tion to God and his government. All are in a fallen and morally debased state, and need redemption and salvation. And it is a doctrine of Christian theology, that Jesus Christ is a divine Redeemer for all. Now, this fact can not be adjusted to the theory of a plurality of origin without doing violence to the plainest teachings of the New Testament. By one inan sin entered into the world, and the race became a fallen race; by one man also salvation is provided, and its blessings are opened to all. The very fact of the common relation of all men to Adam, their parental head, is made the type and the ground of their similar common relation to Christ, the second Adam, the Saviour of the world.*

We conclude, then, that Ethnology, in its physiological aspects, concurs with history as respects the unity of the race. She presents to us no facts which are inconsistent with that unity; she finds nothing in the analogies from the lower races of animals which does not illustrate and confirm it.

* Rom. v. 12-19; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22, 45.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ARGUMENT FROM LANGUAGE.

The Hebrew formerly believed to have been the Primitive Language. Discovery of the Sanskrit, and its Effects. - Views of Stewart and Lord Monboddo. Labors of Sanskrit Scholars. Key to the Classification of Indo-European Languages. - Three great Families.—I. The Aryan.—II. The Semitic. – III. The Turanian. — Classification according to Structure. Monosyllabic, Agglutinative, and Inflectional. Bearing of the Diversity of Languages on the Argument. — 1. The Miraculous "Confusion of Tongues."-2. Languages have much in common between them. 3. Differences diminish as our Knowledge increases. -4. Languages undergo rapid Changes. Conclusion.

SCARCELY three fourths of a century have elapsed since the belief prevailed almost universally that the Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that all other languages have been derived from it. If we go back one or two centuries more, we arrive at a time when this opinion was quite universal. According to Professor Müller, Leibnitz was "the first who really conquered the prejudice that Hebrew

"It is astonish

was the source of all language." ing," he remarks, "what an immense amount of real learning and ingenuity was wasted on this question during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It finds, perhaps, but one parallel - in the laborious calculations and constructions of early astronomers, who had to account for the movements of the heavenly bodies, always taking it for granted that the earth must be the fixed center of the planetary system.†

"These labors continued till near the close of the last century, when the discovery and opening up of the Sanskrit literature wrought an entire revolution in regard to the whole subject of the classification of languages. So great was the excitement caused by this discovery, so radical and important were the results which it was perceived must flow from it, that some of the first scholars and philosophers of Europe doubted its genuineness. For example, Dugald Stewart denied the reality of such a language as the Sanskrit altogether, and wrote his famous essay to prove that it had been put together after the model of the Greek and Latin by those arch forgers and liars the Brahmans, and that the whole of the Sanskrit literature was an imposition." +

* Science of Lang., first series, p. 134. + Ibid. p. 133.

Ibid. p. 164.

Lord Monboddo treated the subject more philosophically, though scarcely more consistently. "He had," says Müller, "just finished his great work 'On the Origin and Progress of Languages,' in which he derives all mankind from a couple of apes, and all the dialects of the world from a language originally framed by some Egyptian gods, when the discovery of the Sanskrit came on him like a thunderbolt. It must be said, however, to his credit, that he at once perceived the immense importance of the discovery. He could not be expected to sacrifice his primeval monkeys or his Egyptian idols, but with that reservation the conclusions which he drew are highly creditable to his acute

ness.

He says (1792), 'I have got such certain information from India, that if I live to finish my history of man, which I have begun in my third volume of "Ancient Metaphysics," I shall be able clearly to prove that the Greek is derived from the Sanskrit, which was the ancient language of Egypt, and was carried by the Egyptians into India with their other arts, and into Greece with the colonies which settled there.'

"A few years later (1795) he had arrived at more definite views on the relation of Sanskrit to Greek; and he writes, 'Mr. Wilkins has proved to my conviction such a resemblance between the Greek and

the Sanskrit, that the one must be a dialect of the other, or both of some original language. Now, the Greek is certainly not a dialect of the Sanskrit, any more than the Sanskrit is of the Greek. They must, therefore, be both dialects of the same language; and that language could be no other than the language of Egypt brought into India by Osiris, of which undoubtedly the Greek was a dialect.'"*

But I must give another quotation from this distinguished nobleman and philosopher, to show his idea of the origin of human speech.

"I have supposed that language could not be invented without supernatural assistance, and accordingly I have maintained that it was the invention of the dæmon kings of Egypt, who, being more than men, first taught themselves to articulate, and then taught others.

But even among them, I am persuaded there was a progress in the art, and that such a language as the Sanskrit was not at once invented." †

This passage constrains me to remark that, so far as I am aware, his lordship was the first to make any practical account of the dæmon dynasties - the Manes of Egypt. It is true that others had allowed them a place in chronology, with a period of many

* Science of Lang., First Series, p. 140.

† Ibid. p. 160. Monboddo's Anc. Metaphysics, vol. iv. p. 357.