31 
which are widely different from those of Ussher. They differ most materially 
Hales’s system of chronology is certainly not the same as Ussher’s. Ussher’s 
was an ingenious calculation, but it is not to be accepted as part of the 
Bible. We have been so accustomed to see those figures 4004 put opposite 
to the first chapter of Genesis, in the account of the Creation, that wo 
are considered to be almost abandoning our Bible if we do not accept 
them. A religious society, in publishing the “ Commentary on the Bible,” 
was bold enough to say that the early dates of the Bible did not 
seem to be sufficiently clearly established to warrant their insertion ; 
and some remonstrances came from earnest men, who said, with alarm, 
“ You are attacking the Bible.” This is the way in which a great 
amount of injury may be done to the cause of truth and of religion. We 
assume certain interpretations of the Bible with which we have been 
familiar, and we tell people “ if you do not accept these, you cannot accept 
the doctrines of Kedemption.” That is a line of argument against which I 
must emphatically protest. I have referred to the monuments of Egypt as 
bearing upon the question of dates, and from these I cannot come to any 
other conclusion than that they afford a much greater antiquity for man’s 
existence than 7,000 years. Then look at language.* Trace it in all its 
families and their connections as far as you can ; and does not the form 
of those various tongues, with their peculiar characteristics and differences, 
require a longer time for growth than these few thousand years 1 
To my mind a very much longer time is required. It may be said that we 
have a dispersion of tongues at the building of the Tower of Babel, but all 
I can say is, we cannot suppose that in that dispersion of tongues 
languages were divided out as we now have them, for they all show the 
marks of gradual progress and gradual formation. If we argue at all, 
we must argue upon things as we see them ; and if we see traces of the 
progress and improvement of language by gradual stages, we are not to go 
back and say, all these could have been done miraculously at the building of 
the Tower of Babel. God does not work with His creatures in that way ; 
He does not invent these things in order to cheat us, and give us historical 
evidence of what is not historical. Whether we examine the crust of the earth, 
or the history of language, or the monuments of Egypt, all we can do is to 
take them on the principle that we are to read their history and their pro- 
gress in the same manner as we read the history and progress of what is 
before us. We need not maintain the strict uniformitarian system, that 
exactly the same rate of deposit was to be laid down every year. A great 
accumulation of worthless conjecture has been obtained by calculating the 
geological deposits that we have, and saying they must have taken 200,000 
or 250,000 years to produce. All that is extremely vague conjecture, but it 
does not destroy the main evidence of the great broad facts ; and I say look 
These two points are treated on in the Transactions, Yol. III. p. 464, 
et scq. 
