Chapter II.—The Causes of Intemperancy 79

Studies in Kitchen Science and Art II.—Wheat, Rye and Corn 82 Bread 84 He Maketh All Things New 86 The Pauper Problem in Germany 87 Romance Versus Reality 88 Geography of the Heavens for November 92 Melrose and Holyrood 93 The Laureate Poets 96 Common Sense in the American Kitchen 97 Chautauquans at Home 100 Bishop Warren to the Class of 1884 101 Outline of Required Readings 101 Weekly Program for Local Circle Work 101 Local Circles 102 The C. L. S. C. Classes 106 Questions and Answers 107 Editor’s Outlook 110 Editor’s Notebook 113 C. L. S. C. Notes on Required Readings for November 115 Notes on Required Readings in “The Chautauquan” 117 The Chautauqua University 119 Talk About Books 120 Special Notes 122 Chautauqua Intermediate Class, 1884 122

REQUIRED READING FOR NOVEMBER.

THE BONDS OF SPEECH.

BY RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

Our inquiry in the first paper of this series led us to follow the emigration of the Aryan, or Indo-European, peoples from their original seat in Central Asia until we found them in possession of the whole of Europe;—the whole, from Siberia to the western shore of Ireland, from the Arctic Sea to the Mediterranean. The people who were there before them, they seem to have totally displaced, with the exception of a small remnant in the Pyrenees, now and long known as the Basques. That there were people in Europe before the Aryans has been clearly established by inquiries which here need only be thus referred to. Neither the inquiries nor the people are anything to our present purpose. As the Aryans began their westward march more than four thousand years ago, this fact of preëxisting European peoples is strong confirmatory evidence of the truth of a quaint line in a little song in “Twelfth Night” (not written by Shakspere, however),

A great while ago the world began.

That the Aryans killed all their predecessors in Europe is hardly credible, even if possible; but that they were very thorough in the performance of this function, is also more than probable. The improving of other people off the face of the earth is by no means an original American invention. It is a process which long antedates the introduction of the arts of civilization; and looking at the subject from the cold heights of history and social science, it seems to have been a necessity, preliminary to the introduction of those arts. The civilization which now fills the best part of the earth, although not the largest, and which seems destined to fill the whole, is in its origin and development altogether Aryan. Probably much the greater part of the primitive European peoples—primitive, if they indeed had not also predecessors—were destroyed. Certainly by the two processes of destruction and absorption they were extinguished. The Aryans, however, were not mere bands of armed men, armies large or small; they were emigrating nations. The men were accompanied by their women and children; and the probability therefore is that there was little mingling of the blood of the superior and conquering race with the blood of the inferior race, or races, whom they conquered and displaced. At least, of such an intermingling no appreciable traces have been discovered. There is in the language of any of the Aryan peoples now in possession of Europe no remnant, either verbal or constructive, of a language like that of the Basques. The consequences in this respect of the Aryan immigration into Europe were probably much like the consequences of the entrance of that people into this country. The American races have disappeared here before the European, and have not in the slightest degree affected, in the United States, at least, the blood, or the civilization or the speech of the latter. “Indians,” as we strangely call them (the real Indians being in Asia, and the “Indians” of America having been so called because America on its discovery was supposed to be the eastern part of Asia)—“Indians” should be treated with justice and with all the humanity that can be shown them; but it is a narrow and really an inhuman sentimentality which mourns their displacement from the great country which they once occupied as a savage hunting-ground.

We have now to inquire what English is; what is the substance and the structure of the language which within only two hundred and fifty years has choked and stilled even the echoes of the speech of Sitting Bull, Squatting Bear, and their forefathers and kindred. But before we go directly into this inquiry it may be instructive, and I hope interesting, to glance briefly at a few of the evidences which the discovery of Sanskrit, and the consequent development of the science of comparative philology, have revealed of the original identity of all the Aryan peoples (those in Europe and those in Asia—that is in Persia and India) and to make a rudimentary acquaintance with the modes and processes by which this identity was discovered.

No single word is so good an example of the testimony of language to the common origin of the Indo-European peoples as one of the commonest that we use, one which expresses the first, or at least the second, thought that enters the human mind—_me_. An infant, a worm, if it can think, has awakened in it on its first touch of another object the consciousness of something else and of itself:—that is not me, this is me. Now the expression in sound of this first perception of the human mind is the most widely diffused, and one of the most ancient, of existing words. In English, Frisian, Dutch, Icelandic, Swedish, Danish, Mæso-Gothic, German, Irish, Gælic, Welsh, Russian, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit, the word expressing the objective recognition of self-hood is either absolutely the same, or like with so little difference that the slightness of the variation is remarkable. When we get to the Latin and the Greek _me_ (the accusative case—so-called—of _ego_, I, which is common to both languages) we have gone back more than two thousand years; and when we reach the Sanskrit _mahyam_, with its dative _me_ and its accusative _má_, we are four thousand years in the past, and as many thousand miles in Central Asia.

