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FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.
I.THE SACRED THEORY IN ITS FIRST FORM.
Among the sciences which have served as entering wedges into the heavy mass of ecclesiastical orthodoxy--to cleave it, disintegrate it, and let the light of Christianity into it--none perhaps has done a more striking work than Comparative Philology.

In one very important respect the history of this science differs from that of any other; for it is the only one whose conclusions theologians have at last fully adopted as the result of their own studies.

This adoption teaches a great lesson, since, while it has destroyed theological views cherished during many centuries, and obliged the Church to accept theories directly contrary to the plain letter of our sacred books, the result is clearly seen to have helped Christianity rather than to have hurt it.

It has certainly done much to clear our religious foundations of the dogmatic rust which was eating into their structure.
How this result was reached, and why the Church has so fully accepted it, I shall endeavour to show in the present chapter.