and rapid, or how his intellectual endowments could have been so successfully cultivated as we know they were, if he had been originally ignorant of all language.

But while the nature of the case might convince us that language is of divine origin, when we look into the Mosaic history, that conviction must be confirmed. There we learn that the laws given to our first parents were given through the medium of language. They obviously conversed with God and with one another. Nor have we any intimation that this intercourse was conducted in any other way than by an oral language. The early worship of our first parents could not have been purely mental and meditative; but oral, and in the noblest language ever uttered by man. We learn too, that our progenitor very early gave names to all the animal creation. It was by the channel of an oral language also, that the Tempter infused the first taint of sin into the bosom of man, breathing his poison with his words. It seems indeed to be more generally conceded, that the first use of oral language is to be attributed to a supernatural revelation. There are exceptions to this opinion, but it is very difficult to give any other tolerable account of the origin of this art.*

*This topic is discussed at length by Herder on the origin of language; by Suckford in his connexions; by Condiliac on the origin of Human knowledge; by Smith in his Theory of Moral

The researches of the most accredited philologists go far to support this opinion. The more critically modern, as well as ancient languages are investigated, the more are they found to resemble each other in their roots and primary forms, and the more clearly are referable to one common stock. The languages which prevailed in all the South of Europe after the destruction of the Roman Empire, were a barbarous mixture of the Latin with the different languages of the Northern invaders. The modern languages of Europe have all evidently been derived from the Roman; the Roman from the Greek, and the Greek from the Phoenician. Goguet, in his Ori gin of laws, arts and sciences, remarks that "the comparison of the Phoenician and Greek Alphabet would alone be sufficient to convince us of this. It is visible that the Greek characters are only the Phoenician letters turned from right to left." Authorities might be greatly multiplied to show that the Phoenicians spoke a dialect of the Hebrew. The Chaldee, Syriac, and Samaritan are also dialects of the Hebrew, without any considerable deviation, or many additional words.

Sentiment; by Magee in a valuable note to his work on Atonement and Sacrifice; by the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, article Language; by Dr. Samuel S. Smith; by Stiling fleet, in his Origna Sacræ; in the Boylean Lectures; in Beattie's Theory of Lan guage; in the Scholar Armed; in Woolaston's Religion of Nature, and in Winder's History of Knowledge.

There is a striking similarity also between the Ethiopic and the Hebrew; the Hebrew and the Arabic, and the Arabic and the Persic. There are strong analogies between the Sanscrit and the Hebrew, and between the Hebrew and the Coptic; while the Coptic is identified with the ancient Egyptian. Dr. Lightfoot, whom Adam Clarke pronounces to have been the first scholar in Europe, is of the opinion that the original tongue was Hebrew; that this was the language spoken in Canaan before the time of Joshua; that it was the language of Adam and the language of God. “God” says he, "was the first founder of it, and Adam was the first speaker of it. It began with the world and the Church, and increased in glory till the captivity in Babylon. The whole language is contained in the Bible, and no other book contains in it an entire language."*

The German scholars of the present century would present much the same account, while they seem to hesitate in expressing the opinion that the Hebrew is the mother tongue. We learn from them that the modern languages of Europe, together with the Gothic, Sclavonic, Greek and Latin are discovered to bear a close affinity; and under the name of Indo-European, are classed with them in one family. Between these and the Semitic family, which, among others, includes the

* Lightfoot's Works.

Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac Samaritan, Ethiopic and Arabic, striking analogies are discovered, and by every new research they are becoming more fully identified. Wiseman, a learned Romanist, says, that the decision of the academy of St. Petersburgh upon the celebrated paper of count Goulianoff was, that all languages are to be considered as dialects of one now lost. I am at a loss to understand the ground of this uncertainty. The Chaldee and Syriac were formerly one language, only they were written with a different character; and they were both dialects of the Hebrew. The hypothesis, for it is an hypothesis merely, that the book of Job is older than the Pentateuch and was written in Arabic, seems indeed to countervail the position that the Hebrew is the first written language. And yet Lightfoot unhesitatingly affirms that the Arabic is a dialect of the Hebrew, and that "all languages are indebted to this, and this to none." This much however may be confided in, that both believers and unbelievers in the Mosaic history have affirmed the original unity of all language; disclaiming the notion that men are of entirely distinct races, and thus far corroborating the position that the same divine source of the physical organs of speech imparted to man the knowledge of their use and power.

The first method of rendering thought visible was by pictures, symbols, and the various kinds of ideagraphic writing. But there is a marked dis

tinction between these imperfect, and elementary forms and Alphabetical writing. This is a system which is expressive primarily of sound rather than of thought. Instead of employing characters as multifarious as the different objects to be pointout, it makes visible by the combination of a few elements of sound, every idea which the mind is capable of conceiving.

From our familiarity with this art, it is not easy for us to appreciate its importance. The extreme simplicity by which results so complicated are attained, bears a strong analogy, not to the works of man's invention, but to the operations of the God of nature, distinguished as they are, not less by the fewness and simplicity of their agents, than their astonishing, nay unlimited combinations. Were we now in possession only of such a mode of writing as distinguished the ancient Egyptians, or the Mexicans upon the discovery of this continent, and as distinguishes the Chinese at the present day; and should some gigantic mind penetrate the mysteries of sound, embody them and give them form, and present to us our simple Alphabet, the first lesson of our childhood, and explain to us its combinations and its uses; what honours, I had almost said, what veneration should we withhold from him!

The claims of most nations to this singular discovery arise solely from their supposed antiquity. And yet is it a somewhat remarkable fact, that some of the most ancient nations remained desti