Page images
PDF
EPUB

synods, forty-five presbyteries, four hundred and twenty-four ministers, one thousand and sixty churches, and eighty-three thousand eight hundred and thirty-one communicants.

The following liberal bequests, to several benevolent institutions, have been made by Mrs. Thomas Fassit, of Philadelphia, lately deceased, viz.: $5000 to the Philadelphia Education Society; $5000 to the Philadelphia Home Missionary Society; $5000 to the American Sunday School Union; and $1000 to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Over $22,000 have been raised by the Wesleyan Missionary Society in Canada during the past year.

The Roman Catholic Church, in this country, comprises six archbishops, twenty-six bishops, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-one priests, and one thousand five hundred and forty-five churches, with an estimated population of two millions, ninety-six thousand three hundred. There are thirty-three ecclesiastical seminaries, forty-five literary institutions for young men, and one hundred and two female academies; there are fortytwo religious institutions for males, and ninety-six for females; there are one hundred and eight charitable institutions.

Eighteen French Catholic missionaries have taken their departure very recently for different parts of the globe, as follows: Seven for China, two for Cochin China, one for Thibet, four for Pondicherry, two for Tonquin, one for Siam, and one for Mysore.

The last report for the American Society for the Amelioration of the condition of the Jews, states that the prosperity of the society exceeds any former year, and the total receipts have amounted to about $13,269 03. Nine regular missionaries have been employed, besides from five to seven colporteurs, all converted Jews. The fruits of missionary labor are on the increase. Fourteen Israelites have publicly professed faith in Christ, through the agency of the society, and the prospects augur more for the next year. Of the 15,000 or more Jewish converts in the world, about one in every sixty is a preacher.

The American Baptist Home Missionary Society employs one hundred and sixty-five missionaries and agents at an expense of about $38,000.

The identical pulpit in which George Whitfield preached many of his powerful sermons in England, was brought over to this country a few months ago, and may be seen at the Tract House, in the rooms of the New York city Tract Society. It is about six feet high, nearly square at the top, and presents the appearance of a light frame-work of hard wood.

A valuable manuscript copy of the Bible, in Norman French, written on vellum, richly illuminated, and once the property of King John of France, is about to be offered for sale for the benefit of the creditors of Mr. Brough ton, formerly of the Foreign Office. It is stated that £1500 was demanded for it on occasion of an application to purchase it by the late Archbishop of Canterbury.

[blocks in formation]

Language must have been a direct gift of God to man, and coeval with his existence. An endowment so essential to his position and the immediate objects of his creation, must have been enjoyed as an instrument necessary to that perfection ascribed to the first man. Its absence in his earliest moments of existence, would have implied a want of adaptation to the objects of his being incompatible with that idea of completeness which the account of his original formation conveys. Adam, who is revealed to us as possessing in his original constitution, the fully developed faculties of a mature and perfect man, must have enjoyed, the moment he stepped VOL. VII.-31

forth a living being, a capacity necessarily concomitant with such a state, and without which many of those faculties would have been inoperative and inefficient. Whatever may be the speculations of men respecting the capabilities of the human mind for any exercise without language, yet it must be evident, that there can be no perfection in such exercise without that medium..

Divine Revelation not only warrants, but fully confirms this theory. It informs us that, under the direction of the Creator, Adam proceeded, in the use of language, to give names to every living creature; "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all,” &c. This statement fully implies that Adam had a language: and its possession thus early, and in his then isolated condition, is susceptible of rational explanation only on the assumption of its being the immediate gift of the Creator.

The specific statement of the Bible is, that for seventeen hundred years, down to the destruction of the tower of Babel, the world had but one language; "And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have one language.". This, doubtless, was the language originally given to Adam, with such corruptions or additions as might, in the progress of society, have been gradually incorporated. But the same authority declares that, at that event, this language was confounded; and that, for the purpose of dividing the people into different and distinct communities, various languages were miraculously given; the people arranging themselves together in separate divisions according to the language of which they found themselves in possession. This account furnishes a striking proof of the divine original of language. It is clear that the confounding of the original language was the immediate act of God, as was the gift of the various languages substituted in its stead. But if these new languages

are thus clearly traceable to the Creator, as their source, the

analogy thus afforded, in connexion with facts already stated, renders it equally conclusive that the first language was like-. wise an emanation from the same great source.

The specified purpose of this act is a forcible indication of the power of language. To obviate that unwieldiness which would result from continuing the mass of the people in a single community, and to place mankind in a condition in which to facilitate the peopling of the earth and the maintenance of the order and progress of society, it was necessary that they should be divided into distinct communities. To accomplish this result; to break up that attractive force which had hitherto bound them together, and thus to organize states, the power of language was employed as the only sufficient instrument. It is this power, therefore, which gave origin to STATES, and which has contributed, perhaps, more than all else, to their protection and permanency. And as Providence has thus employed the power of language to form and perpetuate states, so, whenever, for the accomplishment of his great purposes, he designs them specially to co-operate, as in the instance of Great Britain and the United States, which speak the same language; or to exercise a peculiar influence either upon coming generations, as in the instance of Greece and Rome, the noble records of whose languages have been in a remarkable manner preserved; or upon surrounding countries, as in the instance of France, whose language has largely prevailed among the higher classes of the various continental communities, He has employed the same potent instrumentality.

Whether the various languages thus given to the world, at the period referred to, were all equally excellent as to all the purposes which language is designed to subserve; or whether there was an inequality in these respects; a gradation in their relative rank; are questions which, perhaps, we cannot determine. So many changes, the result of man's own act, have been made since the period of their divine bestowal, that it will be forever impossible so to understand their original character as to allow any fair comparison. The general law of

a diversity in the gifts of talent and privilege, authorize the inference of an original inequality in their relative excellence. While, on the other hand, an equally general law of probation, by which men are put upon their own efforts to improve gifts bestowed, would seem to intimate, that whatever inequality has existed, was attributable rather to human causes.

The Hebrew, the Greek and the Roman are the principal languages which preceded the modern. The former owes its celebrity, not so much to its own intrinsic merits, as to the fact of its being the chief original medium of divine revelation. Indeed, as a medium for those complex ideas originating in a high state of intellectual development, this language, employed only when mankind in a simple state of intellectual life had no need for such terms, is exceedingly deficient. The Greek and the Roman, however, as they come down to us in the immortal works of those who wrote them, have justly distinguished merit, and will ever constitute valuable sources of all subsequent tongues. Whatever opinions may be entertained as to the original character of these languages, all must admit, that the perfection attained by them was the result of the highly cultivated state of those who spoke them. Assuming that language was a divine gift, yet the original gift must have been limited to the then existing necessities of man. No more language was furnished than was necessary to the expression of such ideas as men were then capable of. This is in harmony with the general plan of God already alluded to, which contemplates man's own expansion and improvement of gifts as constituting that great system of probation under which all are placed. While, therefore, mankind remained in a simple state of intellectual development, as was their origi nal state, with but few ideas, and those referring to the commonest wants and relations, their languages would consist of such terms only as were expressive of these ideas. But as their minds, by expansion began to embrace ideas new and complex, they would naturally employ words either arbitrarily or derivatively formed, or else known words, in a tropical sense, to convey those ideas. While, therefore, language is a divine

« PreviousContinue »