logical, and Ecclesiastical Literature, prepared by Rev.
John McClintock, D. D., and James Strong, New York, 1873, vol. v, p.
233. For Arabic as an earlier Semitic development than Hebrew, as well
as for much other valuable information on the questions recently
raised, see article Hebrew, by W. R. Smith, in the latest edition of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For quotation from Canon Farrar, see his
language and Languages, London, 1878, pp. 6,7.

It may, indeed, be now fairly said that the thinking leaders of theology
have come to accept the conclusions of science regarding the origin of
language, as against the old explanations by myth and legend. The result
has been a blessing both to science and to religion. No harm has been
done to religion; what has been done is to release it from the clog of
theories which thinking men saw could no longer be maintained. No matter
what has become of the naming of the animals by Adam, of the origin of
the name Babel, of the fear of the Almighty lest men might climb up into
his realm above the firmament, and of the confusion of tongues and the
dispersion of nations; the essentials of Christianity, as taught by its
blessed Founder, have simply been freed, by Comparative Philology, from
one more great incubus, and have therefore been left to work with more
power upon the hearts and minds of mankind.

Nor has any harm been done to the Bible. On the contrary, this divine
revelation through science has made it all the more precious to us.
In these myths and legends caught from earlier civilizations we see an
evolution of the most important religious and moral truths for our
race. Myth, legend, and parable seem, in obedience to a divine law, the
necessary setting for these truths, as they are successively evolved,
ever in higher and higher forms. What matters it, then, that we have
come to know that the accounts of Creation, the Fall, the Deluge, and
much else in our sacred books, were remembrances of lore obtained from
the Chaldeans? What matters it that the beautiful story of Joseph is
found to be in part derived from an Egyptian romance, of which the
hieroglyphs may still be seen? What matters it that the story of David
and Goliath is poetry; and that Samson, like so many men of strength
in other religions, is probably a sun-myth? What matters it that the
inculcation of high duty in the childhood of the world is embodied in
such quaint stories as those of Jonah and Balaam? The more we