Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity [pp. 250-294]

Philological Argument.
The generalizations and classifications of Dr. Latham, touching this point, are in perfect agreement with the prior and
independent researches of Dr. Prichard, which comprehend also
the anthropological aspects of the subject; and have since been
adopted and confirmed by an elaborate paper in the Philological Transactions by Dr. Beke of Abyssinia, and by Tut scheck, Gablentz, and Krapf, of the Galla country, than whom
there are no higher living authorities, in regard to questions
pertaining to that family of languages. One of these Galla dialects runs four or five degrees south of the equator, and actually
loses itself by merging into the Somali of Barawa.
The clear indications furnished by the great family of African languages and dialects, numbering in all more than a hundred, and so long regarded as wholly isolated from those which
fall within the range of sacred and profane history, are now,
therefore, universally received by ethnologists, as establishing
a relation between this remote province of human civilization,in its general characteristics, perhaps the most remote of all
the greatdivisions of the human race-and the common centre
of origin to which the Scriptures refer the beginnings of all
human history..
It would doubtless be premature to affirm that comparative
philology is yet prepared to render a definitive and final verdict upon the ultimate question of ethnology-the unity and
common origin of the human race: but we hold ourselves fully
authorized to say, that there are no dividing lines which any
extant hypothesis of diversity of origins has laid down, which
it has not already obliterated; and no arguments for such
diversity yet produced, which it is not prepared to overthrow
and scatter to the winds.
The great family of African languages has thus been traced,
by the united researches chiefly of the Tutschecks, Gablentz,
Krapf, Wilson, Beke, Bunsen, Prichard and Latham, (the fruits
of whose labours are piled up before us while we write,) to a
vital connection with the Asiatic stem either through the Semitic relations with the old Abyssinian tongues, or, as Bunsen
maintains is more probable, through a colony of Hamites by
whom Egypt was originally colonized; and whose language
preserved, and now yields up to philological research, indubit
289
1852.].