The text before us therefore is very remarkable. And the more it seems to be contrary to all our experience and to reason, the more diligently should we ponder it and the more firmly should we believe it. By this text therefore we are taught the beginning of man, that the first man did not exist by generation, as Aristotle and the other philosophers, deceiving themselves by human reasonings, have dreamed; that the propagation of the posterity of the first man is indeed effected by generation; but that the first man himself was created from the dust of the field and that the first woman was formed and fashioned out of a rib of the man, extracted from him while he was asleep. Here therefore we have the true beginning of man which all the reason and philosophy of Aristotle could not discover. The beginning then of man, as wrought of God, being thus established by the testimony of Moses, there follows the propagation of man by means of the union of male and female; in no degree less wonderful than the original creation of each. The whole human race are procreated by a single drop of human blood. On this propagation of mankind it is that the apostle Paul eloquently displays his philosophy, derived from this sacred portion of the Scripture, before the philosophers of Athens, "The God that made the world and all things therein," etc., "seeing he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and he made of one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being," Acts 17:24-28. Here Paul speaks before all the Athenian philosophers of the propagation of mankind "by the blood of one," as he expresses it. If therefore the whole race of mankind have been generated from one small drop of blood of one man, and are still so generated, as the experience of all men throughout the whole world testifies, most certainly this miracle is no less wonderful and admirable than were those original wonders, namely, the creation of the first man from the dust of the ground, and that of the first woman from the rib of the man.