357 
so that He who endowed him with the and also with a spirit 
of untold and unknown power, could also continually educate the 
creature He had made, and sustain him in the use of his powers. 
Therefore, while I quite agree that language was welling forth, as has 
been described, from the internal resources of the man, — the tt vev/ia^ I 
take it, may reasonably be supposed to have been not only endowed with 
power, but guided in its efforts by Divine intelligence. At least, I cannot 
myself understand how else the remarkably abstract difficulties of lan- 
guage could be conquered by man. I confess it perplexes me to see how 
this could have been without some Divine supervision and guidance. The 
other theory is, of course, as all know, that man is only an improved 
ape ; and that, by some means or other, he has managed to pick up a mode 
of communicating with the other apes. I confess that I do not feel myself 
to belong to this community, and consequently decline to discuss the 
corresponding theory ; perhaps I could have wished that Mr. Brown 
could have as summarily dismissed it as I have ; because some of his con- 
clusions seem to me rather to take for granted that man did pick up his 
language in this kind of simial style. Possibly I am mistaken, but in the 
passage beginning, “ The circumstances of his first utterances,” the descrip- 
tion belongs to the simial period as far as I can understand it — that is, accord- 
ing to the evolutionist theory ; but in the Scriptural account I find man, in his 
first utterances, giving expression in good and correct language to the most 
abstract and difficult thoughts. If you look at the third chapter of Genesis 
you find the Almighty conversing with man, and man replying, and this 
upon the most difficult subjects. Sin and shame and punishment, and the 
things that are there discoursed about, are the most difficult abstract subjects, 
requiring the greatest perfection of language. My attention was drawn to 
this exact point once when, at the wish of one of my scientific friends, 
when I was young, I took down some portions of the language of the Krumen 
on the west coast of Africa. In translating the parable of the prodigal 
son, I found that a very intelligent Kruman, who had been under Christian 
instruction, hesitated as to the translation of the words, “I have sinned 
against Heaven.” He could not get hold of a version of that sentence 
at all, until he at last put it into the Scriptural phrase, — “ I have sinned 
in the presence of God.” “ I have sinned against Heaven,” I should have 
thought a simple idea ; but it was too abstract for him. Well, all these 
abstract conceptions you find in the conversations with man immediately, 
as far as I understand it, after his creation, and as soon as he is driven 
out of Paradise, and this may be considered not to have been a long 
period. Therefore, it follows that he must have been endowed with 
language from the beginning. How to explain this I do not know. I do 
not attempt to explain it any more than I can explain how the nightingale 
is endowed with its musical powers. That which applies to language applies 
to the nightingale. I think, therefore, there must have been a primitive 
language, because only two persons spoke it. That that language was the 
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