the whole earth, is so expressly stated in Scripture, that, had we not to argue against those who unfortunately disbelieve such evidence, we might here stop:  let us, however, inquire how far the truth of this declaration is substantiated by other considerations.  Enough has been said to show that there is a curious, if not a remarkable, analogy between the predictions of Noah on the future descendants of his three sons, and the actual state of those races which are generally supposed to have sprung from them.  It may here be again remarked, that, to render the subject more clear, we have adopted the quinary arrangement of Professor Blumenbach:  yet that Cuvier and other learned physiologists are of opinion that the primary varieties of the human form are more properly but three; viz., the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Ethiopian.  This number corresponds with that of Noah’s sons.  Assigning, therefore, the Mongolian race to Japheth, and the Ethiopian to Ham, the Caucasian, the noblest race, will belong to Shem, the third son of Noah, himself descended from Seth, the third son of Adam.  That the primary