Finally, all the positions are
relinquished, save by some few skirmishers who appear now and
then upon the horizon, making attempts to defend some subtle
method of "reconciling" the Babel myth with modern science.
Just after the middle of the nineteenth century the last
stage of theological defence was evidently reached--the same
which is seen in the history of almost every science after it has
successfully fought its way through the theological period--the
declaration which we have already seen foreshadowed by Wiseman,
that the scientific discoveries in question are nothing new, but
have really always been known and held by the Church, and that
they simply substantiate the position taken by the Church. This
new contention, which always betokens the last gasp of
theological resistance to science, was now echoed from land to
land. In 1856 it was given forth by a divine of the Anglican
Church, Archdeacon Pratt, of Calcutta. He gives a long list of
eminent philologists who had done most to destroy the old
supernatural view of language, reads into their utterances his
own wishes, and then exclaims, "So singularly do their labours
confirm the literal truth of Scripture.
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