The extent of the surface of the globe, known even to the writers of the New Testament, formed but a small fraction of it--little beyond the confines of the Roman empire. No allusion is even made to Southern and Eastern Asia; Africa, south of the Desert; Australia, America, &c.; all of which were inhabited long before the time of Moses; and of the races of men inhabiting these countries, and their languages, they certainly knew nothing. The Chinese and Indian empires, at least, are beyond dispute. The early Hebrews were a pastoral people; had little commercial or other intercourse with the rest of the world, and were far from being "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." The Egyptian empire was fully developed--arts and science as flourishing--pyramids and gorgeous temples built, not only before the time of Moses, but long prior to that of the Patriarch Abraham, who, with Sarah, went to Egypt to buy corn of the reigning Pharaoh. What is remarkable, too, the Egyptians had their ethnographers, and had already classified the human family into four races, and depicted them on the monuments, viz: the black, white, yellow, and red.[216] In fact, nothing can be more incomplete, contradictory, and unsatisfactory than the ethnography of Genesis. We see Cain going into a foreign land and taking a wife before there were any women born of his parent stock. Cities are seen springing up in the second and third generations, in every direction, &c. All this shows that we have in Genesis no satisfactory history of the human family, and that we can rely no more upon its ethnography than upon its geography, astronomy, cosmogony, geology, zoology, &c. We have already alluded to the fact that the writers of the New Testament give no evidence of additional knowledge in such matters. The sermon from the Mount comes like a light from Heaven, but this volume is mute on all that pertains to the physical laws of the universe.