I.  THE SACRED THEORY IN ITS FIRST FORM.



Among the sciences which have served as entering wedges into the

heavy mass of ecclesiastical orthodoxy--to cleave it,

disintegrate it, and let the light of Christianity into it--none

perhaps has done a more striking work than Comparative Philology.

In one very important respect the history of this science differs

from that of any other; for it is the only one whose conclusions

theologians have at last fully adopted as the result of their own

studies.  This adoption teaches a great lesson, since, while it

has destroyed theological views cherished during many centuries,

and obliged the Church to accept theories directly contrary to

the plain letter of our sacred books, the result is clearly seen

to have helped Christianity rather than to have hurt it.  It has

certainly done much to clear our religious foundations of the

dogmatic rust which was eating into their structure.



How this result was reached, and why the Church has so fully

accepted it, I shall endeavour to show in the present chapter.

At a very early period in the evolution of civilization men began

to ask questions regarding language; and the answers to these

questions were naturally embodied in the myths, legends, and

chronicles of their sacred books.



Among the foremost of these questions were three:  "Whence came

language?"  "Which was the first language?"  "How came the

diversity of language?"



The answer to the first of these was very simple:  each people

naturally held that language was given it directly or indirectly

by some special or national deity of its own; thus, to the

Chaldeans by Oannes, to the Egyptians by Thoth, to the Hebrews by

Jahveh.



The Hebrew answer is embodied in the great poem which opens our

sacred books.  Jahveh talks with Adam and is perfectly

understood; the serpent talks with Eve and is perfectly

understood; Jahveh brings the animals before Adam, who bestows on

each its name.  Language, then, was God-given and complete.  Of

the fact that every language is the result of a growth process

there was evidently, among the compilers of our sacred books, no

suspicion.



The answer to the second of these questions was no less simple.

As, very generally, each nation believed its own chief divinity

to be "a god above all gods,"--as each believed itself "a chosen

people,"--as each believed its own sacred city the actual centre

of the earth, so each believed its own language to be the

first--the original of all.  This answer was from the first

taken for granted by each "chosen people," and especially by the

Hebrews:  throughout their whole history, whether the Almighty

talks with Adam in the Garden or writes the commandments on Mount

Sinai, he uses the same language--the Hebrew.



The answer to the third of these questions, that regarding the

diversity of languages, was much more difficult.  Naturally,

explanations of this diversity frequently gave rise to legends

somewhat complicated.



The "law of wills and causes," formulated by Comte, was

exemplified here as in so many other cases.  That law is, that,

when men do not know the natural causes of things, they simply

attribute them to wills like their own; thus they obtain a

theory which provisionally takes the place of science, and this

theory forms a basis for theology.



Examples of this recur to any thinking reader of history.

Before the simpler laws of astronomy were known, the sun was

supposed to be trundled out into the heavens every day and the

stars hung up in the firmament every night by the right hand of

the Almighty. Before the laws of comets were known, they were

thought to be missiles hurled by an angry God at a wicked world.

Before the real cause of lightning was known, it was supposed to

be the work of a good God in his wrath, or of evil spirits in

their malice. Before the laws of meteorology were known, it was

thought that rains were caused by the Almighty or his angels

opening "the windows of heaven" to let down upon the earth "the

waters that be above the firmament."  Before the laws governing

physical health were known, diseases were supposed to result from

the direct interposition of the Almighty or of Satan.  Before the

laws governing mental health were known, insanity was generally

thought to be diabolic possession.  All these early conceptions

were naturally embodied in the sacred books of the world, and

especially in our own.[412]



[412] Any one who wishes to realize the mediaeval view of the

direct personal attention of the Almighty to the universe, can

perhaps do so most easily by looking over the engravings in the

well-known Nuremberg Chronicle, representing him in the work of

each of the six days, and resting afterward.





So, in this case, to account for the diversity of tongues, the

direct intervention of the Divine Will was brought in.  As this

diversity was felt to be an inconvenience, it was attributed to

the will of a Divine Being in anger.  To explain this anger, it

was held that it must have been provoked by human sin.



Out of this conception explanatory myths and legends grew as

thickly and naturally as elms along water-courses; of these the

earliest form known to us is found in the Chaldean accounts, and

nowhere more clearly than in the legend of the Tower of Babel.



The inscriptions recently found among the ruins of Assyria have

thrown a bright light into this and other scriptural myths and

legends:  the deciphering of the characters in these inscriptions

by Grotefend, and the reading of the texts by George Smith,

Oppert, Sayce, and others, have given us these traditions more

nearly in their original form than they appear in our own

Scriptures.



The Hebrew story of Babel, like so many other legends in the

sacred books of the world, combined various elements.  By a play

upon words, such as the history of myths and legends frequently

shows, it wrought into one fabric the earlier explanations of the

diversities of human speech and of the great ruined tower at

Babylon.  The name Babel (bab-el) means "Gate of God" or "Gate

of the Gods."  All modern scholars of note agree that this was

the real significance of the name; but the Hebrew verb which

signifies TO CONFOUND resembles somewhat the word Babel, so that

out of this resemblance, by one of the most common processes in

myth formation, came to the Hebrew mind an indisputable proof

that the tower was connected with the confusion of tongues, and

this became part of our theological heritage.



In our sacred books the account runs as follows:



"And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.



"And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they

found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.



"And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn

them thoroughly.  And they had brick for stone, and slime had

they for mortar.



"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose

top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be

scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.



"And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the

children of men builded.



"And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all

one language; and this they begin to do:  and now nothing will

be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.



"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."

(Genesis xi, 1-9.)



Thus far the legend had been but slightly changed from the

earlier Chaldean form in which it has been found in the Assyrian

inscriptions.  Its character is very simple:  to use the words of

Prof. Sayce, "It takes us back to the age when the gods were

believed to dwell in the visible sky, and when man, therefore,

did his best to rear his altars as near them as possible."  And

this eminent divine might have added that it takes us back also

to a time when it was thought that Jehovah, in order to see the

tower fully, was obliged to come down from his seat above the

firmament.



As to the real reasons for the building of the towers which

formed so striking a feature in Chaldean architecture--any one of

which may easily have given rise to the explanatory myth which

found its way into our sacred books--there seems a substantial

agreement among leading scholars that they were erected primarily

as parts of temples, but largely for the purpose of astronomical

observations, to which the Chaldeans were so devoted, and to

which their country, with its level surface and clear atmosphere,

was so well adapted.  As to the real cause of the ruin of such

structures, one of the inscribed cylinders discovered in recent

times, speaking of a tower which most of the archaeologists

identify with the Tower of Babel, reads as follows:



"The building named the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which was

the Tower of Borsippa, had been built by a former king.  He had

completed forty-two cubits, but he did not finish its head.

During the lapse of time, it had become ruined; they had not

taken care of the exit of the waters, so that rain and wet had

penetrated into the brickwork; the casing of burned brick had

swollen out, and the terraces of crude brick are scattered in

heaps."



We can well understand how easily "the gods, assisted by the

winds," as stated in the Chaldean legend, could overthrow a tower

thus built.



It may be instructive to compare with the explanatory myth

developed first by the Chaldeans, and in a slightly different

form by the Hebrews, various other legends to explain the same

diversity of tongues.  The Hindu legend of the confusion of

tongues is as follows:



"There grew in the centre of the earth the wonderful `world

tree,' or `knowledge tree.' It was so tall that it reached almost

to heaven.  It said in its heart, `I shall hold my head in

heaven and spread my branches over all the earth, and gather all

men together under my shadow, and protect them, and prevent them

from separating.' But Brahma, to punish the pride of the tree,

cut off its branches and cast them down on the earth, when they

sprang up as wata trees, and made differences of belief and

speech and customs to prevail on the earth, to disperse men upon

its surface."



Still more striking is a Mexican legend:  according to this, the

giant Xelhua built the great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to

reach heaven, until the gods, angry at his audacity, threw fire

upon the building and broke it down, whereupon every separate

family received a language of its own.



Such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth.  A

well-known form of the legend, more like the Chaldean than the

Hebrew later form, appeared among the Greeks.  According to

this, the Aloidae piled Mount Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon

Ossa, in their efforts to reach heaven and dethrone Jupiter.



Still another form of it entered the thoughts of Plato.  He held

that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same

language, but that Zeus confounded their speech because men were

proud and demanded eternal youth and immortality.[413]



[413] For the identification of the Tower of Babel with the "Birs

Nimrad" amid the ruins of the city of Borsippa, see Rawlinson;

also Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament,

London, 1885, pp. 106-112 and following; and especially George

Smith, Assyrian Discoveries, p. 59.  For some of these

inscriptions discovered and read by George Smith, see his

Chaldean Account of Genesis, new York, 1876, pp. 160-162.  For

the statement regarding the origin of the word Babel, see Ersch

and Gruber, article Babylon; also the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce in

the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; also Colenso,

Pentateuch Examined, part iv, p. 302; also John Fiske, Myths and

Myth-makers, p. 72; also Lenormont, Histoire Ancienne de

l'Orient, Paris, 1881, vol. i, pp. 115 et seq.  As to the

character and purpose of the great tower of the temple of Belus,

see Smith's Bible Dictionary, article Babel, quoting Diodorus;

also Rawlinson, especially in Journal of the Asiatic Society for

1861; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (Hibbert

Lectures for 1887), London, 1887, chap. ii and elsewhere,

especially pages 96, 397, 407; also Max Duncker, History of

Antiquity, Abbott's translation, vol. ii, chaps. ii, and iii.

For similar legends in other parts of the world, see Delitzsch;

also Humboldt, American Researches; also Brinton, Myths of the

New World; also Colenso, as above.  The Tower of Cholula is well

known, having been described by Humboldt and Lord Kingsborough.

