History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom Part 61

Still more striking is a Mexican legend: according to this, the giant Xelhua built the great Pyramid of Cholula, in order to reach heaven, until the G.o.ds, angry at his audacity, threw fire upon the building and broke it down, whereupon every separate family received a language of its own.

Such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth. A well-known form of the legend, more like the Chaldean than the Hebrew later form, appeared among the Greeks. According to this, the Aloidae piled Mount Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, in their efforts to reach heaven and dethrone Jupiter.

Still another form of it entered the thoughts of Plato. He held that in the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same language, but that Zeus confounded their speech because men were proud and demanded eternal youth and immortality.(413)

(413) For the identification of the Tower of Babel with the "Birs Nimrad" amid the ruins of the city of Borsippa, see Rawlinson; also Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, London, 1885, pp. 106-112 and following; and especially George Smith, a.s.syrian Discoveries, p. 59. For some of these inscriptions discovered and read by George Smith, see his Chaldean Account of Genesis, new York, 1876, pp. 160-162. For the statement regarding the origin of the word Babel, see Ersch and Gruber, article Babylon; also the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; also Colenso, Pentateuch Examined, part iv, p. 302; also John Fiske, Myths and Myth-makers, p. 72; also Lenormont, Histoire Ancienne de l'Orient, Paris, 1881, vol. i, pp. 115 et seq. As to the character and purpose of the great tower of the temple of Belus, see Smith's Bible Dictionary, article Babel, quoting Diodorus; also Rawlinson, especially in Journal of the Asiatic Society for 1861; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (Hibbert Lectures for 1887), London, 1887, chap. ii and elsewhere, especially pages 96, 397, 407; also Max Duncker, History of Antiquity, Abbott's translation, vol. ii, chaps. ii, and iii.

For similar legends in other parts of the world, see Delitzsch; also Humboldt, American Researches; also Brinton, Myths of the New World; also Colenso, as above. The Tower of Cholula is well known, having been described by Humboldt and Lord Kingsborough. For superb engravings showing the view of Babel as developed by the theological imagination, see Kircher, Turris Babel, Amsterdam, 1679. For the Law of Wills and Causes, with deductions from it well stated, see Beattie Crozier, Civilization and Progress, London, 1888, pp. 112, 178, 179, 273. For Plato, see the Politicus, p. 272, ed. Stephani, cited in Ersch and Gruber, article Babylon. For a good general statement, see Bible Myths, New York, 1883, chap. iii. For Aristotle's strange want of interest in any cla.s.sification of the varieties of human speech, see Max Muller, Lectures on the Science of Language, London, 1864, series i, chap. iv, pp. 123-125.

But naturally the version of the legend which most affected Christendom was that modification of the Chaldean form developed among the Jews and embodied in their sacred books. To a thinking man in these days it is very instructive. The coming down of the Almighty from heaven to see the tower and put an end to it by dispersing its builders, points to the time when his dwelling was supposed to be just above the firmament or solid vault above the earth: the time when he exercised his beneficent activity in such acts as opening "the windows of heaven" to give down rain upon the earth; in bringing out the sun every day and hanging up the stars every night to give light to the earth; in hurling comets, to give warning; in placing his bow in the cloud, to give hope; in, coming down in the cool of the evening to walk and talk with the man he had made; in making coats of skins for Adam and Eve; in enjoying the odour of flesh which Noah burned for him; in eating with Abraham under the oaks of Mamre; in wrestling with Jacob; and in writing with his own finger on the stone tables for Moses.

So came the answer to the third question regarding language; and all three answers, embodied in our sacred books and implanted in the Jewish mind, supplied to the Christian Church the germs of a theological development of philology. These germs developed rapidly in the warm atmosphere of devotion and ignorance of natural law which pervaded the early Church, and there grew a great orthodox theory of language, which was held throughout Christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all," for nearly two thousand years, and to which, until the present century, all science has been obliged, under pains and penalties, to conform.

