Babel

“ There are certain combined looks of simple subtlety,—where whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, that all the languages of Babel set loose together, could not express them;—they are communicated and caught so instantaneously, that you can scarce say which party is the infector. ”

“ By a big dictionary, both careful and bold;
Yet none of them differ—these books born of Babel;
Though always ’t is changing, none lo change it are able;
’T is a very hard task, and admits of no shirking. ”

“ The ambition of the old Babel-builders was well directed for this world. There are but two strong conquerors of the forgetfulness of men, Poetry and Architecture; and the latter in some sort includes the former, and is mightier in its reality. It is well to have not only what men have thought and felt, but what their hands have handled, and their strength wrought, and their eyes beheld all the days of their life. ”

“ Like the labourers of Babel, while we endeavour in vain to express our meaning to each other, the fabric by which, for a common end, we would have ascended to heaven from the ills of earth remains forever unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope that knowledge is the universal language which shall reunite us. ”

“ The Bible must be snatched out of this burning fire of the depraved and savage passions of degraded men, and we must cry out amid the noise and confusion of modern Babel that the Bible is the book Divine, full of wisdom, justice and love. ”

“ The throng is so great, however, and the variety of faces, gowned and ungowned, wigged and unwigged, beaming forth every shade of mind, and betokening every degree of mental vacuity, is so perplexing, that your eye and your imagination are completely bewildered, and you cannot attend either to individuals or single groups, while the buz of voices of so many different tones and pitches give your ears the impression of a very Babel. ”

“ Another observation upon the story of Babel is the inconsistence of it with respect to the opinion that the bible is the word of God given for the information of mankind; for nothing could so effectually prevent such a word being known by mankind as confounding their language. ”

“ He is but a poet, whose language is more interior and universal than those who sing in articulate words. Where we stop short on the threshold of the holy of holies and are unable to penetrate by reason of the imperfection of human speech, the high priest of harmony enters and utters to the world's ear the deep, soul-entrancing oracles of God. The curse of Babel falls not on him. He speaks and writes in the native tongue of the angels, and the music is caught up and repeated with joy and acclamation in the isles beyond the sea. His style becomes the style of his age. ”

“ I’m thinking ’tis like the Tower of Babel over again, after a fashion. We can talk fast enough when our thoughts are down near the earth, but the moment they get up a bit, for the most of us our tongue is halting and stammering, and there’s confusion. I’m thinking it’s as well, or we might get a bit above ourselves with glibness of speech, and be fancying ourselves embryo prophets and visionaries, and getting others to fancy it along with us. ”

“ And whilst they have unrival’d the Glory of speaking as many Languages as Babel afforded, we only desire to express our selves Pertinently and Judiciously in One. We will not vie with them in thumbing over Authors, nor pretend to be walking Libraries, provided they’ll but allow us a competent Knowlege of the Books of GOD, Nature I mean and the Holy Scriptures: And whilst they accomplish themselves with the Knowlege of the World, and experiment all the Pleasures and Follies of it, we’ll aspire no further than to be intimately acquainted with our own Hearts. ”

“ But all this language gotten, and augmented by Adam and his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel, when by the hand of God, every man was stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language. ”

“ If we take any fanciful theory of the creation of man, or accept the biblical account of the Dispersion at the plain of Shinar, at the building of the Tower of Babel, 2218 years before Christ, we find them scattered over the face of the earth, whereas before that Dispersion “The whole earth was one language and of one speech.” ”

“ The next important historical epoch which demands our attention is that connected with what, in sacred history, is known as the dispersion at Babel. The brightness of truth, as it had been communicated by Noah, became covered, as it were, with a cloud. The dogmas of the unity of God and the immortality of the soul were lost sight of, and the first deviation from the true worship occurred in the establishment of Sabianism, or the worship of the sun, moon, and stars, among some peoples, and the deification of men among others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now, as my two syllable-mongers, Beattie and Blair, both agree that language was originally inspired, and that the great variety of languages we find upon earth at present took its rise from the confusion of tongues at Babel, I am not perfectly convinced that there is any just occasion to invent this very ingenious solution of a difficulty which Scripture has solved already. ”

“ Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its colour and odour, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower—and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel. ”

“ The Babel enterprise is in fact the first recorded development of that mound-building instinct which the earlier races everywhere evince, and which has been a distinguishing characteristic more especially of the Cushite or Turanian race, and has apparently made them the teachers of constructive arts to all other peoples. ”

“ A profound religious-ethical significance is given to the differentiations of the peoples, in the story of the tower of Babel in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, in which the divergences and separations which divide mankind are represented as the product of sin: what God had joined together men themselves pulled asunder. ”

“ As a proof of the truth of our position, we have but to refer to the fact that it has been demonstrated that the further we go back through the centuries to the primeval days succeeding the dispersion of mankind at the Tower of Babel, the more frequent and more noticeable are the traces of pure religious truth found intermingled with the follies and vagueries of man-made religions. ”

“ Language is beyond doubt a divine institution, invented by Deity, and by him made known to the human race. If language was devised by man, the invention would not have been at once matured, but must have been the result of the necessities and experience of successive generations. Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden, spoke a language the purity of which continued until its final disruption at the building of the Tower of Babel. ”

“ Some learned men, prepossessed with the notion that all the different idioms now in the world did at first arise from one original language, to which they may be reduced, and that the variety among them is no more than must naturally have happened in a long course of time by the mere separation of the builders of Babel, have maintained, that there were no new languages formed at the confusion ”