For superb engravings showing the view of Babel as developed by

the theological imagination, see Kircher, Turris Babel,

Amsterdam, 1679.  For the Law of Wills and Causes, with

deductions from it well stated, see Beattie Crozier, Civilization

and Progress, London, 1888, pp. 112, 178, 179, 273.  For Plato,

see the Politicus, p. 272, ed. Stephani, cited in Ersch and

Gruber, article Babylon.  For a good general statement, see Bible

Myths, New York, 1883, chap. iii.  For Aristotle's strange want

of interest in any classification of the varieties of human

speech, see Max Muller, Lectures on the Science of Language,

London, 1864, series i, chap. iv, pp. 123-125.





But naturally the version of the legend which most affected

Christendom was that modification of the Chaldean form developed

among the Jews and embodied in their sacred books.  To a

thinking man in these days it is very instructive.  The coming

down of the Almighty from heaven to see the tower and put an end

to it by dispersing its builders, points to the time when his

dwelling was supposed to be just above the firmament or solid

vault above the earth:  the time when he exercised his beneficent

activity in such acts as opening "the windows of heaven" to give

down rain upon the earth; in bringing out the sun every day and

hanging up the stars every night to give light to the earth; in

hurling comets, to give warning; in placing his bow in the cloud,

to give hope; in, coming down in the cool of the evening to walk

and talk with the man he had made; in making coats of skins for

Adam and Eve; in enjoying the odour of flesh which Noah burned

for him; in eating with Abraham under the oaks of Mamre; in

wrestling with Jacob; and in writing with his own finger on the

stone tables for Moses.



So came the answer to the third question regarding language; and

all three answers, embodied in our sacred books and implanted in

the Jewish mind, supplied to the Christian Church the germs of a

theological development of philology.  These germs developed

rapidly in the warm atmosphere of devotion and ignorance of

natural law which pervaded the early Church, and there grew a

great orthodox theory of language, which was held throughout

Christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all," for nearly two

thousand years, and to which, until the present century, all

science has been obliged, under pains and penalties, to conform.



There did, indeed, come into human thought at an early period

some suggestions of the modern scientific view of philology.

Lucretius had proposed a theory, inadequate indeed, but still

pointing toward the truth, as follows:  "Nature impelled man to

try the various sounds of the tongue, and so struck out the names

of things, much in the same way as the inability to speak is seen

in its turn to drive children to the use of gestures."  But,

among the early fathers of the Church, the only one who seems to

have caught an echo of this utterance was St. Gregory of Nyssa:

as a rule, all the other great founders of Christian theology, as

far as they expressed themselves on the subject, took the view

that the original language spoken by the Almighty and given by

him to men was Hebrew, and that from this all other languages

were derived at the destruction of the Tower of Babel.  This

doctrine was especially upheld by Origen, St. Jerome, and St.

Augustine. Origen taught that "the language given at the first

through Adam, the Hebrew, remained among that portion of mankind

which was assigned not to any angel, but continued the portion of

God himself."  St. Augustine declared that, when the other races

were divided by their own peculiar languages, Heber's family

preserved that language which is not unreasonably believed to

have

been the common language of the race, and that on this account it

was henceforth called Hebrew.  St. Jerome wrote, "The whole of

antiquity affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is

written, was the beginning of all human speech."



Amid such great authorities as these even Gregory of Nyssa

struggled in vain.  He seems to have taken the matter very

earnestly, and to have used not only argument but ridicule.  He

insists that God does not speak Hebrew, and that the tongue used

by Moses was not even a pure dialect of one of the languages

resulting from "the confusion."  He makes man the inventor of

speech, and resorts to raillery:  speaking against his opponent

Eunomius, he says that, "passing in silence his base and abject

garrulity," he will "note a few things which are thrown into the

midst of his useless or wordy discourse, where he represents God

teaching words and names to our first parents, sitting before

them like some pedagogue or grammar master."  But, naturally, the

great authority of Origen, Jerome, and Augustine prevailed; the

view suggested by Lucretius, and again by St. Gregory of Nyssa,

died, out; and "always, everywhere, and by all," in the Church,

the doctrine was received that the language spoken by the

Almighty was Hebrew,--that it was taught by him to Adam,--and

that all other languages on the face of the earth originated from

it at the dispersion attending the destruction of the Tower of

Babel.[414]



[414] For Lucretius's statement, see the De Rerum Natura, lib. v,

Munro's edition, with translation, Cambridge, 1886, vol. iii. p.

141.  For the opinion of Gregory of Nyssa, see Benfey, Geschichte

der Sprachwissenschaft in Deutschland, Munchen, 1869, p. 179; and

for the passage cited, see Gregory of Nyssa in his Contra

Eunomium, xii, in Migne's Patr. Graeca, vol. ii, p. 1043.  For

St. Jerome, see his Epistle XVIII, in Migne's Patr. Lat., vol.

xxii, p. 365.  For citation from St. Augustine, see the City of

God, Dod's translation, Edinburgh, 1871, vol. ii, p. 122.  For

citation from Origen, see his Homily XI, cited by Guichard in

preface to L'Harmonie Etymologique, Paris, 1631, lib. xvi, chap.

xi. For absolutely convincing proofs that the Jews derived the

Babel and other legends of their sacred books fro the Chaldeans,

see George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, passim; but

especially for a most candid though somewhat reluctant summing

up, see p. 291.





This idea threw out roots and branches in every direction, and so

developed ever into new and strong forms.  As all scholars now

know, the vowel points in the Hebrew language were not adopted

until at some period between the second and tenth centuries; but

in the mediaeval Church they soon came to be considered as part

of the great miracle,--as the work of the right hand of the

Almighty; and never until the eighteenth century was there any

doubt allowed as to the divine origin of these rabbinical

additions to the text.  To hesitate in believing that these

points were dotted virtually by the very hand of God himself came

to be considered a fearful heresy.



The series of battles between theology and science in the field

of comparative philology opened just on this point, apparently so

insignificant:  the direct divine inspiration of the rabbinical

punctuation.  The first to impugn this divine origin of these

vocal points and accents appears to have been a Spanish monk,

Raymundus Martinus, in his Pugio Fidei, or Poniard of the Faith,

which he put forth in the thirteenth century.  But he and his

doctrine disappeared beneath the waves of the orthodox ocean, and

apparently left no trace.  For nearly three hundred years longer

the full sacred theory held its ground; but about the opening of

the sixteenth century another glimpse of the truth was given by a

Jew, Elias Levita, and this seems to have had some little effect,

at least in keeping the germ of scientific truth alive.



The Reformation, with its renewal of the literal study of the

Scriptures, and its transfer of all infallibility from the Church

and the papacy to the letter of the sacred books, intensified for

a time the devotion of Christendom to this sacred theory of

language.  The belief was strongly held that the writers of the

Bible were merely pens in the hand of God (Dei calami.{;?}  Hence

the conclusion that not only the sense but the words, letters,

and even the punctuation proceeded from the Holy Spirit.  Only

on this one question of the origin of the Hebrew points was there

any controversy, and this waxed hot.  It began to be especially

noted that these vowel points in the Hebrew Bible did not exist

in the synagogue rolls, were not mentioned in the Talmud, and

seemed unknown to St. Jerome; and on these grounds some earnest

men ventured to think them no part of the original revelation to

Adam.  Zwingli, so much before most of the Reformers in other

respects, was equally so in this.  While not doubting the divine

origin and preservation of the Hebrew language as a whole, he

denied the antiquity of the vocal points, demonstrated their

unessential character, and pointed out the fact that St. Jerome

makes no mention of them.  His denial was long the refuge of

those who shared this heresy.



But the full orthodox theory remained established among the vast

majority both of Catholics and Protestants.  The attitude of the

former is well illustrated in the imposing work of the canon

Marini, which appeared at Venice in 1593, under the title of

Noah's Ark:  A New Treasury of the Sacred Tongue.  The huge

folios begin with the declaration that the Hebrew tongue was

"divinely inspired at the very beginning of the world," and the

doctrine is steadily maintained that this divine inspiration

extended not only to the letters but to the punctuation.



Not before the seventeenth century was well under way do we find

a thorough scholar bold enough to gainsay this preposterous

doctrine.  This new assailant was Capellus, Professor of Hebrew

at Saumur; but he dared not put forth his argument in France:  he

was obliged to publish it in Holland, and even there such

obstacles were thrown in his way that it was ten years before he

published another treatise of importance.



The work of Capellus was received as settling the question by

very many open-minded scholars, among whom was Hugo Grotius.

But many theologians felt this view to be a blow at the sanctity

and integrity of the sacred text; and in 1648 the great scholar,

John Buxtorf the younger, rose to defend the orthodox citadel:

in his Anticritica he brought all his stores of knowledge to

uphold the doctrine that the rabbinical points and accents had

been jotted down by the right hand of God.



The controversy waxed hot:  scholars like Voss and Brian Walton

supported Capellus; Wasmuth and many others of note were as

fierce against him.  The Swiss Protestants were especially

violent on the orthodox side; their formula consensus of 1675

declared the vowel points to be inspired, and three years later

the Calvinists of Geneva, by a special canon, forbade that any

minister should be received into their jurisdiction until he

publicly confessed that the Hebrew text, as it to-day exists in

the Masoretic copies, is, both as to the consonants and vowel

points, divine and authentic.



While in Holland so great a man as Hugo Grotius supported the

view of Capellus, and while in France the eminent Catholic

scholar Richard Simon, and many others, Catholic and Protestant,

took similar ground against this divine origin of the Hebrew

punctuation, there was arrayed against them a body apparently

overwhelming.  In France, Bossuet, the greatest theologian that

France has ever produced, did his best to crush Simon.  In

Germany, Wasmuth, professor first at Rostock and afterward at

Kiel, hurled his Vindiciae at the innovators.  Yet at this very

moment the battle was clearly won; the arguments of Capellus

were irrefragable, and, despite the commands of bishops, the

outcries of theologians, and the sneering of critics, his

application of strictly scientific observation and reasoning

carried the day.



Yet a casual observer, long after the fate of the battle was

really settled, might have supposed that it was still in doubt.

As is not unusual in theologic controversies, attempts were made

to galvanize the dead doctrine into an appearance of life.

