444 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 dis- 

 cretion. 



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 honor 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 Chi- 

 nese 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 con- 

 sent 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 

 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 ap- 

 peared 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 : 



