History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

But even such champions as these could 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, Professor of Theology at the Protestant University of Erlangen. He does not, indeed, dare put in the old claim that Hebrew is identical with the primitive tongue, but he insists that it is nearer it than any other. He relinquishes the two former theological strongholds—first, the idea that language was taught by the Almighty to Adam, and, next, that the alphabet was thus taught to Moses—and falls back on the position that all tongues are thus derived from Noah, giving as an example the language of the Caribbees, and insisting that it was evidently so derived. What chance similarity in words between Hebrew and the Caribbee tongue he had in mind is past finding out. He comes out strongly in defence of the biblical account of the Tower of Babel, and insists that "by the symbolical expression 'God said, Let us go down,' a further natural phenomenon is intimated, to wit, the cleaving of the earth, whereby the return of the dispersed became impossible—that is to say, through a new or not universal flood, a partial inundation and temporary violent separation of great continents until the time of the rediscovery" By these words the learned doctor means nothing less than the separation of Europe from America.

While at the middle of the nineteenth century the theory of the origin and development of language was upon the continent considered as settled, and a well-ordered science had there emerged from the old chaos, Great Britain still held back, in spite of the fact that the most important contributors to the science were of British origin. Leaders in every English church and sect vied with each other, either in denouncing the encroachments of the science of language or in explaining them away.

But a new epoch had come, and in a way least expected. Perhaps the most notable effort in bringing it in was made by Dr. Wiseman, afterward Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. His is one of the best examples of a method which has been used with considerable effect during the latest stages of nearly all the controversies between theology and science. It consists in stating, with much fairness, the conclusions of the scientific authorities, and then in persuading one's self and trying to persuade others that the Church has always accepted them and accepts them now as "additional proofs of the truth of Scripture." A little juggling with words, a little amalgamation of texts, a little judicious suppression, a little imaginative deduction, a little unctuous phrasing, and the thing is done. One great service this eminent and kindly Catholic champion undoubtedly rendered: by this acknowledgment, so widely spread in his published lectures, he made it impossible for Catholics or Protestants longer to resist the main conclusions of science. Henceforward we only have efforts to save theological appearances, and these only by men whose zeal outran their discretion.

On both sides of the Atlantic, down to a recent period, we see these efforts, but we see no less clearly that they are mutually destructive. Yet out of this chaos among English-speaking peoples the new science began to develop steadily and rapidly. Attempts did indeed continue here and there to save the old theory. Even as late as 1859 we hear the eminent Presbyterian divine, Dr. John Cumming, from his pulpit in London, speaking of Hebrew as "that magnificent tongue—that mother-tongue, from which all others are but distant and debilitated progenies."

But the honour of producing in the nineteenth century the most absurd known attempt to prove Hebrew the primitive tongue belongs to the youngest of the continents, Australia. In the year 1857 was printed at Melbourne The Triumph of Truth, or a Popular Lecture on the Origin of Languages, by B. Atkinson, M.R.C.P.L.—whatever that may mean. In this work, starting with the assertion that "the Hebrew was the primary stock whence all languages were derived," the author states that Sanskrit is "a dialect of the Hebrew," and declares that "the manuscripts found with mummies agree precisely with the Chinese version of the Psalms of David." It all sounds like Alice in Wonderland. Curiously enough, in the latter part of his book, evidently thinking that his views would not give him authority among fastidious philologists, he says, "A great deal of our consent to the foregoing statements arises in our belief in the Divine inspiration of the Mosaic account of the creation of the world and of our first parents in the Garden of Eden." A yet more interesting light is thrown upon the author's view of truth, and of its promulgation, by his dedication: he says that, "being persuaded that literary men ought to be fostered by the hand of power," he dedicates his treatise "to his Excellency Sir H. Barkly," who was at the time Governor of Victoria.

Still another curious survival is seen in a work which appeared as late as 1885, at Edinburgh, by William Galloway, M.A., Ph.D., M.D. The author thinks that he has produced abundant evidence to prove that "Jehovah, the Second Person of the Godhead, wrote the first chapter of Genesis on a stone pillar, and that this is the manner by which he first revealed it to Adam; and thus Adam was taught not only to speak but to read and write by Jehovah, the Divine Son; and that the first lesson he got was from the first chapter of Genesis." He goes on to say: "Jehovah wrote these first two documents; the first containing the history of the Creation, and the second the revelation of man's redemption,... for Adam's and Eve's instruction; it is evident that he wrote them in the Hebrew tongue, because that was the language of Adam and Eve." But this was only a flower out of season.

And, finally, in these latter days Mr. Gladstone has touched the subject. With that well-known facility in believing anything he wishes to believe, which he once showed in connecting Neptune's trident with the doctrine of the Trinity, he floats airily over all the impossibilities of the original Babel legend and all the conquests of science, makes an assertion regarding the results of philology which no philologist of any standing would admit, and then escapes in a cloud of rhetoric after his well-known fashion.