There did, indeed, come into human thought at an early period some suggestions of the modern scientific view of philology. Lucretius had proposed a theory, inadequate indeed, but still pointing toward the truth, as follows: "Nature impelled man to try the various sounds of the tongue, and so struck out the names of things, much in the same way as the inability to speak is seen in its turn to drive children to the use of gestures." But, among the early fathers of the Church, the only one who seems to have caught an echo of this utterance was St. Gregory of Nyssa: as a rule, all the other great founders of Christian theology, as far as they expressed themselves on the subject, took the view that the original language spoken by the Almighty and given by him to men was Hebrew, and that from this all other languages were derived at the destruction of the Tower of Babel. This doctrine was especially upheld by Origen, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine. Origen taught that "the language given at the first through Adam, the Hebrew, remained among that portion of mankind which was a.s.signed not to any angel, but continued the portion of G.o.d himself." St. Augustine declared that, when the other races were divided by their own peculiar languages, Heber's family preserved that language which is not unreasonably believed to have been the common language of the race, and that on this account it was henceforth called Hebrew. St. Jerome wrote, "The whole of antiquity affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is written, was the beginning of all human speech."

Amid such great authorities as these even Gregory of Nyssa struggled in vain. He seems to have taken the matter very earnestly, and to have used not only argument but ridicule. He insists that G.o.d does not speak Hebrew, and that the tongue used by Moses was not even a pure dialect of one of the languages resulting from "the confusion." He makes man the inventor of speech, and resorts to raillery: speaking against his opponent Eunomius, he says that, "pa.s.sing in silence his base and abject garrulity," he will "note a few things which are thrown into the midst of his useless or wordy discourse, where he represents G.o.d teaching words and names to our first parents, sitting before them like some pedagogue or grammar master." But, naturally, the great authority of Origen, Jerome, and Augustine prevailed; the view suggested by Lucretius, and again by St. Gregory of Nyssa, died, out; and "always, everywhere, and by all," in the Church, the doctrine was received that the language spoken by the Almighty was Hebrew,--that it was taught by him to Adam,--and that all other languages on the face of the earth originated from it at the dispersion attending the destruction of the Tower of Babel.(414)

(414) For Lucretius's statement, see the De Rerum Natura, lib. v, Munro's edition, with translation, Cambridge, 1886, vol. iii. p.

141. For the opinion of Gregory of Nyssa, see Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft in Deutschland, Munchen, 1869, p. 179; and for the pa.s.sage cited, see Gregory of Nyssa in his Contra Eunomium, xii, in Migne's Patr. Graeca, vol. ii, p. 1043. For St. Jerome, see his Epistle XVIII, in Migne's Patr. Lat., vol. xxii, p. 365. For citation from St.

Augustine, see the City of G.o.d, Dod's translation, Edinburgh, 1871, vol. ii, p. 122. For citation from Origen, see his Homily XI, cited by Guichard in preface to L'Harmonie Etymologique, Paris, 1631, lib. xvi, chap. xi. For absolutely convincing proofs that the Jews derived the Babel and other legends of their sacred books fro the Chaldeans, see George Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, pa.s.sim; but especially for a most candid though somewhat reluctant summing up, see p. 291.

This idea threw out roots and branches in every direction, and so developed ever into new and strong forms. As all scholars now know, the vowel points in the Hebrew language were not adopted until at some period between the second and tenth centuries; but in the mediaeval Church they soon came to be considered as part of the great miracle,--as the work of the right hand of the Almighty; and never until the eighteenth century was there any doubt allowed as to the divine origin of these rabbinical additions to the text. To hesitate in believing that these points were dotted virtually by the very hand of G.o.d himself came to be considered a fearful heresy.

The series of battles between theology and science in the field of comparative philology opened just on this point, apparently so insignificant: the direct divine inspiration of the rabbinical punctuation. The first to impugn this divine origin of these vocal points and accents appears to have been a Spanish monk, Raymundus Martinus, in his Pugio Fidei, or Poniard of the Faith, which he put forth in the thirteenth century. But he and his doctrine disappeared beneath the waves of the orthodox ocean, and apparently left no trace.

For nearly three hundred years longer the full sacred theory held its ground; but about the opening of the sixteenth century another glimpse of the truth was given by a Jew, Elias Levita, and this seems to have had some little effect, at least in keeping the germ of scientific truth alive.

