NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 291 



mind an indisputable proof that the tower was connected with 

 the sudden 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 since been found in the 

 Assyrian inscriptions. Its character is very simple ; to use the 

 words of the most eminent English-speaking authority, Prof. 

 Sayce, of Oxford, a clergyman of the Church of England, "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 the eminent professor 

 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. In its 

 earlier Chaldean form the legend runs, that the gods, assisted by 

 the winds, overthrew the work of the contrivers and introduced 

 a diversity of tongues. 



As to the real cause of the building of the tower there seems a 

 substantial agreement among leading scholars that it was erected 

 primarily as part of a temple, but largely for the purpose of as- 

 tronomical observations, to which the Chaldeans were so devoted, 

 and to which their country, with its level surface and clear at- 

 mosphere, was so well adapted. As to the real cause of its de- 



