LANGUAGE AND RELIGION, FROM WHENCE?

There are conditions under which circumstantial evidence is the best
possible testimony. These conditions are found inseparably connected
with our present subject. That men now possess the same powers of body
and mind that they always manifested is disputed by no intelligent
individual. Those powers have been, through all the ages, precisely the
same both in number and kind. Has the history of humanity furnished a
single case in which a person, perfectly deaf during all his life, had
the ability to speak words? Such is unknown in the history of the past,
and also in the records of the present. History is as blank at this
point, as a barren oasis. All the other faculties are as perfect with
the deaf as they are with those whose hearing is perfect. Their
inventive genius is equally vigorous; this being true, why should the
defect of the ear deprive them of the power of speech? Will the Deist
answer this question? Mr. Skeptic, as you are in the same difficulty
with the Deist, you may help him if you choose. If you are, as you
pretend, free and fearless thinkers, give us your thoughts upon this
question. If you are cowardly, then stand off and sneer at the question
which you dare not try to answer. The facts developed at this point
ought to be remembered, and the question, why can the deaf, described,
never talk? ought to be pressed home to every heart.

MATHEMATICS WILL AID US HERE.

When we see a constant increase in the number of persons or things in an
undeviating ratio, with the aid of mathematics we can pass back to the
first of the series, to the first man living at the base of the human
series. Ever remember that there can not be a series without a unit
lying at its base.

Why do the life-long deaf never talk? You answer: All Adam's children
learn to talk by hearing others talk, and as those deaf ones never
heard, so they never learned to talk. Very well. The first man, at the
beginning of the series of humanity, had no powers or faculties which
his descendants do not possess, and as they all have been under the
necessity of learning to talk by hearing others talk, will you
unbelievers and skeptics tell us, if you can, how that first man became
a talker? Can the life-long deaf talk as well as those whose ears are
perfect? No. Well, then, the difficulty rests upon you. That you may
remember it, I will repeat it once more, it is this: who did the first
man hear in order