This one word, it should seem, was sufficient to indicate identity of origin in all the European languages, ancient and modern; and if not to produce conviction, to arouse attention and stimulate investigation. When the word was found in Sanskrit, it is not too much to say that identity of origin in all the Indo-European tongues was so clear that further investigation could discover only an accumulation of evidence. For otherwise it would be necessary to assume some inherent, intrinsic, or, as we say, some natural, relations between the idea of objective self-hood and the sound _me_, or that very ancient original sound of which it is a slight modification. But there is no such relation. There is no such relation between any word and any thought. If there were, then all the peoples of the world would have expressed that idea, and would now express it, by this sound, or by some modification of it. This, however, is not true. It is and it has been so used only by the peoples of the great Aryan or Indo-European family. But what a tremendous fact it is, the use of this little word by hundreds and thousands of millions of people over half the civilized world for more than four thousand years, to express this first thought that enters the mind of man!—people who were strangers, and enemies, who were slaughtering each other as they fought through the dark cycles of centuries for land, for life, for supremacy; who hated each other as foreign and alien; and who were all calling themselves, each to himself and each to the other, _me_, and in doing so were telling each other that they were of one blood and one speech!

It should be very distinctly remembered that the _me_ (with its variations) of the various European peoples is not _derived_ from the Sanskrit _mahyam_, _má_, or _me_, but that the Sanskrit form, like the others, is derived from a root in the yet more ancient, and now wholly lost, original Aryan speech. That word, according to evidence which I believe is satisfactory to all the great comparative philologists, is the pronominal root _ma_, which, for reasons undiscovered, and which are probably undiscoverable, was used to express the first person. Many verbal roots have been thus satisfactorily unearthed; but in the consideration of our subject it must never be forgotten, that the Sanskrit, although it has proved to be the key that unlocks the mysteries of language, and makes them no longer mysteries, but mere successions of related facts, is not the original fact or form of Aryan or Indo-European speech. No word in Latin, Greek, in the Celtic, Teutonic, Slavic, or other European tongues is derived from a Sanskrit word, although the two may seem identical. Both are derived alike from an elder word or root. The supreme importance of Sanskrit in the study of language is in the fact that it is the oldest, very much the oldest, of all the existing Aryan languages, and that it has been preserved for thousands of years with a minute accuracy and a religious devotion.

Having made this discovery about the word for that very important, that most important, individual, _I_, we should naturally expect that the words expressive of the first and most important relation of that individual—that to his progenitors—would be in like manner general, and in like manner preserved among the various families of the Aryan race. This proved to be the case. The word for mother, is, with very slight variation, the same in all of them. For example, English _mother_, Anglo-Saxon _moder_, Dutch _moeder_, Icelandic _mothir_, Danish _moder_, German _mutter_, Celtic _mathair_, Russian _mat-e_, Latin _mater_, Greek _m_e_t_e_r_,[A] Sanskrit _matri_; and on the other side, the male, we have, English _father_, Anglo-Saxon _fæder_, Dutch _vader_, Danish _fader_, Icelandic _fathir_, Mæso-Gothic _fadar_, German _vater_, Latin _pater_, Greek _pater_, Persian _pedar_, and Sanskrit _pitri_. Here again we have followed these household words through Europe and four thousand years into Central Asia. The root of _mother_, or _mater_, is assumed to be _ma_; although its significance is, I believe, yet unknown. That of _father_, or _pater_, is assumed by most of the best scholars (although on grounds which, with a hesitation only becoming in me, I venture to think not absolutely satisfactory) to be _pa_, conveying the idea of protection. In both cases, however, there can be no doubt of the radical positions of the syllables _ma_ and _pa_; and thus we see a fact at once whimsically and touchingly significant; that the two childish household words _ma_ and _pa_, so commonly, although not universally, used, are at least representatives of a speech of such hoary antiquity that it lies beyond the bounds of history and within the realm of conjecture. _Ma_ and _pa_ antedate not only _mother_ and _father_, but the Sanskrit _matri_ and _pitri_.

A difference between the historical forms of these two words will be remarked by the observant reader. In _mother_, _mater_, we have the initial consonant of the root preserved in all tongues, from the beginning (or as near the beginning as we can go); but in _fa-ther_, when we touch the Latin and the Greek, the _f_ becomes _p_, _pater_; and this we find was the sound with which the word began in the elder speech,—Sanskrit _pitri_. This fact, so far from being at all inconsistent with the substantial identity of the word in its various forms, confirms that identity. The difference is the result of a phonetic change by which (according to well-established principles which can here be only thus mentioned) certain consonant sounds change to certain other sounds. The reason of this change is not known; but it is known as an observed fact, which observed fact is loosely called a law. We are in the habit of supposing that what always takes place does so because of a rule of law. But phonetic changes of this kind, which affect vowels and what are called semi-vowels, as well as consonants, take place in so regular a way that words can be traced through them with a certainty which is almost if not quite unerring. This change accounts not only for the _f_ in _father_, but for the vowel difference between the Latin _pater_ and the Sanskrit _pitri_. And in this word we have a good example in point as to the position of Sanskrit in relation to the other related Aryan languages. It is by no means certain, but rather the contrary, that the _i_ in the _pi_ of the Sanskrit _pitri_ is older than the _a_ in the Latin _pater_ and the English _father_. The _a_ in those words came not by any phonetic change from the _i_ in the Sanskrit _pitri_ and the Persian _pidar_. Probably, rather, it came directly down to the Teutonic, the Gothic, and the Celtic languages from that elder lost speech from which the Sanskrit as well as those others is derived.

