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absolutely essential stand-point in a pliilosphical society, and, as on a former 
occasion I ventured to adopt the conduct of St. Paul at Athens, when he took 
the Athenians oil their own ground, so I shall remind you to-night of a still 
higher example, when the great Founder of Christianity met the sceptics of His 
day, who rejected nearly the whole of the Old Testament, and took them 
strictly on their own ground, i.e., on the Pentateuch, which they accepted 
themselves. That is the reason, and the only reason, why this paper is, as 
may be seen, so remarkable for the absence of Scriptural quotations, and while 
there are no allusions to this, that, or the other positions which may involve 
circumstances about which there are as many opinions as men. Suppose, for 
instance, you w r ere arguing with a Brahmin, in defence of your faith, and 
he were to say, “ I am perfectly willing to discuss the matter with you, but 
you must assume that my books are divine works, and that I only know how 
to interpret them. 5 ’ You would, of course, say at once, “I do not admit 
anything of the sort;” but I am afraid that when we are dealing with the 
world at large, v r e shall have to take people on their owm ground, and meet 
them from a stand-point on which all can agree. I have, therefore, in this 
paper endeavoured to take such common ground, and to show the evolu- 
tionists and others of our scientific friends that, taken on their own basis, the 
evidence they adduce does not give the results they suppose, but the contrar}' - . 
And here I would make just one or two remarks, after first thanking 
you for the kind patience with which you have listened to my paper. 
Our Chairman has spoken of the supervision of Divine, goodness. 
I have never denied it ; but I think we may suppose the Archbishop 
of York to be a fair Christian authority on these matters, and he 
says that language is a divine gift, but that the power, and not the 
result was imparted. The Chairman has also said that I have denied a 
primeval language. I have done nothing of the sort. Of course there must 
have been a primeval language, — a primeval language that is now 
unknown. If you will refer to page 317 of the paper, which I did not read, 
iu order that I might save time, you will find the question of original 
names there dealt with, and the bearing they have on the question whether 
there was a primeval language. As to which was the primitive language it 
cannot be inferred that, because some of our remote progenitors bore the 
same names as others, living hundreds of years after, they therefore spoke 
the same language. Of course the modern Italian differs from the ancient 
dialect that may have been spoken in an archaic age. The Hebrew 
language, as known to us in its most archaic documents, could only have 
come into existence when there was a Hebrew nation, and hundreds of years 
must then have passed since Abraham came out of another country where the 
Assyrian, the Chaldean, and the Babylonian languages, and languages 
of the same stock, or family, were spoken, though of a much older and 
distinctly different form, — languages which have a better claim to anti- 
quity, in the same way as, I believe, that Admu was an older form 
than Adam. Exception has been taken to the introductory heading of my 
