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we start with believing the Scriptures, and then find, upon a scientific exam- 
ination of man’s speech, that there is an undercurrent of similarity running 
through all languages, this is a ground for holding to the truth of what the 
Scriptures tell us. Now I think that that is a perfectly sound argument. 
And if you do not limit your consideration of the subject merely to language, 
-but if you will also take into account all human traditions ; if you will 
take the whole of man’s history, and all the facts connected with his past 
and present condition, so far as we can discover them, then you will find that 
what might be but a weak argument by itself, and if it rested upon philology 
alone, becomes, with the addition of these other arguments, a very strong 
and completely built-up proof of the original unity of the human race. We 
have the statement of the Bible to begin with— which surely must go for 
something ; and when we find it is supported by ah the other evidence we 
can collect, does not that afford good ground for holding to what the Scriptures 
narrate ? (Hear, hear.) For my own part, I do not hesitate to say that I 
do not believe that man could ever have invented language, if originally 
without speech. But, at the best, if he really did so, it must have been by 
a very slow process indeed. For we must remember that those who reject 
the Scriptures and adopt the polygenist theory, must start with mankind in 
the very lowest condition. Except to account for the existence of savages m 
that abject condition, with their low mental capacity and imperfect language, 
there would be no need for a polygenist hypothesis at all. But if you adopt 
that hypothesis, then the question is limited very nearly to this : What rational 
ground have you for believing that civilized man with his perfect language 
has been developed out of the savage with his ahnost unintelligible gibberish ? 
Now I venture to say, Mr. Warington has not given us any reason, nor a 
single fact, for believing in that. (Hear, hear.) As regards the somewhat 
ingenious argument he has advanced (whether he has adopted it bond fide as 
his own view, I do not know), namely, that as human nature is everywhere 
much alike, and as men have all the same organs of speech, they would 
therefore naturally hit upon the same sounds to express their ideas ; and hence 
the similarities in all languages might be accounted for. I can scarcely 
imagine a more thoroughly perverted view of the whole question than this. 
The° admission of such similarities is important. But it is surely notorious 
that it is because of the physical differences and the philological differences 
between one race and another of mankind, and between one language and 
another, that the polygenous theory of man’s origin has ever been thought of. 
It is surely a fact within our own experience also, that, starting with the same 
parents, we find diversities in their children, and that every living language 
of which we know anything is gradually changing and modifying before our 
eyes, and tending to diverge away from its original ; while it is not a fact that 
from diversity of origin we have any experience of this assumed tendency 
towards unity. The differences between languages are patent; but those 
traces of unity in various languages which Hr. Thornton has called attention to, 
are found lying hid in the original roots and the oldest germs of words, and not 
in their present forms or last developments. Then, as to the notion that the 