Famous among these attempts was that made as late as the

beginning of the eighteenth century by two Bremen theologians,

Hase and Iken.  They put forth a compilation in two huge folios

simultaneously at Leyden and Amsterdam, prominent in which work

is the treatise on The Integrity of Scripture, by Johann Andreas

Danzius, Professor of Oriental Languages and Senior Member of the

Philosophical Faculty of Jena, and, to preface it, there was a

formal and fulsome approval by three eminent professors of

theology at Leyden.  With great fervour the author pointed out

that "religion itself depends absolutely on the infallible

inspiration, both verbal and literal, of the Scripture text"; and

with impassioned eloquence he assailed the blasphemers who dared

question the divine origin of the Hebrew points.  But this was

really the last great effort.  That the case was lost was seen by

the fact that Danzius felt obliged to use other missiles than

arguments, and especially to call his opponents hard names.  From

this period the old sacred theory as to the origin of the Hebrew

points may be considered as dead and buried.







II.  THE SACRED THEORY OF LANGUAGE IN ITS SECOND FORM.





But the war was soon to be waged on a wider and far more

important field.  The inspiration of the Hebrew punctuation

having been given up, the great orthodox body fell back upon the

remainder of the theory, and intrenched this more strongly than

ever:  the theory that the Hebrew language was the first of all

languages--that which was spoken by the Almighty, given by him to

Adam, transmitted through Noah to the world after the Deluge--and

that the "confusion of tongues" was the origin of all other

languages.



In giving account of this new phase of the struggle, it is well

to go back a little.  From the Revival of Learning and the

Reformation had come the renewed study of Hebrew in the fifteenth

and sixteenth centuries, and thus the sacred doctrine regarding

the origin of the Hebrew language received additional authority.

All the early Hebrew grammars, from that of Reuchlin down, assert

the divine origin and miraculous claims of Hebrew.  It is

constantly mentioned as "the sacred tongue"--sancta lingua.  In

1506, Reuchlin, though himself persecuted by a large faction in

the Church for advanced views, refers to Hebrew as "spoken by the

mouth of God."



This idea was popularized by the edition of the Margarita

Philosophica, published at Strasburg in 1508.  That work, in

its successive editions a mirror of human knowledge at the close

of the Middle Ages and the opening of modern times, contains a

curious introduction to the study of Hebrew, In this it is

declared that Hebrew was the original speech "used between God

and man and between men and angels."  Its full-page frontispiece

represents Moses receiving from God the tables of stone written

in Hebrew; and, as a conclusive argument, it reminds us that

Christ himself, by choosing a Hebrew maid for his mother, made

that his mother tongue.



It must be noted here, however, that Luther, in one of those

outbursts of strong sense which so often appear in his career,

enforced the explanation that the words "God said" had nothing to

do with the articulation of human language.  Still, he evidently

yielded to the general view.  In the Roman Church at the same

period we have a typical example of the theologic method applied

to philology, as we have seen it applied to other sciences, in

the statement by Luther's great opponent, Cajetan, that the three

languages of the inscription on the cross of Calvary "were the

representatives of all languages, because the number three

denotes perfection."



In 1538 Postillus made a very important endeavour at a

comparative study of languages, but with the orthodox assumption

that all were derived from one source, namely, the Hebrew.

Naturally, Comparative Philology blundered and stumbled along

this path into endless absurdities.  The most amazing efforts

were made to trace back everything to the sacred language.

English and Latin dictionaries appeared, in which every word was

traced back to a Hebrew root.  No supposition was too absurd in

this attempt to square Science with Scripture.  It was declared

that, as Hebrew is written from right to left, it might be read

either way, in order to produce a satisfactory etymology.  The

whole effort in all this sacred scholarship was, not to find what

the truth is--not to see how the various languages are to be

classified, or from what source they are really derived--but to

demonstrate what was supposed necessary to maintain what was then

held to be the truth of Scripture; namely, that all languages are

derived from the Hebrew.



This stumbling and blundering, under the sway of orthodox

necessity, was seen among the foremost scholars throughout

Europe.  About the middle of the sixteenth century the great

Swiss scholar, Conrad Gesner, beginning his Mithridates, says,

"While of all languages Hebrew is the first and oldest, of all is

alone pure and unmixed, all the rest are much mixed, for there is

none which has not some words derived and corrupted from Hebrew."



Typical, as we approach the end of the sixteenth century, are the

utterances of two of the most noted English divines.  First of

these may be mentioned Dr. William Fulke, Master of Pembroke

Hall, in the University of Cambridge.  In his Discovery of the

Dangerous Rock of the Romish Church, published in 1580, he

speaks of "the Hebrew tongue,...the first tongue of the world,

and for the excellency thereof called `the holy tongue.'"



Yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine,

Dr. William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and Master

of St. John's College at Cambridge.  In his Disputation on Holy

Scripture, first printed in 1588, he says:  "The Hebrew is the

most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone prevailed

in the world before the Deluge and the erection of the Tower of

Babel.  For it was this which Adam used and all men before the

Flood, as is manifest from the Scriptures, as the fathers

testify."  He then proceeds to quote passages on this subject

from St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others, and cites St.

Chrysostom in support of the statement that "God himself showed

the model and method of writing when he delivered the Law written

by his own finger to Moses."[415]



[415] For the whole scriptural argument, embracing the various

texts on which the sacred science of Philology was founded, with

the use made of such texts, see Benfey, Geschichte der

Sprachwissenschaft in Deutschland, Munchen, 1869, pp. 22-26.  As

to the origin of the vowel points, see Benfey, as above; he holds

that they began to be inserted in the second century A.D., and

that the process lasted until about the tenth.  For Raymundus and

his Pugio Fidei, see G. L. Bauer, Prolegomena to his revision of

Glassius's Philologia Sacra, Leipsic, 1795,--see especially pp.

8-14, in tome ii of the work.  For Zwingli, see Praef. in Apol.

comp. Isaiae (Opera, iii).  See also Morinus, De Lingua primaeva,

p.447.  For Marini, see his Arca Noe: Thesaurus Linguae Sanctae,

Venet., 1593, and especially the preface.  For general account of

Capellus, see G. L. Bauer, in his Prolegomena, as above, vol. ii,

pp. 8-14.  His Arcanum Premetationis Revelatum was brought out at

Leyden in 1624; his Critica Sacra ten years later.  See on

Capellus and Swiss theologues, Wolfius, Bibliotheca Nebr., tome

ii, p. 27.  For the struggle, see Schnedermann, Die Controverse

des Ludovicus Capellus mit den Buxtorfen, Leipsic, 1879, cited in

article Hebrew, in Encyclopaedia Britannica.  For Wasmuth, see

his Vindiciae Sanctae Hebraicae Scripturae, Rostock, 1664.  For

Reuchlin, see the dedicatory preface to his Rudimenta Hebraica,

Pforzheim, 1506, folio, in which he speaks of the "in divina

scriptura dicendi genus, quale os Dei locatum est."  The

statement in the Margarita Philosophica as to Hebrew is doubtless

based on Reuchlin's Rudimenta Hebraica, which it quotes, and

which first appeared in 1506.  It is significant that this

section disappeared from the Margarita in the following editions;

but this disappearence is easily understood when we recall the

fact that Gregory Reysch, its author, having become one of the

Papal Commission to judge Reuchlin in his quarrel with the

Dominicans, thought it prudent to side with the latter, and

therefore, doubtless, considered it wise to suppress all evidence

of Reuchlin's influence upon his beliefs.  All the other editions

of the Margarita in my possession are content with teaching,

under the head of the Alphabet, that the Hebrew letters were

invented by Adam.  On Luther's view of the words "God said," see

Farrar, Language and Languages.  For a most valuable statement

regarding the clashing opinions at the Reformation, see Max

Muller, as above, lecture iv, p. 132.  For the prevailing view

among the Reformers, see Calovius, vol. i, p. 484, and Thulock,

The Doctrine of Inspiration, in Theolog. Essays, Boston, 1867.

Both Muller and Benfey note, as especially important, the

difference between the Church view and the ancient heathen view

regarding "barbarians."  See Muller, as above, lecture iv, p.

127, and Benfey, as above, pp. 170 et seq.  For a very remarkable

list of Bibles printed at an early period, see Benfey, p. 569.

On the attempts to trace all words back to Hebrew roots, see

Sayce, Introduction to the Science of Language, chap. vi.  For

Gesner, see his Mithridates (de differentiis linguarum), Zurich,

1555.  For a similar attempt to prove that Italian was also

derived from Hebrew, see Giambullari, cited in Garlanda, p. 174.

For Fulke, see the Parker Society's Publications, 1848, p. 224.

For Whitaker, see his Disputation on Holy Scripture in the same

series, pp. 112-114.





This sacred theory entered the seventeenth century in full force,

and for a time swept everything before it.  Eminent

commentators, Catholic and Protestant, accepted and developed it.



Great prelates, Catholic and Protestant, stood guard over it,

favouring those who supported it, doing their best to destroy

those who would modify it.



In 1606 Stephen Guichard built new buttresses for it in Catholic

France.  He explains in his preface that his intention is "to

make the reader see in the Hebrew word not only the Greek and

Latin, but also the Italian, the Spanish, the French, the German,

the Flemish, the English, and many others from all languages."

As the merest tyro in philology can now see, the great difficulty

that Guichard encounters is in getting from the Hebrew to the

Aryan group of languages.  How he meets this difficulty may be

imagined from his statement, as follows:  "As for the derivation

of words by addition, subtraction, and inversion of the letters,

it is certain that this can and ought thus to be done, if we

would find etymologies--a thing which becomes very credible when

we consider that the Hebrews wrote from right to left and the

Greeks and others from left to right.  All the learned recognise

such derivations as necessary;...and...certainly otherwise one

could scarcely trace any etymology back to Hebrew."



Of course, by this method of philological juggling, anything

could be proved which the author thought necessary to his pious

purpose.



Two years later, Andrew Willett published at London his Hexapla,

or Sixfold Commentary upon Genesis.  In this he insists that

the one language of all mankind in the beginning "was the Hebrew

tongue preserved still in Heber's family."  He also takes pains

to say that the Tower of Babel "was not so called of Belus, as

some have imagined, but of confusion, for so the Hebrew word

ballal signifieth"; and he quotes from St. Chrysostom to

strengthen his position.



