uld not stay the progress of thought.
While they seemed to be carrying everything before them in France,
researches in philology made at such centres of thought as the Sorbonne
and the College of France were undermining their last great fortress.
Curious indeed is it to find that the Sorbonne, the stronghold of
theology through so many centuries, was now made in the nineteenth
century the arsenal and stronghold of the new ideas. But the most
striking result of the new tendency in France was seen when the greatest
of the three champions, Lamennais himself, though offered the highest
Church preferment, and even a cardinal's hat, braved the papal anathema,
and went over to the scientific side.(419)

(419) For Johnson's work, showing how Moses learned the alphabet, see
the Collection of Discourses by Rev. John Johnson, A. M., Vicar of Kent,
London, 1728, p. 42, and the preface. For Beattie, see his Theory of
Language, London, 1788, p. 98; also pp. 100, 101. For Adam Clarke, see,
for the speech cited, his Miscellaneous Works, London, 1837; for the
passage from his Commentary, see the London edition of 1836, vol. i,
p. 93; for the other passage, see Introduction to Bibliographical
Miscellany, quoted in article, Origin of Language and Alphabetical
Characters, in Methodist Magazine, vol. xv, p. 214. For De Bonald,
see his Recherches Philosophiques, part iii, chap. ii, De l'Origine du
Language, in his Oeuvres, Bruxelles, 1852, vol. i, Les Soirees de Saint
Petersbourg, deuxieme entretien, passim. For Lamennais, see his Oeuvres
Completes, Paris, 1836-'37, tome ii, pp.78-81, chap. xv of Essai sur
l'Indifference en Matiere de Religion.

In Germany philological science took so strong a hold that its positions
were soon recognised as impregnable. Leaders like the Schlegels, Wilhelm
von Humboldt, and above all Franz Bopp and Jacob Grimm, gave such
additional force to scientific truth that it could no longer be
withstood. To say nothing of other conquests, the demonstration of that
great law in philology which bears Grimm's name brought home to all
thinking men the evidence that the evolution of language had not been
determined by the philosophic utterances of Adam in naming the animals
which Jehovah brought before him, but in obedience to natural law.

True, a few devoted theologians showed themselves willing to lead a
forlorn hope; and perhaps the most forlorn of all was that of 1840,
led by Dr. Gottlieb Christian Kayser, P