NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 293 



But naturally the version of the legend which most affected 

 Christendom was that modification of the Chaldean form devel- 

 oped 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 

 in the garden of Eden and to talk with the man he had made ; in 

 meeting one chosen man upon a mountain to give him laws, and 

 another in the desert to wrestle with him. 



But closely connected in its effects with this Babel legend was 

 that of the naming of the animals by Adam. It was written in 

 one of our two accounts of the creation that Jehovah came down 

 and brought all the animals before Adam, who gave them their 

 names. This and other indications of language, together with the 

 Chaldean legend, which, in passing through the Jewish mind, be- 

 came monotheistic, supplied to Christian theology the germs of a 

 sacred science of philology. These germs developed rapidly in the 

 warm atmosphere of devotion and ignorance of natural law which 

 pervaded the early Christian Church ; and so there grew a great 



Discoveries, p. 59. For a different view, see Lenormant, Histoire Ancienne de l'Orient, 

 vol. i, p. 118. 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 re- 

 garding the origin of the word Babel, see Ersch and Griiber, article Babel ; also, the Rev. 

 Prof. A. H. Sayce, in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; also Colenso, 

 Pentateuch examined, vol. iv, p. 268 ; also John Fiske, Myths and Myth-makers, p. 72 ; 

 also Lenormant, 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 Lect- 

 ures for 1887), London, 1877, chap. Hand elsewhere, especially pp. 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 Delitch ; also Humboldt, American Re- 

 searches ; also Brinton, Myths of the New World ; also Colenso, as above. The Tower of 

 Choluia is well known, having been described by Humboldt and Lord Kingsborough. For 

 superb engravings showing the view of Babel as developed by the theological imagina- 

 tion, 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, Lon- 

 don, 1888, pp. 112, 178, 179, 273. For Plato, see the Polit., 272, ed. Steph., and elsewhere 

 cited in Ersch and Griiber, 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 Miiller, Lectures on the Science of 

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