In 1627 Dr. Constantine l'Empereur was inducted into the chair

of Philosophy of the Sacred Language in the University of Leyden.

In his inaugural oration on The Dignity and Utility of the Hebrew

Tongue, he puts himself on record in favour of the Divine origin

and miraculous purity of that language.  "Who," he says, "can

call in question the fact that the Hebrew idiom is coeval with

the world itself, save such as seek to win vainglory for their

own sophistry?"



Two years after Willett, in England, comes the famous Dr.

Lightfoot, the most renowned scholar of his time in Hebrew,

Greek, and Latin; but all his scholarship was bent to suit

theological requirements.  In his Erubhin, published in 1629,

he goes to the full length of the sacred theory, though we begin

to see a curious endeavour to get over some linguistic


difficulties.



One passage will serve to show both the robustness of his faith

and the acuteness of his reasoning, in view of the difficulties

which scholars now began to find in the sacred theory."  Other

commendations this tongue (Hebrew) needeth none than what it hath

of itself; namely, for sanctity it was the tongue of God; and for

antiquity it was the tongue of Adam.  God the first founder, and

Adam the first speaker of it....It began with the world and the

Church, and continued and increased in glory till the captivity

in Babylon....As the man in Seneca, that through sickness lost

his memory and forgot his own name, so the Jews, for their sins,

lost their language and forgot their own tongue....Before the

confusion of tongues all the world spoke their tongue and no

other but since the confusion of the Jews they speak the language

of all the world and not their own."



But just at the middle of the century (1657) came in England a

champion of the sacred theory more important than any of

these--Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester.  His Polyglot Bible

dominated English scriptural criticism throughout the remainder

of the century.  He prefaces his great work by proving at length

the divine origin of Hebrew, and the derivation from it of all

other forms of speech.  He declares it "probable that the first

parent of mankind was the inventor of letters."  His chapters on

this subject are full of interesting details.  He says that the

Welshman, Davis, had already tried to prove the Welsh the

primitive speech; Wormius, the Danish; Mitilerius, the German;

but the bishop stands firmly by the sacred theory, informing us

that "even in the New World are found traces of the Hebrew

tongue, namely, in New England and in New Belgium, where the word

Aguarda signifies earth, and the name Joseph is found among the

Hurons."  As we have seen, Bishop Walton had been forced to give

up the inspiration of the rabbinical punctuation, but he seems to

have fallen back with all the more tenacity on what remained of

the great sacred theory of language, and to have become its

leading champion among English-speaking peoples.



At that same period the same doctrine was put forth by a great

authority in Germany.  In 1657 Andreas Sennert published his

inaugural address as Professor of Sacred Letters and Dean of the

Theological Faculty at Wittenberg.  All his efforts were given

to making Luther's old university a fortress of the orthodox

theory.  His address, like many others in various parts of

Europe, shows that in his time an inaugural with any save an

orthodox statement of the theological platform would not be

tolerated.  Few things in the past are to the sentimental mind

more pathetic, to the philosophical mind more natural, and to the

progressive mind more ludicrous, than addresses at high festivals

of theological schools.  The audience has generally consisted

mainly of estimable elderly gentlemen, who received their

theology in their youth, and who in their old age have watched

over it with jealous care to keep it well protected from every

fresh breeze of thought.  Naturally, a theological professor

inaugurated under such auspices endeavours to propitiate his

audience.  Sennert goes to great lengths both in his address and

in his grammar, published nine years later; for, declaring the

Divine origin of Hebrew to be quite beyond controversy, he says:

"Noah received it from our first parents, and guarded it in the

midst of the waters; Heber and Peleg saved it from the confusion

of tongues."



The same doctrine was no less loudly insisted upon by the

greatest authority in Switzerland, Buxtorf, professor at Basle,

who proclaimed Hebrew to be "the tongue of God, the tongue of

angels, the tongue of the prophets"; and the effect of this

proclamation may be imagined when we note in 1663 that his book

had reached its sixth edition.



It was re-echoed through England, Germany, France, and America,

and, if possible, yet more highly developed.  In England

Theophilus Gale set himself to prove that not only all the

languages, but all the learning of the world, had been drawn from

the Hebrew records.



This orthodox doctrine was also fully vindicated in Holland.

Six years before the close of the seventeenth century, Morinus,

Doctor of Theology, Professor of Oriental Languages, and pastor

at Amsterdam, published his great work on Primaeval Language.

Its frontispiece depicts the confusion of tongues at Babel, and,

as a pendant to this, the pentecostal gift of tongues to the

apostles.  In the successive chapters of the first book he

proves that language could not have come into existence save as a

direct gift from heaven; that there is a primitive language, the

mother of all the rest; that this primitive language still exists

in its pristine purity; that this language is the Hebrew.  The

second book is devoted to proving that the Hebrew letters were

divinely received, have been preserved intact, and are the source

of all other alphabets.  But in the third book he feels obliged

to allow, in the face of the contrary dogma held, as he says, by

"not a few most eminent men piously solicitous for the authority

of the sacred text," that the Hebrew punctuation was, after all,

not of Divine inspiration, but a late invention of the rabbis.



France, also, was held to all appearance in complete subjection

to the orthodox idea up to the end of the century.  In 1697

appeared at Paris perhaps the most learned of all the books

written to prove Hebrew the original tongue and source of all

others.  The Gallican Church was then at the height of its

power.  Bossuet as bishop, as thinker, and as adviser of Louis

XIV, had crushed all opposition to orthodoxy.  The Edict of

Nantes had been revoked, and the Huguenots, so far as they could

escape, were scattered throughout the world, destined to repay

France with interest a thousandfold during the next two

centuries.  The bones of the Jansenists at Port Royal were dug up

and scattered.  Louis XIV stood guard over the piety of his

people.  It was in the midst of this series of triumphs that

Father Louis Thomassin, Priest of the Oratory, issued his

Universal Hebrew Glossary.  In this, to use his own language,

"the divinity, antiquity, and perpetuity of the Hebrew tongue,

with its letters, accents, and other characters," are established

forever and beyond all cavil, by proofs drawn from all peoples,

kindreds, and nations under the sun.  This superb,

thousand-columned folio was issued from the royal press, and is

one of the most imposing monuments of human piety and

folly--taking rank with the treatises of Fromundus against

Galileo, of Quaresmius on Lot's Wife, and of Gladstone on Genesis

and Geology.



The great theologic-philologic chorus was steadily maintained,

and, as in a responsive chant, its doctrines were echoed from

land to land.  From America there came the earnest words of John

Eliot, praising Hebrew as the most fit to be made a universal

language, and declaring it the tongue "which it pleased our Lord

Jesus to make use of when he spake from heaven unto Paul."  At

the close of the seventeenth century came from England a strong

antiphonal answer in this chorus; Meric Casaubon, the learned

Prebendary of Canterbury, thus declared:  "One language, the

Hebrew, I hold to be simply and absolutely the source of all."

And, to swell the chorus, there came into it, in complete unison,

the voice of Bentley--the greatest scholar of the old sort whom

England has ever produced.  He was, indeed, one of the most

learned and acute critics of any age; but he was also Master of

Trinity, Archdeacon of Bristol, held two livings besides, and

enjoyed the honour of refusing the bishopric of Bristol, as not

rich enough to tempt him.  Noblesse oblige:  that Bentley should

hold a brief for the theological side was inevitable, and we need

not be surprised when we hear him declaring:  "We are sure, from

the names of persons and places mentioned in Scripture before the

Deluge, not to insist upon other arguments, that the Hebrew was

the primitive language of mankind, and that it continued pure

above three thousand years until the captivity in Babylon."  The

power of the theologic bias, when properly stimulated with

ecclesiastical preferment, could hardly be more perfectly

exemplified than in such a captivity of such a man as Bentley.



Yet here two important exceptions should be noted.  In England,

Prideaux, whose biblical studies gave him much authority, opposed

the dominant opinion; and in America, Cotton Mather, who in

taking his Master's degree at Harvard had supported the doctrine

that the Hebrew vowel points were of divine origin, bravely

recanted and declared for the better view.[416]



[416] The quotation from Guichard is from L'Harmonie Etymologique

des Langues, . . . dans laquelle par plusiers Antiquites et

Etymologies de toute sorte, je demonstre evidemment que toutes

les langues sont descendues de l'Hebraique; par M. Estienne

Guichard, Paris, 1631.  The first edition appeared in 1606.  For

Willett, see his Hexapla, London, 1608, pp. 125-128.  For the

Address of L'Empereur, see his publication, Leyden, 1627.  The

quotation from Lightfoot, beginning "Other commendations," etc.,

is taken from his Erubhin, or Miscellanies, edition of 1629; see

also his works, vol. iv, pp. 46, 47, London, 1822.  For Bishop

Brian Walton, see the Cambridge edition of his works, 1828,

Prolegomena S 1 and 3.  As to Walton's giving up the rabbinical

points, he mentions in one of the latest editions of his works

the fact that Isaac Casabon, Joseph Scaliger, Isaac Vossius,

Grotius, Beza, Luther, Zwingli, Brentz, Oecolampadius, Calvin,

and even some of the Popes were with him in this.  For Sennert,

see his Dissertation de Ebraicae S. S. Linguae Origine, etc.,

Wittenberg, 1657; also his Grammitica Orientalis, Wittenberg,

1666.  For Buxtorf, see the preface to his Thesaurus Grammaticus

Linguae Sanctae Hebraeae, sixth edition, 1663.  For Gale, see his

Court of the Gentiles, Oxford, 1672.  For Morinus, see his

Exercitationes de Lingua Primaeva, Utrecht, 1697.  For Thomassin,

see his Glossarium Universale Hebraicum, Paris, 1697.  For John

Eliot's utterance, see Mather's Magnalia, book iii, p. 184.  For

Meric Casaubon, see his De Lingua Anglia Vet., p. 160, cited by

Massey, p. 16 of Origin and Progress of Letters.  For Bentley,

see his works, London, 1836, vol. ii, p. 11, and citations by

Welsford, Mithridates Minor, p. 2.  As to Bentley's position as a

scholar, see the famous estimate in Macaulay's Essays.  For a

short but very interesting account of him, see Mark Pattison's

article in vol. iii of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia

Britannica.  The postion of Pattison as an agnostic dignitary in

the English Church eminently fitted him to understand Bentley's

career, both as regards the orthodox and the scholastic world.