The Reformation, with its renewal of the literal study of the Scriptures, and its transfer of all infallibility from the Church and the papacy to the letter of the sacred books, intensified for a time the devotion of Christendom to this sacred theory of language. The belief was strongly held that the writers of the Bible were merely pens in the hand of G.o.d (Dei calami.{;?} Hence the conclusion that not only the sense but the words, letters, and even the punctuation proceeded from the Holy Spirit. Only on this one question of the origin of the Hebrew points was there any controversy, and this waxed hot. It began to be especially noted that these vowel points in the Hebrew Bible did not exist in the synagogue rolls, were not mentioned in the Talmud, and seemed unknown to St. Jerome; and on these grounds some earnest men ventured to think them no part of the original revelation to Adam.

Zwingli, so much before most of the Reformers in other respects, was equally so in this. While not doubting the divine origin and preservation of the Hebrew language as a whole, he denied the antiquity of the vocal points, demonstrated their unessential character, and pointed out the fact that St. Jerome makes no mention of them. His denial was long the refuge of those who shared this heresy.

But the full orthodox theory remained established among the vast majority both of Catholics and Protestants. The att.i.tude of the former is well ill.u.s.trated in the imposing work of the canon Marini, which appeared at Venice in 1593, under the t.i.tle of Noah's Ark: A New Treasury of the Sacred Tongue. The huge folios begin with the declaration that the Hebrew tongue was "divinely inspired at the very beginning of the world," and the doctrine is steadily maintained that this divine inspiration extended not only to the letters but to the punctuation.

Not before the seventeenth century was well under way do we find a thorough scholar bold enough to gainsay this preposterous doctrine. This new a.s.sailant was Capellus, Professor of Hebrew at Saumur; but he dared not put forth his argument in France: he was obliged to publish it in Holland, and even there such obstacles were thrown in his way that it was ten years before he published another treatise of importance.

The work of Capellus was received as settling the question by very many open-minded scholars, among whom was Hugo Grotius. But many theologians felt this view to be a blow at the sanct.i.ty and integrity of the sacred text; and in 1648 the great scholar, John Buxtorf the younger, rose to defend the orthodox citadel: in his Anticritica he brought all his stores of knowledge to uphold the doctrine that the rabbinical points and accents had been jotted down by the right hand of G.o.d.

The controversy waxed hot: scholars like Voss and Brian Walton supported Capellus; Was.m.u.th and many others of note were as fierce against him.

The Swiss Protestants were especially violent on the orthodox side; their formula consensus of 1675 declared the vowel points to be inspired, and three years later the Calvinists of Geneva, by a special canon, forbade that any minister should be received into their jurisdiction until he publicly confessed that the Hebrew text, as it to-day exists in the Masoretic copies, is, both as to the consonants and vowel points, divine and authentic.

While in Holland so great a man as Hugo Grotius supported the view of Capellus, and while in France the eminent Catholic scholar Richard Simon, and many others, Catholic and Protestant, took similar ground against this divine origin of the Hebrew punctuation, there was arrayed against them a body apparently overwhelming. In France, Bossuet, the greatest theologian that France has ever produced, did his best to crush Simon. In Germany, Was.m.u.th, professor first at Rostock and afterward at Kiel, hurled his Vindiciae at the innovators. Yet at this very moment the battle was clearly won; the arguments of Capellus were irrefragable, and, despite the commands of bishops, the outcries of theologians, and the sneering of critics, his application of strictly scientific observation and reasoning carried the day.

Yet a casual observer, long after the fate of the battle was really settled, might have supposed that it was still in doubt. As is not unusual in theologic controversies, attempts were made to galvanize the dead doctrine into an appearance of life. Famous among these attempts was that made as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century by two Bremen theologians, Hase and Iken. They put forth a compilation in two huge folios simultaneously at Leyden and Amsterdam, prominent in which work is the treatise on The Integrity of Scripture, by Johann Andreas Danzius, Professor of Oriental Languages and Senior Member of the Philosophical Faculty of Jena, and, to preface it, there was a formal and fulsome approval by three eminent professors of theology at Leyden.

With great fervour the author pointed out that "religion itself depends absolutely on the infallible inspiration, both verbal and literal, of the Scripture text"; and with impa.s.sioned eloquence he a.s.sailed the blasphemers who dared question the divine origin of the Hebrew points.

But this was really the last great effort. That the case was lost was seen by the fact that Danzius felt obliged to use other missiles than arguments, and especially to call his opponents hard names. From this period the old sacred theory as to the origin of the Hebrew points may be considered as dead and buried.

