3 o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



language, and to have "become its leading champion among Eng- 

 lish-speaking peoples. 



At this same period we have the same doctrine pnt forth by a 

 great authority in Germany. In 1G57 Andreas Sennert published 

 his inaugural address as Professor of Sacred Letters and Dean of 

 the Theological Faculty at Wittenberg. All his efforts are 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 hardly have been 

 tolerated. There are few things in the past to the sentimental 

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

 to the progressive mind more ludicrous, than most addresses on 

 such occasions before assemblages of learned theologians at high 

 festivals of great 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 see that it is well coddled and 

 protected from any fresh breeze of thought. Naturally, then, a 

 theological professor inaugurated under these circumstances has 

 endeavored to propitiate his audience. Sennert goes to great 

 lengths both in this and in his grammar, published nine years 

 later, for, declaring the divine origin of Hebrew to be quite be- 

 yond 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 procla- 

 mation may be imagined when we note in 1G63 that his book had 

 reached its sixth edition. 



It was re-echoed through England, Holland, Germany, France, 

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

 England Theophilus Gale sets himself to prove that not only all 

 the languages, but all the learning of the world, have been drawn 

 from the Hebrew records. 



The 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 lan- 

 guage could not have come into existence save as a direct gift 

 from heaven ; that there is a primitive language, the mother of 