For perhaps the most striking account of the manner in which

Bentley lorded it in the scholastic world of his time, see Monk's

Life of Bentley, vol. ii, chap. xvii, and especially his

contemptuous reply to the judges, as given in vol. ii, pp. 211,

212.  For Cotton Mather, see his biography by Samuel Mather,

Boston, 1729, pp. 5, 6.





But even this dissent produced little immediate effect, and at

the beginning of the eighteenth century this sacred doctrine,

based upon explicit statements of Scripture, seemed forever

settled.  As we have seen, strong fortresses had been built for

it in every Christian land:  nothing seemed more unlikely than

that the little groups of scholars scattered through these

various countries could ever prevail against them.  These

strongholds were built so firmly, and had behind them so vast an

army of religionists of every creed, that to conquer them seemed

impossible.  And yet at that very moment their doom was decreed.

Within a few years from this period of their greatest triumph,


the garrisons of all these sacred fortresses were in hopeless

confusion, and the armies behind them in full retreat; a little

later, all the important orthodox fortresses and forces were in

the hands of the scientific philologists.



How this came about will be shown in the third part of this

chapter.







III.  BREAKING DOWN OF THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.





We have now seen the steps by which the sacred theory of human

language had been developed:  how it had been strengthened in

every land until it seemed to bid defiance forever to advancing

thought; how it rested firmly upon the letter of Scripture, upon

the explicit declarations of leading fathers of the Church, of

the great doctors of the Middle Ages, of the most eminent

theological scholars down to the beginning of the eighteenth

century, and was guarded by the decrees of popes, kings, bishops,

Catholic and Protestant, and the whole hierarchy of authorities

in church and state.



And yet, as we now look back, it is easy to see that even in that

hour of its triumph it was doomed.



The reason why the Church has so fully accepted the conclusions

of science which have destroyed the sacred theory is instructive.

The study of languages has been, since the Revival of Learning

and the Reformation, a favourite study with the whole Western

Church, Catholic and Protestant.  The importance of understanding

the ancient tongues in which our sacred books are preserved first

stimulated the study, and Church missionary efforts have

contributed nobly to supply the material for extending it, and

for the application of that comparative method which, in

philology as in other sciences, has been so fruitful.  Hence it

is that so many leading theologians have come to know at first

hand the truths given by this science, and to recognise its

fundamental principles.  What the conclusions which they, as

well as all other scholars in this field, have been absolutely

forced to accept, I shall now endeavour to show.



The beginnings of a scientific theory seemed weak indeed, but

they were none the less effective.  As far back as 1661,

Hottinger, professor at Heidelberg, came into the chorus of

theologians like a great bell in a chime; but like a bell whose

opening tone is harmonious and whose closing tone is discordant.

For while, at the beginning, Hottinger cites a formidable list of

great scholars who had held the sacred theory of the origin of

language, he goes on to note a closer resemblance to the Hebrew

in some languages than in others, and explains this by declaring

that the confusion of tongues was of two sorts, total and

partial:  the Arabic and Chaldaic he thinks underwent only a

partial confusion; the Egyptian, Persian, and all the European

languages a total one.  Here comes in the discord; here gently

sounds forth from the great chorus a new note--that idea of

grouping and classifying languages which at a later day was to

destroy utterly the whole sacred theory.



But the great chorus resounded on, as we have seen, from shore to

shore, until the closing years of the seventeenth century; then

arose men who silenced it forever.  The first leader who threw

the weight of his knowledge, thought, and authority against it

was Leibnitz.  He declared, "There is as much reason for

supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind

as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a

work at Antwerp in 1580 to prove that Dutch was the language

spoken in paradise."



In a letter to Tenzel, Leibnitz wrote, "To call Hebrew the

primitive language is like calling the branches of a tree

primitive branches, or like imagining that in some country hewn

trunks could grow instead of trees."  He also asked, "If the

primeval language existed even up to the time of Moses, whence

came the Egyptian language?"



But the efficiency of Leibnitz did not end with mere suggestions.

He applied the inductive method to linguistic study, made great

efforts to have vocabularies collected and grammars drawn up

wherever missionaries and travellers came in contact with new

races, and thus succeeded in giving the initial impulse to at

least three notable collections--that of Catharine the Great, of

Russia; that of the Spanish Jesuit, Lorenzo Hervas; and, at a

later period, the Mithridates of Adelung.  The interest of the

Empress Catharine in her collection of linguistic materials was

very strong, and her influence is seen in the fact that

Washington, to please her, requested governors and generals to

send in materials from various parts of the United States and the

Territories.  The work of Hervas extended over the period from

1735 to 1809:  a missionary in America, he enlarged his catalogue

of languages to six volumes, which were published in Spanish in

1800, and contained specimens of more than three hundred

languages, with the grammars of more than forty.  It should be

said to his credit that Hervas dared point out with especial care

the limits of the Semitic family of languages, and declared, as a

result of his enormous studies, that the various languages of

mankind could not have been derived from the Hebrew.



While such work was done in Catholic Spain, Protestant Germany

was honoured by the work of Adelung.  It contained the Lord's

Prayer in nearly five hundred languages and dialects, and the

comparison of these, early in the nineteenth century, helped to

end the sway of theological philology.



But the period which intervened between Leibnitz and this modern

development was a period of philological chaos.  It began mainly

with the doubts which Leibnitz had forced upon Europe, and ended

only with the beginning of the study of Sanskrit in the latter

half of the eighteenth century, and with the comparisons made by

means of the collections of Catharine, Hervas, and Adelung at the

beginning of the nineteenth.  The old theory that Hebrew was the

original language had gone to pieces; but nothing had taken its

place as a finality.  Great authorities, like Buddeus, were

still cited in behalf of the narrower belief; but everywhere

researches, unorganized though they were, tended to destroy it.

The story of Babel continued indeed throughout the whole

eighteenth century to hinder or warp scientific investigation,

and a very curious illustration of this fact is seen in the book

of Lord Nelme on The Origin and Elements of Language.  He

declares that connected with the confusion was the cleaving of

America from Europe, and he regards the most terrible chapters in

the book of Job as intended for a description of the Flood, which

in all probability Job had from Noah himself.  Again, Rowland

Jones tried to prove that Celtic was the primitive tongue, and

that it passed through Babel unharmed.  Still another effect was

made by a Breton to prove that all languages took their rise in

the language of Brittany.  All was chaos.  There was much

wrangling, but little earnest controversy.  Here and there

theologians were calling out frantically, beseeching the Church

to save the old doctrine as "essential to the truth of

Scripture"; here and there other divines began to foreshadow the

inevitable compromise which has always been thus vainly attempted

in the history of every science.  But it was soon seen by

thinking men that no concessions as yet spoken of by theologians

were sufficient.  In the latter half of the century came the

bloom period of the French philosophers and encyclopedists, of

the English deists, of such German thinkers as Herder, Kant, and

Lessing; and while here and there some writer on the theological

side, like Perrin, amused thinking men by his flounderings in

this great chaos, all remained without form and void.[417]



[417] For Hottinger, see the preface to his Etymologicum

Orientale, Frankfort, 1661.  For Leibnitz, Catharine the Great,

Hervas, and Adelung, see Max Muller, as above, from whom I have

quoted very fully; see also Benfey, Geschichte der

Sprachwissenschaft, etc., p. 269.  Benfey declares that the

Catalogue of Hervas is even now a mine for the philologist.  For

the first two citations from Leibnitz, as well as for a statement

of his importance in the history of languages, see Max Muller, as

above, pp. 135, 136.  For the third quotation, Leibnitz, Opera,

Geneva, 1768, vi, part ii, p. 232.  For Nelme, see his Origin and

Elements of Language, London, 1772, pp. 85-100.  For Rowland

Jones, see The Origin of Language and Nations, London, 1764, and

preface.  For the origin of languages in Brittany, see Le

Brigant, Paris, 1787.  For Herder and Lessing, see Canon Farrar's

treatise; on Lessing, see Sayce, as above.  As to Perrin, see his

essay Sur l'Origine et l'Antiquite des Langues, London, 1767.





Nothing better reveals to us the darkness and duration of this

chaos in England than a comparison of the articles on Philology

given in the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia

Britannica.  The first edition of that great mirror of British

thought was printed in 1771:  chaos reigns through the whole of

its article on this subject.  The writer divides languages into

two classes, seems to indicate a mixture of divine inspiration

with human invention, and finally escapes under a cloud.  In the

second edition, published in 1780, some progress has been made.

The author states the sacred theory, and declares:  "There are

some divines who pretend that Hebrew was the language in which

God talked with Adam in paradise, and that the saints will make

use of it in heaven in those praises which they will eternally

offer to the Almighty.  These doctors seem to be as certain in

regard to what is past as to what is to come."



This was evidently considered dangerous.  It clearly outran the

belief of the average British Philistine; and accordingly we

find in the third edition, published seventeen years later, a new

article, in which, while the author gives, as he says, "the best

arguments on both sides," he takes pains to adhere to a fairly

orthodox theory.



This soothing dose was repeated in the fourth and fifth editions.

