This book ought to be read, as mentally it is written, with at the end
of every sentence one of those _et ceteras_, which the genius of a Coke
interpreted so keenly of the genius of a Littleton: for, far more
remains on each subject to be said, than in any one has been attempted.
Let us pass on to the story of Babel: I can conceive nothing more _à
priori_ probable than the account we read in Scripture. Briefly consider
the matter. A multitude of men, possibly the then whole human family,
once more a fallen race, emigrate towards the East, and come to a vast
plain in the region of Shinar, afterwards Chaldæa. Fertile,
well-watered, apt for every mundane purpose, it yet wanted one great
requisite. The degenerate race "put not their trust in God:" they did
not believe but that the world might some day be again destroyed by
water: and they required a point of refuge in the possible event of a
second deluge from the broken bounds of ocean and the windows of the
skies. They had come from the West; more strictly the North-west, a land
of mountains, as they deemed them, ready-made refuges: and their scheme,
a probable one enough, was to construct some such mountain artificially,
so that its top might reach the clouds, as did the summit of Ararat.
This would serve the twofold purpose of outwitting any further attempt
to drown them, and of making for themselves a proud name upon the earth.
So, the Lord God, in his etherealized human form (having taken counsel
with His own divine compeers), coming in the guise wherein He was wont
to walk with Adam and with Enoch and his other saints of men, "came down
and saw the tower:" truly, He needed not have come, for ubiquity was
his, and omniscience; but in the days when God and man were (so to
speak) less chronologically divided than as now, and while yet the
trial-family was young, it does not seem unlikely that He should. God
then, in his aspect of the Head of all mankind, took notice of that
dangerous and unholy combination: and He made within His Triune Mind the
wise resolve to break their bond of union. Omniscience had herein a view
to ulterior consequences benevolent to man, and He knew that it would be
a wise thing for the future world, as well as a discriminative check
upon the race then living, to confuse the universal language into many
discordant dialects. Was this in any sense an improbable or improper
method of making "the devices of the wicked to be of none effect, and of
laughing to scorn the counsels of the mighty?" Was it not to have been
expected that a fallen race should be disallowed the combinative force
necessary to a common language, but that such force should be dissipated
and diverted for moral usages into many tongues?--There they were, all
the chiefs of men congregated to accomplish a vast, ungodly scheme: and
interposing Heaven to crush such insane presumption--and withal
thereafter designing to bless by arranging through such means the future
interchange of commerce and the enterprise of nationalities--He, in his
Trinity, was not unlikely to have said, "Let us go down, and confound
their language." What better mode could have been devised to scatter
mankind, and so to people the extremities of earth? In order that the
various dialects should crystallize apart, each in its discriminative
lump, the nucleus of a nation; that thereafter the world might be able
no longer to unite as one man against its Lord, but by conflicting
interests, the product of conflicting languages, might give to good a
better chance of not being altogether overwhelmed; that, though many "a
multitude might go to do evil," it should not thenceforward be the whole
consenting family of man; but that, here by one and there by one, the
remembrance of God should be kept extant, and evil no longer acquire an
accumulated force, by having all the world one nation.