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ject are twofold-negative and positive: 1. Comparative Philology has not proved, and can not prove, that all the languages of man did not have a common origin. 2. She has proved that all the more important languages are spoken by nations whose ancestors were the direct descendants of Noah; and she exhibits many facts, both as to the materials and the form of all languages, which show traces of such original unity. Or, in the words of Professor Müller,

"1. Nothing necessitates the admission of different independent beginnings for the material elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech; nay, it is possible even now to point out radicals, which, under various changes and disguises, have been current in these branches ever since their first separation.

"2. Nothing necessitates the admission of different beginnings for the formal elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech; and although it is not possible to derive the Aryan system of grammar from the Semitic, or the Semitic from the Aryan, we can perfectly understand how, either through individual influences, or by the wear and tear of speech in its own continuous working, the different systems of Asia and Europe may have been produced." *

*Science of Lang., vol. i. p. 340.

And says Professor Whitney, "Our general conclusion, which may be looked on as incontrovertibly established, is this: If the tribes of men are of different parentage, their languages could not be expected to be more unlike than they in fact are; while, on the other hand, if all mankind are of one blood, their tongues need not be more alike than we actually find them to be.” *

* Language, p. 394

CHAPTER X.

THE ARGUMENT FROM TRADITION.

Traditions of Primitive Ages to be expected.

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2. Of the Creation.

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3. Of

found to exist. Statement of Dr. Smyth.-Those only of Value in the Argument which are not derived from the Bible. -1. Traditions of one God. the Garden of Eden. 4. Of the Temptation and Fall. 5. Of the Weekly Division of Time.-6. Of the Deluge of Noah.

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If all men have descended from a single origin, and that so late as the flood of Noah, it might be expected that they would preserve some traditions of that fact, and of the chief events occurring in the infancy of the race. We should anticipate, indeed, that these would vary according to the genius and the outer history of the different nations, some retaining more vivid reminiscences than others, and all of them, perhaps, holding them in forms more or less disguised, with such additions or other modifications as might naturally arise in the lapse of centuries. And wherever such traditions are found, clearly defined and of unmistakable import, they afford strong

collateral evidence as to the origin of the people who entertain them.

Such traditions, in fact, exist. "The primitive condition of mankind," says Dr. Smyth ; " the purity and happiness of the golden age; the location of man in a garden; the tree of knowledge of good and evil; the influence of a serpent in the seduction and ruin of man; the consequent curse inflicted on map, on woman, and upon the earth; the promise of an incarnate Redeemer; traditions respecting Cain and Abel, Enoch and Noah; the longevity of the ancient patriarchs, and the existence of ten generations from Adam to Noah; the growing deteriorations of human nature; the reduction of man's age and power; the deluge and destruction of all mankind except a single family; the building of an ark, and its resting on a mountain, and the flying of the dove; the building of the Tower of Babel, and the miraculous confusion of languages; the institution of sacrifices; the rainbow, as the sign and symbol of destruction and of hope; the fable of the man in the moon which is equally known in opposite quarters of the globe; the great mother, who is a mythus of the ark; the hermaphrodite unity of all the gods and goddesses, from a mistaken notion of the creation of Adam and Eve; the nature and purport of the mysteries in the Old and New World;

groves, and mountains, and caves, as places of worship; traditions also of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and the Red Sea; the division of time by weeks; and the explanation of the future conflagration of the earth; these, and many other facts which lie at the foundation of sacred history, and the earliest events of humanity, are all found imbedded, like the fossils of the earth, in the traditionary legends, both written and oral, of every tribe and people under the whole heavens."

I am inclined to think that this language is too strong, certainly as affirming the existence of these traditions among every tribe and people. There may be casual resemblances in some single particulars which have no proper historical character, just as there are striking coincidences in many facts of the natural world, which have no vital connection with each other. It must be borne in mind, also, that only those traditions which have not been derived from the Bible itself, have any value in this argument. The influence of the Jewish and Christian religions has been very great and very wide in the world, and many things contained in them may have made their way thence within the knowledge of surrounding nations. Such, for instance, was probably the gen

* T. Smyth, On the Unity of the Human Races, pp. 237, 238.

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