In 1824 appeared a supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth

editions, which dealt with the facts so far as they were known;

but there was scarcely a reference to the biblical theory

throughout the article.  Three years later came another

supplement.  While this chaos was fast becoming cosmos in

Germany, such a change had evidently not gone far in England, for

from this edition of the Encyclopaedia the subject of philology

was omitted.  In fact, Babel and Philology made nearly as much

trouble to encyclopedists as Noah's Deluge and Geology.  Just as

in the latter case they had been obliged to stave off a

presentation of scientific truth, by the words "For Deluge, see

Flood" and "For Flood, see Noah," so in the former they were

obliged to take various provisional measures, some of them

comical.  In 1842 came the seventh edition.  In this the first

part of the old article on Philology which had appeared in the

third, fourth, and fifth editions was printed, but the

supernatural part was mainly cut out.  Yet we find a curious

evidence of the continued reign of chaos in a foot-note inserted

by the publishers, disavowing any departure from orthodox views.

In 1859 appeared the eighth edition.  This abandoned the old

article completely, and in its place gave a history of philology

free from admixture of scriptural doctrines.



Finally, in the year 1885, appeared the ninth edition, in which

Professors Whitney of Yale and Sievers of Tubingen give admirably

and in fair compass what is known of philology, making short work

of the sacred theory--in fact, throwing it overboard entirely.





IV.  TRIUMPH OF THE NEW SCIENCE.





Such was that chaos of thought into which the discovery of

Sanskrit suddenly threw its great light.  Well does one of the

foremost modern philologists say that this "was the electric

spark which caused the floating elements to crystallize into

regular forms."  Among the first to bring the knowledge of

Sanskrit to Europe were the Jesuit missionaries, whose services

to the material basis of the science of comparative philology had

already been so great; and the importance of the new discovery

was soon seen among all scholars, whether orthodox or scientific.

In 1784 the Asiatic Society at Calcutta was founded, and with it

began Sanskrit philology.  Scholars like Sir William Jones,

Carey, Wilkins, Foster, Colebrooke, did noble work in the new

field.  A new spirit brooded over that chaos, and a great new orb

of science was evolved.



The little group of scholars who gave themselves up to these

researches, though almost without exception reverent Christians,

were recognised at once by theologians as mortal foes of the

whole sacred theory of language.  Not only was the dogma of the

multiplication of languages at the Tower of Babel swept out of

sight by the new discovery, but the still more vital dogma of the

divine origin of language, never before endangered, was felt to

be in peril, since the evidence became overwhelming that so many

varieties had been produced by a process of natural growth.



Heroic efforts were therefore made, in the supposed interest of

Scripture, to discredit the new learning.  Even such a man as

Dugald Stewart declared that the discovery of Sanskrit was

altogether fraudulent, and endeavoured to prove that the Brahmans

had made it up from the vocabulary and grammar of Greek and

Latin.  Others exercised their ingenuity in picking the new

discovery to pieces, and still others attributed it all to the

machinations of Satan.



On the other hand, the more thoughtful men in the Church

endeavoured to save something from the wreck of the old system by

a compromise.  They attempted to prove that Hebrew is at least a

cognate tongue with the original speech of mankind, if not the

original speech itself; but here they were confronted by the

authority they dreaded most--the great Christian scholar, Sir

William Jones himself.  His words were:  "I can only declare my

belief that the language of Noah is irretrievably lost.  After

diligent search I can not find a single word used in common by

the Arabian, Indian, and Tartar families, before the intermixture

of dialects occasioned by the Mohammedan conquests."



So, too, in Germany came full acknowledgment of the new truth,

and from a Roman Catholic, Frederick Schlegel.  He accepted the

discoveries in the old language and literature of India as final:

he saw the significance of these discoveries as regards

philology, and grouped the languages of India, Persia, Greece,

Italy, and Germany under the name afterward so universally

accepted--Indo-Germanic.



It now began to be felt more and more, even among the most

devoted churchmen, that the old theological dogmas regarding the

origin of language, as held "always, everywhere, and by all,"

were wrong, and that Lucretius and sturdy old Gregory of Nyssa

might be right.



But this was not the only wreck.  During ages the great men in

the Church had been calling upon the world to admire the amazing

exploit of Adam in naming the animals which Jehovah had brought

before him, and to accept the history of language in the light of

this exploit.  The early fathers, the mediaeval doctors, the

great divines of the Reformation period, Catholic and Protestant,

had united in this universal chorus.  Clement of Alexandria

declared Adam's naming of the animals proof of a prophetic gift.

St. John Chrysostom insisted that it was an evidence of

consummate intelligence.  Eusebius held that the phrase "That was

the name thereof" implied that each name embodied the real

character and description of the animal concerned.



This view was echoed by a multitude of divines in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries.  Typical among these was the great Dr.

South, who, in his sermon on The State of Man before the Fall,

declared that "Adam came into the world a philosopher, which

sufficiently appears by his writing the nature of things upon

their names."



In the chorus of modern English divines there appeared one of

eminence who declared against this theory:  Dr. Shuckford,

chaplain in ordinary to his Majesty George II, in the preface to

his work on The Creation and Fall of Man, pronounced the whole

theory "romantic and irrational."  He goes on to say:  "The

original of our speaking was from God; not that God put into

Adam's mouth the very sounds which he designed he should use as

the names of things; but God made Adam with the powers of a man;

he had the use of an understanding to form notions in his mind of

the things about him, and he had the power to utter sounds which

should be to himself the names of things according as he might

think fit to call them."



This echo of Gregory of Nyssa was for many years of little avail.

Historians of philosophy still began with Adam, because only a

philosopher could have named all created things.  There was,

indeed, one difficulty which had much troubled some theologians:

this was, that fishes were not specially mentioned among the

animals brought by Jehovah before Adam for naming.  To meet this

difficulty there was much argument, and some theologians laid

stress on the difficulty of bringing fishes from the sea to the

Garden of Eden to receive their names; but naturally other

theologians replied that the almighty power which created the

fishes could have easily brought them into the garden, one by

one, even from the uttermost parts of the sea.  This point,

therefore, seems to have been left in abeyance.[418]



[418] For the danger of "the little system of the history of the

world," see Sayce, as above.  On Dugald Stewart's contention, see

Max Muller, Lectures on Language, pp. 167, 168.  For Sir William

Jones, see his Works, London, 1807, vol. i, p. 199.  For

Schlegel, see Max Muller, as above.  For an enormous list of

great theologians, from the fathers down, who dwelt on the divine

inspiration and wonderful gifts of Adam on this subject, see

Canon Farrar, Language and Languages.  The citation from Clement

of Alexandria is Strom.. i, p. 335.  See also Chrysostom, Hom.

XIV in Genesin; also Eusebius, Praep. Evang. XI, p. 6.  For the

two quotations given above from Shuckford, see The Creation and

Fall of Man, London, 1763, preface, p. lxxxiii; also his Sacred

and Profane History of the World, 1753; revised edition by

Wheeler, London, 1858.  For the argument regarding the difficulty

of bringing the fishes to be named into the Garden of Eden, see

Massey, Origin and Progress of Letters, London, 1763, pp. 14-19.





It had continued, then, the universal belief in the Church that

the names of all created things, except possibly fishes, were

given by Adam and in Hebrew; but all this theory was whelmed in

ruin when it was found that there were other and indeed earlier

names for the same animals than those in the Hebrew language;

and especially was this enforced on thinking men when the

Egyptian discoveries began to reveal the pictures of animals with

their names in hieroglyphics at a period earlier than that agreed

on by all the sacred chronologists as the date of the Creation.



Still another part of the sacred theory now received its

death-blow.  Closely allied with the question of the origin of

language was that of the origin of letters.  The earlier writers

had held that letters were also a divine gift to Adam; but as we

go on in the eighteenth century we find theological opinion

inclining to the belief that this gift was reserved for Moses.

This, as we have seen, was the view of St. John Chrysostom; and

an eminent English divine early in the eighteenth century, John

Johnson, Vicar of Kent, echoed it in the declaration concerning

the alphabet, that "Moses first learned it from God by means of

the lettering on the tables of the law."  But here a difficulty

arose--the biblical statement that God commanded Moses to "write

in a book" his decree concerning Amalek before he went up into

Sinai.  With this the good vicar grapples manfully.  He supposes

that God had previously concealed the tables of stone in Mount

Horeb, and that Moses, "when he kept Jethro's sheep thereabout,

had free access to these tables, and perused them at discretion,

though he was not permitted to carry them down with him."  Our

reconciler then asks for what other reason could God have kept

Moses up in the mountain forty days at a time, except to teach

him to write; and says, "It seems highly probable that the angel

gave him the alphabet of the Hebrew, or in some other way unknown

to us became his guide."



But this theory of letters was soon to be doomed like the other

parts of the sacred theory.  Studies in Comparative Philology,

based upon researches in India, began to be reenforced by facts

regarding the inscriptions in Egypt, the cuneiform inscriptions

of Assyria, the legends of Chaldea, and the folklore of

China--where it was found in the sacred books that the animals

were named by Fohi, and with such wisdom and insight that every

name disclosed the nature of the corresponding animal.



But, although the old theory was doomed, heroic efforts were

still made to support it.  In 1788 James Beattie, in all the

glory of his Oxford doctorate and royal pension, made a vigorous

onslaught, declaring the new system of philology to be "degrading

to our nature," and that the theory of the natural development of

language is simply due to the beauty of Lucretius' poetry.  But

his main weapon was ridicule, and in this he showed himself a

master.  He tells the world, "The following paraphrase has

nothing of the elegance of Horace or Lucretius, but seems to have

all the elegance that so ridiculous a doctrine deserves":



"When men out of the earth of old

A dumb and beastly vermin crawled;

For acorns, first, and holes of shelter,

They tooth and nail, and helter skelter,

Fought fist to fist; then with a club

Each learned his brother brute to drub;

Till, more experienced grown, these cattle

Forged fit accoutrements for battle.

At last (Lucretius says and Creech)

They set their wits to work on SPEECH:

And that their thoughts might all have marks

To make them known, these learned clerks

Left off the trade of cracking crowns,

And manufactured verbs and nouns."





