NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 447 



A skill in theology and casuistry so exquisitely developed as 

 to permit such assertions, and a faith so robust as to warrant 

 their acceptance, leave certainly nothing to be desired. But how 

 baseless these contentions are is seen, 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 lan- 

 guage upon earth, but that it is not even the oldest form in the 

 Semitic group to which it belongs. To use the language of one 

 of the most eminent modern authorities, "It is now generally 

 recognized that in grammatical structure the Arabic preserves 

 much more of the original forms than either the Hebrew or 

 Aramaic." 



Science places inexorably the account of the confusion of 

 tongues and the dispersion of races at Babel among the myths. 



A more complete relinquishment of the old contention is made 

 by Archdeacon Farrar, Canon of Westminster. "With a boldness 

 which in an earlier period might have cost him dear, but which 

 merits praise even in this time 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 misrepre- 

 sentation 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 most honorable 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 honor, 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 quietly given up, and the scientific view accepted.* 



* For Kayser, see his work, Ueber die Ursprache, oder iiber eine Behauptung Mosis, dass 

 alle Spraehen der Welt von einer einzigen der Noachischen abstammen, Erlangen, 1840, 

 192 pp. ; see especially pp. 5, 80, 95, 112. For Wiseman, see his Lectures on the Connec- 

 tion 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 cf 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 



