The learner may be instructed to arrange and compare the words of these different languages according to the following plan. He should also proceed in committing to memory the tables of inflections, and apply them by assiduous parsing of each language according to the methods before pointed out. By the time the student has thus got through the Gospel of Matthew, he will be acquainted with the bulk of the common stems and with the general principles of construction of the above languages, and may now study each separately in its respective classical works. The habit of etymological and syntactical analysis and comparison now acquired will be still carried into this separate study, and make the further knowledge attained of the different languages still bind itself into one connected whole.

The teacher may help the mind of the learner to acquire power over and apply the words in the various languages thus acquired by working them up into new combinations of phrases for the purpose of conversation. For example, from the words of the above verse might be formed the phrases, Where is the east? Who is the king? We have seen him. Where was

he born? We are come to see you. What say you? We adore him. Where is the star? Where are we? We come from the east, &c.

HAVING laid the foundation of the hall of language, let us see how the knowledge we have acquired bears upon the development of our higher life. Words have been compared to potent spirits; and they are potent for good or for evil. You have seen what we can do for others by words-to console, to instruct, to inspire, to gladden, to annoy, to sadden, and to corrupt. In having such wonderful power in our hands, then, what wonderful responsibilty we possess. If we think of some monarch having at his disposal a multitude of servants, and power to render immeasurable benefit to a large country, and he uses his servants and all his power only for his own selfish pleasure and caprice-oppressing his subjects, and harrassing his neighbours-like Nero, or John, or Charles II., or Napoleon-we think of him with indignation and detestation. But, in possessing this power over words we are mighty monarchs, does not then our judgment of the bad, selfish king turn round upon us with severe condemnation, if we do not use our servants-the instruments of words-to do good to others?

And what are the ways in which we can do good to others by words? First, by truth. We are like persons wandering in a forest: some have information that others want; they see the way that others cannot. We must all depend very

much on each other. Now, when we ask information of one another, any one that tells us an untruth is like a person telling us a wrong way, making us wander for a long time in vain, and perhaps fall into some pitfall, or down some precipice. Hence, we are naturally indignant at any one who tells us untruth, because it tends to do us an injury-it leads us on a wrong course-it betrays our trust. We reposed in the truthfulness of the person speaking, and he deceived us. We should, therefore, always use words to utter truth.

Secondly, we should utter words kindly. How beautiful it is that almost every time we speak to a fellow creature, we can, by the gentleness and kindness of our manner, awaken a pleasant feeling in the person spoken to! Oh, what wonderful power to shed peace and happiness around us we have in words!

mean ones.

Thirdly, we should use words intelligently, for the purpose of awakening great and beautiful ideas rather than little and We should not let our conversation with others be always upon trifles and petty, useless subjects. If we fill our own minds with great and beautiful ideas, we may make every conversation we have with others a means of enriching or gratifying their minds, by awakening such ideas; and he who gives or recalls such ideas for us is always one of our greatest benefactors.

Fourthly, we should use words as much as we can to inspire and encourage others in what is noble; and this we shall do if we cherish in ourselves a love of all that is good, and true, and high, and fear not to express it whenever the occasion naturally presents itself. And now, on the other hand, how carefully should we avoid wickedly abusing our power over others by words, to deceive them by untruth,-to wound and vex them by unkind words,-to help to make their minds little and foolish, by trifling discourse,-and, above all, to lower the tone of their minds and corrupt their fine perceptions by the low tone of our conversation.

Since power over language is the means of attaining so much of the higher, especially the intellectual, life for ourselves, and thus giving us the means of being so valuable to others, it becomes a sacred duty, as well as an object of noble ambition, to devote ourselves to gain that power.

LESSON IX.

LANGUAGE-RELIGIOUS INTERPRETATION.

WORDS raise thoughts in the mind; but how? Surely by the agency of the Great Cause or Worker; therefore He must know all our thoughts. How wise, then, must He be Who is at the fountain of all thought of all thinkers, even the wisest. What trust we then should have in Him Whose knowledge infinitely exceeds our own. When He then suggests to us His will through conscience, we should give ourselves up to it, feeling out of what an infinite depth of wisdom it comes. The consideration that Infinite Witness knows all our thoughts, and must therefore approve or disapprove them, should make us afraid and ashamed even to indulge in

wrong thoughts, but earnest to keep order and beauty in the region of our minds.

But if God is the Great Worker in our minds, why does he allow us to have evil thoughts or feelings? He does not naturally give us any evil thoughts or feelings; He gives us higher feelings and lower ones; he means to limit and explain the latter by the former. Now, if we do not listen to the former, but take the latter by themselves, and let them go to what extent they please, then they become evil. But it is we who make them evil by listening to them without the other voices which explain and limit them, just as we might make the common air deadly, if we took from it the oxygen and left only the nitrogen. The study of language also helps us to understand how God communicates to us. He has two sorts of communication to us, like spoken and written language. He speaks in our spirits; He writes to us from every quarter of the universe in which He is; and, as we cannot understand written language without the spoken, so we cannot understand God's more distant revelations to us, unless we are sensitive to those which He makes in our souls; that is, what we call our own better nature.

The heavens and the earth, the history of man, individually and nationally, form a written word of God; in our own spirits there is the spoken word. What are the scriptures then? They are the records by holy men of the spoken word of God in their souls. The consideration of the power of language should also make us grateful to God for its gift. To nothing are we more indebted. It awakens and nourishes our minds; it affords us and enables us to give consolation; it is the very medium of love and friendship,-of conversation, of instruction, of communion, with all other spirits, and with God himself; it is the means by which all the richest, highest life pours into our minds, and by which, too, we give it to others. There is no consideration, therefore, more calculated to raise the feelings of pious gratitude than the consideration of the mighty power of language.

THE END.