But a far more powerful theologian entered the field in England

to save the sacred theory of language--Dr. Adam Clarke.  He

was no less severe against Philology than against Geology.  In

1804, as President of the Manchester Philological Society, he

delivered an address in which he declared that, while men of all

sects were eligible to membership, "he who rejects the

establishment of what we believe to be a divine revelation, he

who would disturb the peace of the quiet, and by doubtful

disputations unhinge the minds of the simple and unreflecting,

and endeavour to turn the unwary out of the way of peace and

rational subordination, can have no seat among the members of

this institution."  The first sentence in this declaration gives

food for reflection, for it is the same confusion of two ideas

which has been at the root of so much interference of theology

with science for the last two thousand years.  Adam Clarke speaks

of those "who reject the establishment of what, WE BELIEVE, to be

a divine revelation."  Thus comes in that customary begging of

the question--the substitution, as the real significance of

Scripture, of "WHAT WE BELIEVE" for what IS.



The intended result, too, of this ecclesiastical sentence was

simple enough.  It was, that great men like Sir William Jones,

Colebrooke, and their compeers, must not be heard in the

Manchester Philological Society in discussion with Dr. Adam

Clarke on questions regarding Sanskrit and other matters

regarding which they knew all that was then known, and Dr.

Clarke knew nothing.



But even Clarke was forced to yield to the scientific current.

Thirty years later, in his Commentary on the Old Testament, he

pitched the claims of the sacred theory on a much lower key.  He

says:  "Mankind was of one language, in all likelihood the

Hebrew....The proper names and other significations given in

the Scripture seem incontestable evidence that the Hebrew

language was the original language of the earth,--the language in

which God spoke to man, and in which he gave the revelation of

his will to Moses and the prophets."  Here are signs that this

great champion is growing weaker in the faith:  in the citations

made it will be observed he no longer says "IS," but "SEEMS"; and

finally we have him saying, "What the first language was is

almost useless to inquire, as it is impossible to arrive at any

satisfactory information on this point."



In France, during the first half of the nineteenth century, yet

more heavy artillery was wheeled into place, in order to make a

last desperate defence of the sacred theory.  The leaders in

this effort were the three great Ultramontanes, De Maistre, De

Bonald, and Lamennais.  Condillac's contention that "languages

were gradually and insensibly acquired, and that every man had

his share of the general result," they attacked with reasoning

based upon premises drawn from the book of Genesis.  De Maistre

especially excelled in ridiculing the philosophic or scientific

theory.  Lamennais, who afterward became so vexatious a thorn in

the side of the Church, insisted, at this earlier period, that

"man can no more think without words than see without light."

And then, by that sort of mystical play upon words so well known

in the higher ranges of theologic reasoning, he clinches his

argument by saying, "The Word is truly and in every sense `the

light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.'"



But even such champions as these could not stay the progress of

thought.  While they seemed to be carrying everything before them

in France, researches in philology made at such centres of

thought as the Sorbonne and the College of France were

undermining their last great fortress.  Curious indeed is it to

find that the Sorbonne, the stronghold of theology through so

many centuries, was now made in the nineteenth century the

arsenal and stronghold of the new ideas.  But the most striking

result of the new tendency in France was seen when the greatest

of the three champions, Lamennais himself, though offered the

highest Church preferment, and even a cardinal's hat, braved the

papal anathema, and went over to the scientific side.[419]



[419] For Johnson's work, showing how Moses learned the alphabet,

see the Collection of Discourses by Rev. John Johnson, A. M.,

Vicar of Kent, London, 1728, p. 42, and the preface.  For

Beattie, see his Theory of Language, London, 1788, p. 98; also

pp. 100, 101.  For Adam Clarke, see, for the speech cited, his

Miscellaneous Works, London, 1837; for the passage from his

Commentary, see the London edition of 1836, vol. i, p. 93; for

the other passage, see Introduction to Bibliographical

Miscellany, quoted in article, Origin of Language and

Alphabetical Characters, in Methodist Magazine, vol. xv, p. 214.

For De Bonald, see his Recherches Philosophiques, part iii, chap.

ii, De l'Origine du Language, in his Oeuvres, Bruxelles, 1852,

vol. i, Les Soirees de Saint Petersbourg, deuxieme entretien,

passim.  For Lamennais, see his Oeuvres Completes, Paris, 1836-

'37, tome ii, pp.78-81, chap. xv of Essai sur l'Indifference en

Matiere de Religion.





In Germany philological science took so strong a hold that its

positions were soon recognised as impregnable.  Leaders like the

Schlegels, Wilhelm von Humboldt, and above all Franz Bopp and

Jacob Grimm, gave such additional force to scientific truth that

it could no longer be withstood.  To say nothing of other

conquests, the demonstration of that great law in philology which

bears Grimm's name brought home to all thinking men the evidence

that the evolution of language had not been determined by the

philosophic utterances of Adam in naming the animals which

Jehovah brought before him, but in obedience to natural law.



True, a few devoted theologians showed themselves willing to lead

a forlorn hope; and perhaps the most forlorn of all was that of

1840, led by Dr. Gottlieb Christian Kayser, Professor of

Theology at the Protestant University of Erlangen.  He does not,

indeed, dare put in the old claim that Hebrew is identical with

the primitive tongue, but he insists that it is nearer it than

any other.  He relinquishes the two former theological

strongholds--first, the idea that language was taught by the

Almighty to Adam, and, next, that the alphabet was thus taught to

Moses--and falls back on the position that all tongues are thus

derived from Noah, giving as an example the language of the

Caribbees, and insisting that it was evidently so derived.  What

chance similarity in words between Hebrew and the Caribbee tongue

he had in mind is past finding out.  He comes out strongly in

defence of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, and

insists that "by the symbolical expression `God said, Let us go

down,' a further natural phenomenon is intimated, to wit, the

cleaving of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed became

impossible--that is to say, through a new or not universal flood,

a partial inundation and temporary violent separation of great

continents until the time of the rediscovery" By these words the

learned doctor means nothing less than the separation of Europe

from America.



While at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory of the

origin and development of language was upon the continent

considered as settled, and a well-ordered science had there

emerged from the old chaos, Great Britain still held back, in

spite of the fact that the most important contributors to the

science were of British origin.  Leaders in every English church

and sect vied with each other, either in denouncing the

encroachments of the science of language or in explaining them

away.



But a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected.  Perhaps

the most notable effort in bringing it in was made by Dr.

Wiseman, afterward Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.  His is

one of the best examples of a method which has been used with

considerable effect during the latest stages of nearly all the

controversies between theology and science.  It consists in

stating, with much fairness, the conclusions of the scientific

authorities, and then in persuading one's self and trying to

persuade others that the Church has always accepted them and

accepts them now as "additional proofs of the truth of

Scripture."  A little juggling with words, a little amalgamation

of texts, a little judicious suppression, a little imaginative

deduction, a little unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done.

One great service this eminent and kindly Catholic champion

undoubtedly rendered:  by this acknowledgment, so widely spread

in his published lectures, he made it impossible for Catholics or

Protestants longer to resist the main conclusions of science.

Henceforward we only have efforts to save theological

appearances, and these only by men whose zeal outran their

discretion.



On both sides of the Atlantic, down to a recent period, we see

these efforts, but we see no less clearly that they are mutually

destructive.  Yet out of this chaos among English-speaking

peoples the new science began to develop steadily and rapidly.

Attempts did indeed continue here and there to save the old

theory.  Even as late as 1859 we hear the eminent Presbyterian

divine, Dr. John Cumming, from his pulpit in London, speaking of

Hebrew as "that magnificent tongue--that mother-tongue, from

which all others are but distant and debilitated progenies."



But the honour of producing in the nineteenth century the most

absurd known attempt to prove Hebrew the primitive tongue belongs

to the youngest of the continents, Australia.  In the year 1857

was printed at Melbourne The Triumph of Truth, or a Popular

Lecture on the Origin of Languages, by B. Atkinson,

M.R.C.P.L.--whatever that may mean.  In this work, starting with

the assertion that "the Hebrew was the primary stock whence all

languages were derived," the author states that Sanskrit is "a

dialect of the Hebrew," and declares that "the manuscripts found

with mummies agree precisely with the Chinese version of the

Psalms of David."  It all sounds like Alice in Wonderland.

Curiously enough, in the latter part of his book, evidently

thinking that his views would not give him authority among

fastidious philologists, he says, "A great deal of our consent to

the foregoing statements arises in our belief in the Divine

inspiration of the Mosaic account of the creation of the world

and of our first parents in the Garden of Eden."  A yet more

interesting light is thrown upon the author's view of truth, and

of its promulgation, by his dedication:  he says that, "being

persuaded that literary men ought to be fostered by the hand of

power," he dedicates his treatise "to his Excellency Sir H.

Barkly," who was at the time Governor of Victoria.



Still another curious survival is seen in a work which appeared

as late as 1885, at Edinburgh, by William Galloway, M.A., Ph.D.,

M.D.  The author thinks that he has produced abundant

evidence to prove that "Jehovah, the Second Person of the

Godhead, wrote the first chapter of Genesis on a stone pillar,

and that this is the manner by which he first revealed it to

Adam; and thus Adam was taught not only to speak but to read and

write by Jehovah, the Divine Son; and that the first lesson he

got was from the first chapter of Genesis."  He goes on to say:

"Jehovah wrote these first two documents; the first containing

the history of the Creation, and the second the revelation of

man's redemption,...for Adam's and Eve's instruction; it is

evident that he wrote them in the Hebrew tongue, because that was

the language of Adam and Eve."  But this was only a flower out of

season.



And, finally, in these latter days Mr. Gladstone has touched

the subject.  With that well-known facility in believing anything

he wishes to believe, which he once showed in connecting

Neptune's trident with the doctrine of the Trinity, he floats

airily over all the impossibilities of the original Babel legend

and all the conquests of science, makes an assertion regarding

the results of philology which no philologist of any standing

would admit, and then escapes in a cloud of rhetoric after his

well-known fashion.



