1. It is true, doubtless, that there are various races of men; but there is but one great Human Family, in which Caucasian, Ethiopian, Chinese, and Indian are all brothers, children of _one_ Father, and heirs to _one_ happiness. Though variously endowed, they are all tending in the same direction; nor can the light obtained by one be withheld from any. The ether discovery in Boston will soothe pain hereafter in Africa and in Asia, in Abyssinia and in China. So are we all knit together, that words of wisdom and truth, which first sway the hearts of the American people, may help to elevate benighted tribes of the most distant regions. The vexed question of modern science, whether these races proceeded originally from one stock, does not interfere with the sublime revelation of Christianity, the Brotherhood of Man. In the light of science and of religion, Humanity is an organism, complex, but still one,--throbbing with one life, animated by one soul, every part sympathizing with every other part, and the whole advancing in one indefinite career of Progress. 2. And what is the measure of this career? It is common to speak of the long life already passed by man on earth; but how brief and trivial is this, compared with the countless ages before him! According to received chronology, six thousand years have not yet elapsed since his creation. But the science of Geology, that unimpeached interpreter of the Past, now demonstrates (and here the geology of New York furnishes important evidence), that, anterior to the commencement of human history, this globe had endured for ages upon ages, baffling human calculation and imagination. Without losing ourselves in the stupendous speculations with regard to different geological epochs, before the earth assumed its present figure, and when it was occupied only by races of animals now extinct, it may not be without interest to glance at the age of the epoch in which we live. This, happily, we are able to do.