II. THE SACRED THEORY OF LANGUAGE IN ITS SECOND FORM.

But the war was soon to be waged on a wider and far more important field. The inspiration of the Hebrew punctuation having been given up, the great orthodox body fell back upon the remainder of the theory, and intrenched this more strongly than ever: the theory that the Hebrew language was the first of all languages--that which was spoken by the Almighty, given by him to Adam, transmitted through Noah to the world after the Deluge--and that the "confusion of tongues" was the origin of all other languages.

In giving account of this new phase of the struggle, it is well to go back a little. From the Revival of Learning and the Reformation had come the renewed study of Hebrew in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and thus the sacred doctrine regarding the origin of the Hebrew language received additional authority. All the early Hebrew grammars, from that of Reuchlin down, a.s.sert the divine origin and miraculous claims of Hebrew. It is constantly mentioned as "the sacred tongue"--sancta lingua. In 1506, Reuchlin, though himself persecuted by a large faction in the Church for advanced views, refers to Hebrew as "spoken by the mouth of G.o.d."

This idea was popularized by the edition of the Margarita Philosophica, published at Strasburg in 1508. That work, in its successive editions a mirror of human knowledge at the close of the Middle Ages and the opening of modern times, contains a curious introduction to the study of Hebrew, In this it is declared that Hebrew was the original speech "used between G.o.d and man and between men and angels." Its full-page frontispiece represents Moses receiving from G.o.d the tables of stone written in Hebrew; and, as a conclusive argument, it reminds us that Christ himself, by choosing a Hebrew maid for his mother, made that his mother tongue.

It must be noted here, however, that Luther, in one of those outbursts of strong sense which so often appear in his career, enforced the explanation that the words "G.o.d said" had nothing to do with the articulation of human language. Still, he evidently yielded to the general view. In the Roman Church at the same period we have a typical example of the theologic method applied to philology, as we have seen it applied to other sciences, in the statement by Luther's great opponent, Cajetan, that the three languages of the inscription on the cross of Calvary "were the representatives of all languages, because the number three denotes perfection."

In 1538 Postillus made a very important endeavour at a comparative study of languages, but with the orthodox a.s.sumption that all were derived from one source, namely, the Hebrew. Naturally, Comparative Philology blundered and stumbled along this path into endless absurdities. The most amazing efforts were made to trace back everything to the sacred language. English and Latin dictionaries appeared, in which every word was traced back to a Hebrew root. No supposition was too absurd in this attempt to square Science with Scripture. It was declared that, as Hebrew is written from right to left, it might be read either way, in order to produce a satisfactory etymology. The whole effort in all this sacred scholars.h.i.+p was, not to find what the truth is--not to see how the various languages are to be cla.s.sified, or from what source they are really derived--but to demonstrate what was supposed necessary to maintain what was then held to be the truth of Scripture; namely, that all languages are derived from the Hebrew.

This stumbling and blundering, under the sway of orthodox necessity, was seen among the foremost scholars throughout Europe. About the middle of the sixteenth century the great Swiss scholar, Conrad Gesner, beginning his Mithridates, says, "While of all languages Hebrew is the first and oldest, of all is alone pure and unmixed, all the rest are much mixed, for there is none which has not some words derived and corrupted from Hebrew."

Typical, as we approach the end of the sixteenth century, are the utterances of two of the most noted English divines. First of these may be mentioned Dr. William Fulke, Master of Pembroke Hall, in the University of Cambridge. In his Discovery of the Dangerous Rock of the Romish Church, published in 1580, he speaks of "the Hebrew tongue,... the first tongue of the world, and for the excellency thereof called 'the holy tongue.'"

Yet more emphatic, eight years later, was another eminent divine, Dr.