This, too, must be set down simply as a survival, for in the

British Isles as elsewhere the truth has been established.  Such

men as Max Muller and Sayce in England,--Steinthal, Schleicher,

Weber, Karl Abel, and a host of others in Germany,--Ascoli and De

Gubernatis in Italy,--and Whitney, with the scholars inspired by

him, in America, have carried the new science to a complete

triumph.  The sons of Yale University may well be proud of the

fact that this old Puritan foundation was made the headquarters

of the American Oriental Society, which has done so much for the

truth in this field.[420]



[420] For Mr. Gladstone's view, see his Impregnable Rock of Holy

Scripture, London, 1890, pp. 241 et seq.  The passage connecting

the trident of Neptune with the Trinity is in his Juventus Mundi.

To any American boy who sees how inevitably, both among Indian

and white fishermen, the fish spear takes the three-pronged form,

this utterance of Mr. Gladstone is amazing.







V.  SUMMARY.





It may be instructive, in conclusion, to sum up briefly the

history of the whole struggle.



First, as to the origin of speech, we have in the beginning the

whole Church rallying around the idea that the original language

was Hebrew; that this language, even including the medieval

rabbinical punctuation, was directly inspired by the Almighty;

that Adam was taught it by God himself in walks and talks; and

that all other languages were derived from it at the "confusion

of Babel."



Next, we see parts of this theory fading out:  the inspiration of

the rabbinical points begins to disappear.  Adam, instead of

being taught directly by God, is "inspired" by him.



Then comes the third stage:  advanced theologians endeavour to

compromise on the idea that Adam was "given verbal roots and a

mental power."



Finally, in our time, we have them accepting the theory that

language is the result of an evolutionary process in obedience to

laws more or less clearly ascertained.  Babel thus takes its

place quietly among the sacred myths.



As to the origin of writing, we have the more eminent theologians

at first insisting that God taught Adam to write; next we find

them gradually retreating from this position, but insisting that

writing was taught to the world by Noah.  After the retreat from

this position, we find them insisting that it was Moses whom God

taught to write.  But scientific modes of thought still

progressed, and we next have influential theologians agreeing

that writing was a Mosaic invention; this is followed by another

theological retreat to the position that writing was a

post-Mosaic invention.  Finally, all the positions are

relinquished, save by some few skirmishers who appear now and

then upon the horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle

method of "reconciling" the Babel myth with modern science.



Just after the middle of the nineteenth century the last stage of

theological defence was evidently reached--the same which is seen

in the history of almost every science after it has successfully

fought its way through the theological period--the declaration

which we have already seen foreshadowed by Wiseman, that the

scientific discoveries in question are nothing new, but have

really always been known and held by the Church, and that they

simply substantiate the position taken by the Church.  This new

contention, which always betokens the last gasp of theological

resistance to science, was now echoed from land to land.  In

1856 it was given forth by a divine of the Anglican Church,

Archdeacon Pratt, of Calcutta.  He gives a long list of eminent

philologists who had done most to destroy the old supernatural

view of language, reads into their utterances his own wishes, and

then exclaims, "So singularly do their labours confirm the

literal truth of Scripture."



Two years later this contention was echoed from the American

Presbyterian Church, and Dr. B. W. Dwight, having stigmatized as

"infidels" those who had not incorporated into their science the

literal acceptance of Hebrew legend, declared that "chronology,

ethnography, and etymology have all been tortured in vain to make

them contradict the Mosaic account of the early history of man."

Twelve years later this was re-echoed from England.  The Rev.

Dr. Baylee, Principal of the College of St. Aidan's, declared,

"With regard to the varieties of human language, the account of

the confusion of tongues is receiving daily confirmation by all

the recent discoveries in comparative philology."  So, too, in

the same year (1870), in the United Presbyterian Church of

Scotland, Dr. John Eadie, Professor of Biblical Literature and

Exegesis, declared, "Comparative philology has established the

miracle of Babel."



A skill in theology and casuistry so exquisite as to contrive

such assertions, and a faith so robust as to accept them,

certainly leave nothing to be desired.  But how baseless these

contentions are is shown, first, by the simple history of the

attitude of the Church toward this question; and, secondly, by

the fact that comparative philology now reveals beyond a doubt

that not only is Hebrew not the original or oldest language upon

earth, but that it is not even the oldest form in the Semitic

group to which it belongs.  To use the words of one of the most

eminent modern authorities, "It is now generally recognised that

in grammatical structure the Arabic preserves much more of the

original forms than either the Hebrew or Aramaic."



History, ethnology, and philology now combine inexorably to place

the account of the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of

races at Babel among the myths; but their work has not been

merely destructive:  more and more strong are the grounds for

belief in an evolution of language.



A very complete acceptance of the scientific doctrines has been

made by Archdeacon Farrar, Canon of Westminster.  With a

boldness which in an earlier period might have cost him dear, and

which merits praise even now for its courage, he says:  "For all

reasoners except that portion of the clergy who in all ages have

been found among the bitterest enemies of scientific discovery,

these considerations have been conclusive.  But, strange to say,

here, as in so many other instances, this self-styled

orthodoxy--more orthodox than the Bible itself--directly

contradicts the very Scriptures which it professes to explain,

and by sheer misrepresentation succeeds in producing a needless

and deplorable collision between the statements of Scripture and

those other mighty and certain truths which have been revealed to

science and humanity as their glory and reward."



Still another acknowledgment was made in America through the

instrumentality of a divine of the Methodist Episcopal Church,

whom the present generation at least will hold in honour not only

for his scholarship but for his patriotism in the darkest hour of

his country's need--John McClintock.  In the article on

Language, in the Biblical Cyclopaedia, edited by him and the Rev.

Dr. Strong, which appeared in 1873, the whole sacred theory is

given up, and the scientific view accepted.[421]



[421] For Kayser, see his work, Ueber die Ursprache, oder uber

eine Behauptung Mosis, dass alle Sprachen der Welt von einer

einzigen der Noahhischen abstammen, Erlangen, 1840; see

especially pp. 5, 80, 95, 112.  For Wiseman, see his Lectures on

the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion, London,

1836.  For examples typical of very many in this field, see the

works of Pratt, 1856; Dwight, 1858; Jamieson, 1868.  For citation

from Cumming, see his Great Tribulation, London, 1859, p. 4; see

also his Things Hard to be Understood, London, 1861, p. 48.  For

an admirable summary of the work of the great modern

philologists, and a most careful estimate of the conclusions

reached, see Prof. Whitney's article on Philology in the

Encyclopaedia Britannica.  A copy of Mr. Atkinson's book is in the

Harvard College Library, it having been presented by the Trustees

of the Public Library of Victoria.  For Galloway, see his

Philosophy of the Creation, Edinburgh and London, 1885, pp. 21,

238, 239, 446.  For citation from Baylee, see his Verbal

Inspiration the True Characteristic of God's Holy Word, London,

1870, p. 14 and elsewhere.  For Archdeacon Pratt, see his

Scripture and Science not at Variance, London, 1856, p. 55.  For

the citation from Dr. Eadie, see his Biblical Cyclopaedia,

London, 1870, p. 53.  For Dr. Dwight, see The New-Englander, vol.

xvi, p. 465.  For the theological article referred to as giving

up the sacred theory, see the Cyclopaedia of Biblical,

Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, prepared by Rev. John

McClintock, D. D., and James Strong, New York, 1873, vol. v, p.

233.  For Arabic as an earlier Semitic development than Hebrew,

as well as for much other valuable information on the questions

recently raised, see article Hebrew, by W. R. Smith, in the

latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  For quotation

from Canon Farrar, see his language and Languages, London, 1878,

pp. 6,7.





It may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of

theology have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding

the origin of language, as against the old explanations by myth

and legend.  The result has been a blessing both to science and

to religion.  No harm has been done to religion; what has been

done is to release it from the clog of theories which thinking

men saw could no longer be maintained.  No matter what has become

of the naming of the animals by Adam, of the origin of the name

Babel, of the fear of the Almighty lest men might climb up into

his realm above the firmament, and of the confusion of tongues

and the dispersion of nations; the essentials of Christianity, as

taught by its blessed Founder, have simply been freed, by

Comparative Philology, from one more great incubus, and have

therefore been left to work with more power upon the hearts and

minds of mankind.



Nor has any harm been done to the Bible.  On the contrary, this

divine revelation through science has made it all the more

precious to us.  In these myths and legends caught from earlier

civilizations we see an evolution of the most important religious

and moral truths for our race.  Myth, legend, and parable seem,

in obedience to a divine law, the necessary setting for these

truths, as they are successively evolved, ever in higher and

higher forms.  What matters it, then, that we have come to know

that the accounts of Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, and much

else in our sacred books, were remembrances of lore obtained from

the Chaldeans?  What matters it that the beautiful story of

Joseph is found to be in part derived from an Egyptian romance,

of which the hieroglyphs may still be seen?  What matters it that

the story of David and Goliath is poetry; and that Samson, like

so many men of strength in other religions, is probably a

sun-myth?  What matters it that the inculcation of high duty in

the childhood of the world is embodied in such quaint stories as

those of Jonah and Balaam?  The more we realize these facts, the

richer becomes that great body of literature brought together

within the covers of the Bible.  What matters it that those who

incorporated the Creation lore of Babylonia and other Oriental

nations into the sacred books of the Hebrews, mixed it with their

own conceptions and deductions?  What matters it that Darwin

changed the whole aspect of our Creation myths; that Lyell and

his compeers placed the Hebrew story of Creation and of the

Deluge of Noah among legends; that Copernicus put an end to the

standing still of the sun for Joshua; that Halley, in

promulgating his law of comets, put an end to the doctrine of

"signs and wonders"; that Pinel, in showing that all insanity is

physical disease, relegated to the realm of mythology the witch

of Endor and all stories of demoniacal possession; that the Rev.

Dr. Schaff, and a multitude of recent Christian travellers

in Palestine, have put into the realm of legend the story of

Lot's wife transformed into a pillar of salt; that the

anthropologists, by showing how man has risen everywhere from low

and brutal beginnings, have destroyed the whole theological

theory of "the fall of man"?  Our great body of sacred literature

is thereby only made more and more valuable to us:  more and more

we see how long and patiently the forces in the universe which

make for righteousness have been acting in and upon mankind

through the only agencies fitted for such work in the earliest

ages of the world--through myth, legend, parable, and poem.