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LEARNING LANGUAGES.

to disseminate divine knowledge by the translation of the scriptures and by the publication of useful works, through the medium of the vernacular languages; modern missionaries thought they were directed by experience, and by the example of primitive times. On the day of Pentecost, they remembered that the Spirit descended upon apostles and evangelists, endowed them with the gift of tongues, and enabled them to address Parthians, and Medes and Elamites, and dwellers in Mesopotamia and in many foreign countries, on the mysteries of redemption. Why, we ask, was not the miracle wrought upon the hearers, rather than upon the preachers? Why, instead of granting the ability to speak so many languages to the few, did not the Almighty agent, grant the ability to the thousands assembled in Jerusalem, and to the vast multitudes in different lands to whom the message was to be proclaimed, to understand his servants who spoke probably the language of Judea? The one miracle would have been as easy to him, as the other; but as it would not have been so much in accordance with nature, and with those general laws to which the Divine Being has attended even in the working of these wonders, he bestowed the gift of tongues. As he did not provide food for millions, when a sufficiency for thousands was all that was required, so he did not grant the gift of understanding the Hebrew or the Greek to the nations, when the other gift to the preachers, was sufficient to accom

plish his purposes of love. Though this endowment is not now continued to the church; yet the missionaries deemed it both more scriptural, and more reasonable, that they should toil to obtain the languages of the people, than that the heathen should, either in dozens or in multitudes, learn their foreign dialect; and when God gave them power to accomplish the task, when he commanded his blessing to rest upon their labours, and when idolaters were impressed with the word, they concluded, that they had additional arguments to persevere in their course.

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But it has been said that the heathen languages do not, at present, contain terms adequate to convey Christian truth; and it will be better to wait till natives are educated and raised up, to introduce these terms into their own tongues. This is a very old objection. Among the polished writers of Italy," says Hallam, "we meet on every side the name of Bembo; great in Italian as well as in Latin literature, in prose as in verse. It is now the fourth time it occurs to us; and in merited more of his country. century, so absorbing had ancient learning, that the natural language, beautiful and copious as it really was, and polished as it had been under the hands of Boccaccio, seemed to a very false-judging pedantry, scarce worthy the higher kinds of composition. Those, too, who with enthusiastic diligence, had acquired the power of

no instance has he Since the fourteenth become the love of

writing Latin well, did not brook so much as the equality of their native language. In an oration delivered at Bologna in 1529, before the emperor and the pope, by Romalo Amaseo, one of the good writers of the sixteenth century, he not only pronounced a panegyric upon the Latin tongue, but contended that the Italian should be reserved for shops, for markets, and the conversation of the vulgar; nor was this doctrine uncommon in that

"Can such men assert," says the mandate of Berthold, "that our German language is capable of expressing what great authors have written in Greek and Latin, on the high mysteries of Christian faith and on general science. Certainly it is not; and hence they either invent new words, or use old ones in erroneous senses-a thing especially dangerous in sacred scripture."

But if such an objection, whether made in former times or repeated now, is not the language of ignorance, it must be of prejudice, since the vernacular languages of India are as well qualified to convey divine knowledge, as the languages of Greece and Rome were of old. Did the apostles and evangelists, in their sermons and in their writings, draw their theological terms from the Hebrew, and use them in the languages of the heathen? Instead of employing the term Jehovah or Elohim to express the name of the Divine Being, did they not adopt "Theos" which was used among the Greeks, and

"Deus," which was used among the Latins, and reclaiming the general name from the heathen, apply it to the living and true God? I might pursue this argument with the terms adopted to express sin, conscience, salvation, heaven, hell, adoption, and justification; and did not the apostles take the general terms that were used by the Greeks, and by other nations in an idolatrous sense, and giving them a Christian signification, appropriate them to the doctrines and precepts of Christianity? By this example, modern missionaries have thought that they were justified in taking heathen terms, in giving them a Christian signification, and in making idolaters and Christians understand them either by an explanation, or by the connexion in which they are placed. Nay more; when natives receive an English education, and understand our literature, science and theology; these missionaries cannot see what different plan they will adopt to give their own people the knowledge of the Bible. If instead of pursuing this mode, they attempt to saturate their vernacular tongues with terms from the English as the advocates propose, the barbarity will be extreme; and I will leave those who find such difficulty in pronouncing our eastern words, to judge whether it will be a recommendation, or an act of self-denial to the natives of India to study our religion, when the tracts, the scriptures, and books will be filled with the harsh and disagreeable words which not one in a hundred of them will ever be able to pronounce. In

order to consign the Sanscrit to oblivion, Mr. Trevelyan labours to show, that the English language has passed through various gradations to its present stage of perfection; but from whence has it gathered its terms which are now applied to literature and science? Has it not been from Greek and from Latin-heathen languages? And why may not the terms as well be taken from the Sanscrit a language so copious, and so incorporated already with the vernaculars,-as from western languages whose sounds are so barbarous, and whose etymology is so unknown, to the natives of the East? It is right to speak with modesty of one's country and kindred; but surely it is no arrogant assumption to say that when European missionaries have, in addition to being born in Britain and having obtained an English education, they have studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew in their youth, and have acquired, from many years of labour, a knowledge of an Indian language, that they are as well qualified to introduce terms into these dialects, or appropriate those which will be suitable, as any of the students who may graduate at the Hindoo colleges in Calcutta.

Whatever may be the opinion of others, I cannot but regard this new system, and what has been said to support it, as an injudicious sally against the operations, and the progress of our missions in Southern India. More than a century has elapsed, since the Danish missionaries landed at Tranquebar;