William Whitaker, Regius Professor of Divinity and Master of St. John's College at Cambridge. In his Disputation on Holy Scripture, first printed in 1588, he says: "The Hebrew is the most ancient of all languages, and was that which alone prevailed in the world before the Deluge and the erection of the Tower of Babel. For it was this which Adam used and all men before the Flood, as is manifest from the Scriptures, as the fathers testify." He then proceeds to quote pa.s.sages on this subject from St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and others, and cites St. Chrysostom in support of the statement that "G.o.d himself showed the model and method of writing when he delivered the Law written by his own finger to Moses."(415)

(415) For the whole scriptural argument, embracing the various texts on which the sacred science of Philology was founded, with the use made of such texts, see Benfey, Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft in Deutschland, Munchen, 1869, pp. 22-26. As to the origin of the vowel points, see Benfey, as above; he holds that they began to be inserted in the second century A.D., and that the process lasted until about the tenth. For Raymundus and his Pugio Fidei, see G. L. Bauer, Prolegomena to his revision of Gla.s.sius's Philologia Sacra, Leipsic, 1795,--see especially pp. 8-14, in tome ii of the work. For Zwingli, see Praef. in Apol. comp. Isaiae (Opera, iii). See also Morinus, De Lingua primaeva, p.447. For Marini, see his Arca Noe: Thesaurus Linguae Sanctae, Venet., 1593, and especially the preface. For general account of Capellus, see G. L. Bauer, in his Prolegomena, as above, vol. ii, pp. 8-14. His Arcanum Premetationis Revelatum was brought out at Leyden in 1624; his Critica Sacra ten years later. See on Capellus and Swiss theologues, Wolfius, Bibliotheca Nebr., tome ii, p. 27. For the struggle, see Schnedermann, Die Controverse des Ludovicus Capellus mit den Buxtorfen, Leipsic, 1879, cited in article Hebrew, in Encyclopaedia Britannica. For Was.m.u.th, see his Vindiciae Sanctae Hebraicae Scripturae, Rostock, 1664.

For Reuchlin, see the dedicatory preface to his Rudimenta Hebraica, Pforzheim, 1506, folio, in which he speaks of the "in divina scriptura dicendi genus, quale os Dei locatum est." The statement in the Margarita Philosophica as to Hebrew is doubtless based on Reuchlin's Rudimenta Hebraica, which it quotes, and which first appeared in 1506. It is significant that this section disappeared from the Margarita in the following editions; but this disappearence is easily understood when we recall the fact that Gregory Reysch, its author, having become one of the Papal Commission to judge Reuchlin in his quarrel with the Dominicans, thought it prudent to side with the latter, and therefore, doubtless, considered it wise to suppress all evidence of Reuchlin's influence upon his beliefs. All the other editions of the Margarita in my possession are content with teaching, under the head of the Alphabet, that the Hebrew letters were invented by Adam. On Luther's view of the words "G.o.d said," see Farrar, Language and Languages. For a most valuable statement regarding the clas.h.i.+ng opinions at the Reformation, see Max Muller, as above, lecture iv, p. 132. For the prevailing view among the Reformers, see Calovius, vol. i, p. 484, and Thulock, The Doctrine of Inspiration, in Theolog. Essays, Boston, 1867. Both Muller and Benfey note, as especially important, the difference between the Church view and the ancient heathen view regarding "barbarians." See Muller, as above, lecture iv, p. 127, and Benfey, as above, pp. 170 et seq. For a very remarkable list of Bibles printed at an early period, see Benfey, p. 569. On the attempts to trace all words back to Hebrew roots, see Sayce, Introduction to the Science of Language, chap. vi. For Gesner, see his Mithridates (de differentiis linguarum), Zurich, 1555.

For a similar attempt to prove that Italian was also derived from Hebrew, see Giambullari, cited in Garlanda, p. 174. For Fulke, see the Parker Society's Publications, 1848, p. 224. For Whitaker, see his Disputation on Holy Scripture in the same series, pp. 112-114.

This sacred theory entered the seventeenth century in full force, and for a time swept everything before it. Eminent commentators, Catholic and Protestant, accepted and developed it.

Great prelates, Catholic and Protestant, stood guard over it, favouring those who supported it, doing their best to destroy those who would modify it.

In 1606 Stephen Guichard built new b.u.t.tresses for it in Catholic France.

He explains in his preface that his intention is "to make the reader see in the Hebrew word not only the Greek and Latin, but also the Italian, the Spanish, the French, the German, the Flemish, the English, and many others from all languages." As the merest tyro in philology can now see, the great difficulty that Guichard encounters is in getting from the Hebrew to the Aryan group of languages. How he meets this difficulty may be imagined from his statement, as follows: "As for the derivation of words by addition, subtraction, and inversion of the letters, it is certain that this can and ought thus to be done, if we would find etymologies--a thing which becomes very credible when we consider that the Hebrews wrote from right to left and the Greeks and others from left to right. All the learned recognise such derivations as necessary;... and... certainly otherwise one could scarcely trace any etymology back to Hebrew."

