TITHE-GIVING AMONGST ANCIENT PAGAN NATIONS. 139 



In the inaugural Address of the Congress of Orientalists held 

 in London in 1895, arguing on philological grounds, he said : — 



" It is'tlae study of words, it is the science of langnage that has 

 withdrawn the curtain which formerly concealed these ancient 

 times and their intellectual struggles from the sight of historians. 

 Even now, when scholars speak of languages, and families of 

 languages, they often forget that languages mean speakers of 

 languages, and families of speech presuppose real families, or classes 

 or powerful confederacies which have struggled for their existence 

 and held their ground against all enemies. Languages, as we 

 read in the Book of Daniel, are the same as nations that dwell on 

 all the earth. If, therefoi^e, Greeks and Romans, Celts, Germans, 

 Slavs, Persians, and Indians, speaking different languages, and 

 each forming a separate nationality, constitute, as long as we know 

 them, a real historical fact, there is another fact equally real and 

 historical, though we may refer it to a prehistoric period, namely, 

 that there -was a time when the ancestors of all these nations and 

 languages formed one compact body, speaking one and the same 

 language, a language so real, so truly historical, that without it 

 there would never have been a real Greek, a real Latin language, 

 never a Greek Republic, never a Roman Empire; there would 

 have been no Sanscrit, no Vedas, no Avesta, no Plato, no Greek 

 iS"ew Testament." — Ed. 