“ When the time comes that the wicked who will not obey are swept from the earth, the Lord will restore to His children the language which they learned from their mother tongue and which was spoken from Adam to the time of the tower of Babel. ”

“ Finally, in our time, we have them accepting the theory that language is the result of an evolutionary process in obedience to laws more or less clearly ascertained. Babel thus takes its place quietly among the sacred myths.
As to the origin of writing, we have the more eminent theologians at first insisting that God taught Adam to write; next we find them gradually retreating from this position, but insisting that writing was taught to the world by Noah. After the retreat from this position, we find them insisting that it was Moses whom God taught to write. ”

“ And to the end our work may be more praiseworthy and good, I beseech the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name every work has a good beginning, continuance and end.
§ 2.—How through the confusion of the Tower of Babel the world began to be inhabited. ”

“ These tongues were cloven, to signify that God would hereby divide unto all nations the knowledge of his grace, as he is said to have divided to them by his providence the light of the heavenly bodies, Deut. 4. 19. The tongues were divided, and yet they still continued all of one accord; for there may be a sincerity of affections, where yet there is a diversity of expression. Dr. Lightfoot observes, that the dividing of tongues at Babel, was the casting off of the heathen ”

“ I2 For, all whatsoever is taught and spoken concerning God, without the Spirit of God, is but Babell, let it play the hypocrite and flatter how it will Gods Spirit must speake from or out of US, if our speech be acceptible before God. ”

“ And Faith an anchor gained:—that holy Book is thine.
Behold the Book,—whose sacred truths to spread
Christ's heralds toil beneath a foreign sky,
Pouring its blessings o'er the heathen's head,
A martyr-courage kindling in their eye.
Wide o'er the globe its glorious light must shine,
As glows the arch of Heaven:—that holy Book is thine. ”

“ So strong has been the sense of Holy Scripture being 'the Book,' the worthiest and best, that book which explains all other books, standing up in their midst,—like Joseph's kingly sheaf, to which all the other sheaves did obeisance,— that this name of 'Bible' or 'Book' has been restrained to it alone: just as 'Scripture' means no more than 'writing' ”

“ It will follow from what has been offered, that you are invited to read every book in the Bible in the order in which it actually stands,—never, of course, skipping a chapter; much less a Book. In every mere catalogue of names, be resolved to find edification. Feel persuaded that details, seemingly the driest, are full of God. Remember that the difference between every syllable of Scripture and all other books in the world is, not a difference of degree, but of kind. All books but one, are human: that one book is Divine! ”

“ The language of the Bible, then, is literary, not scientific language; language thrown out at an object of consciousness not fully grasped, which inspired emotion. Evidently, if the object be one not fully to be grasped, and one to inspire emotion, the language of figure and feeling will satisfy us better about it, will cover more of what we seek to express; than the language of literal fact and science. The language of science about it will be below what we feel to be the truth. ”

“ Of all books, whether rhetoric, logic, vocabulary, poetry, philosophy, history, or whatever be the end, the Bible should be first and most carefully studied, its literary spirit and form should be closely traced and discerned, and its truth should be reverently incorporated into the daily speech, thought and life. ”

“ I. We have now before us the Holy Bible, or Book, for so Bible signifies. We call it the Book, by way of eminency; for it is incomparably the best book that ever was written, the Book of books, shining like the sun, in the firmament of learning; other valuable and useful books, like the moon and stars, borrowing their light from it. We call it the Holy Book; because it was written by holy men, and indited by the Holy Ghost; it is perfectly pure from all falsehood and corrupt intention; and the manifest tendency of it is to promote holiness among men. ”

“ There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings."
Our masters of poetry and prose have thus become the Bible's messengers; but such also are the lesser writers and speakers of every day. The Bible words find a response that is universal; for Truth knows no chosen vessel but rather has chosen all. Story and lyric, epic and drama, alike carry onward the Bible's messages and continue to spread their truth among all people of the English tongue. ”

“ Paul, ‘Written not on tables of stone, but on fleshly tables of the heart;’ and again, ‘Ye are my epistles known and read of all men.’ There may be a use in writing as a preservative against the forgetfulness of old age, but to live is higher far, to be ourselves the book, or the epistle, the truth embodied in a person, the Word made flesh. ”

“ These passages, taken together, open up again the great questions of Inspiration, Memory, Creation, Mechanism, and since each one of these words is now made to stand for differing conceptions, they are ambiguous, and we may not use them without first defining sharply what we mean. We speak of the true [Pg 133] poet like Shakespeare, the true mystic like Blake, the true saint like Catherine of Siena, and the true Book like the Bible as all being inspired, yet in each case the inspiration is of a different order. ”

“ Here the Bible is at variance with science, which is Nature stated in exact language. Few men will say directly what the schoolmen said to Galileo, “If Nature is opposed to the Bible then Nature is mistaken, for the Bible is certainly right;” ”

“ Every case reported of restoring life to a dead person by Christ, Elijah, Elisha, and other God-men, if they had any foundation in truth, are explained by the principles of this science. Similar cases have been witnessed in modern times.
13. Philosophy.—The science of philosophy, in its matured aspect, is of modern origin, and furnishes the true explanation for many of the "mysteries of godliness," and other mysteries of the Christian Bible, which, by the illiterate writers of that age, were ascribed to the direct manifestation of deific powers. ”