Of course, by this method of philological juggling, anything could be proved which the author thought necessary to his pious purpose.

Two years later, Andrew Willett published at London his Hexapla, or Sixfold Commentary upon Genesis. In this he insists that the one language of all mankind in the beginning "was the Hebrew tongue preserved still in Heber's family." He also takes pains to say that the Tower of Babel "was not so called of Belus, as some have imagined, but of confusion, for so the Hebrew word ballal signifieth"; and he quotes from St. Chrysostom to strengthen his position.

In 1627 Dr. Constantine l'Empereur was inducted into the chair of Philosophy of the Sacred Language in the University of Leyden. In his inaugural oration on The Dignity and Utility of the Hebrew Tongue, he puts himself on record in favour of the Divine origin and miraculous purity of that language. "Who," he says, "can call in question the fact that the Hebrew idiom is coeval with the world itself, save such as seek to win vainglory for their own sophistry?"

Two years after Willett, in England, comes the famous Dr. Lightfoot, the most renowned scholar of his time in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin; but all his scholars.h.i.+p was bent to suit theological requirements. In his Erubhin, published in 1629, he goes to the full length of the sacred theory, though we begin to see a curious endeavour to get over some linguistic difficulties.

One pa.s.sage will serve to show both the robustness of his faith and the acuteness of his reasoning, in view of the difficulties which scholars now began to find in the sacred theory." Other commendations this tongue (Hebrew) needeth none than what it hath of itself; namely, for sanct.i.ty it was the tongue of G.o.d; and for antiquity it was the tongue of Adam.

G.o.d the first founder, and Adam the first speaker of it.... It began with the world and the Church, and continued and increased in glory till the captivity in Babylon.... As the man in Seneca, that through sickness lost his memory and forgot his own name, so the Jews, for their sins, lost their language and forgot their own tongue.... Before the confusion of tongues all the world spoke their tongue and no other but since the confusion of the Jews they speak the language of all the world and not their own."

But just at the middle of the century (1657) came in England a champion of the sacred theory more important than any of these--Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester. His Polyglot Bible dominated English scriptural criticism throughout the remainder of the century. He prefaces his great work by proving at length the divine origin of Hebrew, and the derivation from it of all other forms of speech. He declares it "probable that the first parent of mankind was the inventor of letters."

His chapters on this subject are full of interesting details. He says that the Welshman, Davis, had already tried to prove the Welsh the primitive speech; Wormius, the Danish; Mitilerius, the German; but the bishop stands firmly by the sacred theory, informing us that "even in the New World are found traces of the Hebrew tongue, namely, in New England and in New Belgium, where the word Aguarda signifies earth, and the name Joseph is found among the Hurons." As we have seen, Bishop Walton had been forced to give up the inspiration of the rabbinical punctuation, but he seems to have fallen back with all the more tenacity on what remained of the great sacred theory of language, and to have become its leading champion among English-speaking peoples.

At that same period the same doctrine was put forth by a great authority in Germany. In 1657 Andreas Sennert published his inaugural address as Professor of Sacred Letters and Dean of the Theological Faculty at Wittenberg. All his efforts were given to making Luther's old university a fortress of the orthodox theory. His address, like many others in various parts of Europe, shows that in his time an inaugural with any save an orthodox statement of the theological platform would not be tolerated. Few things in the past are to the sentimental mind more pathetic, to the philosophical mind more natural, and to the progressive mind more ludicrous, than addresses at high festivals of theological schools. The audience has generally consisted mainly of estimable elderly gentlemen, who received their theology in their youth, and who in their old age have watched over it with jealous care to keep it well protected from every fresh breeze of thought. Naturally, a theological professor inaugurated under such auspices endeavours to propitiate his audience. Sennert goes to great lengths both in his address and in his grammar, published nine years later; for, declaring the Divine origin of Hebrew to be quite beyond controversy, he says: "Noah received it from our first parents, and guarded it in the midst of the waters; Heber and Peleg saved it from the confusion of tongues."