One other family and household word is illustrative of our subject, and has a singular interest. Both _son_ and _daughter_, like _father_ and _mother_, are found in most of the Indo-European languages, and in Sanskrit. _Son_ in Sanskrit is _súnu_, and is reasonably assumed to be derived from _su_, to beget, to bear, to bring forth. _Daughter_, the word just particularly referred to, is in Anglo-Saxon _dohtor_, Dutch _dochter_, Danish _datter_, Swedish _dotter_, Icelandic _dôttir_, Mæso-Gothic _dauhtar_, Russian _do-che_, German _tochter_, Greek _thugat_e_r_, Sanskrit _duhitri_. And if the generally accepted derivation of this word (which so conforms to all the required conditions that there is no reasonable ground of doubt about it) is correct, it records an interesting fact and tells a little story. _Duhitri_, the Sanskrit for _daughter_, is from _duh_ or _dhugh_, which means, to milk; and _daughter_ means the milker, a milk-maid. The milk-maid of the rural past has been gradually yielding place, first to an Irish lad in cowhide boots, and next to a machine more or less india-rubber in its structure; but within the memory of living men, not aged, New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were filled with farmers’ daughters who performed a function which fell naturally to their share in the distribution of work, as it had done to their fore-mothers thousands of years before on the plateau of Central Asia; and every time that father or mother called one of them _daughter_, they heard unconsciously the name of their household place and office. Nor have these gentle milkers, these _dugh-i-tri_, I am glad to believe, quite disappeared before the march of Celtic emigration and machinery.

One of man’s first efforts at the orderly arrangement of things is numbering them, counting; and numeral words must have been among the earliest that were formed, and among those which, being most constantly used, would be most tenaciously preserved. So it proved. Most of the numeral words, _one_, _two_, _three_, etc., in all the Indo-European languages are found to be identical in origin, and some of them essentially so in form. For clearness and brevity of illustration let us take English _two_, which in Dutch is _twe_, Icelandic (in the objective) _tvo_, Danish _to_, Swedish _tva_, Mæso-Gothic _twai_, German _zwei_, Gælic _da_, Welsh _dau_, Russian _dva_, Latin _duo_, French _deux_, Italian _due_, Greek _duo_, Sanskrit _dra_:—so English _three_ is in Dutch _trie_, Danish and Swedish _tre_, Icelandic _thrir_, in the Celtic tongues _tri_, in Russian _tri_, Mæso-Gothic _threis_, German _drei_, Latin _tres_, Greek _treis_, Sanskrit _tri_. It is unnecessary to continue the illustration of this point. Other numeral words are equally remarkable in their continuity; and all are traceable to a remote antiquity and through a wide dispersion.

One more pronoun may well be examined. The first thought of the human mind, as we have already seen, on the perception of something else than its own body is “me” and “not me:” a dual thought, both elements of which come into consciousness together:—this that I feel or see is not me. The second perception is of what we call the second person, for which the word in English until recently was, and among some English-speaking people still is, _thou_. This word, which supplies one of the commonest needs of life in language among people of all conditions, has been preserved among all the Aryan peoples for four thousand years almost without the signs of phonetic wear and tear. In Old Frisian (the language which, next to the so-called Anglo-Saxon, is nearest of kin to English) it is _thu_, in Dutch (which of spoken languages is next nearest) it has strangely disappeared, but in Icelandic it is _thu_, Danish and Swedish _du_, in Mæso-Gothic _thu_, in German _du_, in the Celtic tongues _tu_, in Russian _tui_, Latin, Italian and French _tu_, Greek _su_ (for _tu_), Persian _tu_, Sanskrit _tuam_.

As the intelligent reader considers these lists of common words which are identical, or almost identical, in so many languages spoken through forty centuries, from a period extending far beyond historical records, the thought must arise that it was strange, almost unaccountable, that the close connection, the affiliation, of these languages was left to be clearly proved within only about fifty years. But it must be remembered that this affiliation in regard to some of them was as well known before that time as it is now. That the Scandinavian tongues were closely related, that English was connected with the Scandinavian and the Teutonic languages, that French, Spanish and Italian were close cousins, and were all direct descendants (with some mixture by inter-marriage) from Latin, was well known to all students of language. But beyond this line they were all abroad. Of the connection of the Celtic tongues—Welsh, Gælic, Erse (Irish) and Cornish—with the Teutonic and the Scandinavian, or even with the Latin and Greek (with which they are more nearly allied) there was no knowledge. Nor was it supposed that Greek and Latin had any other connection with English than that which existed through Greek words and Latin words transplanted into English. Latin was supposed to be derived from Greek, and indeed to be a debased form of that language; and as to the Sclavonic tongues, Russian, Polish, etc., they were the gabble of outside barbarians.

Besides all this, the influence of theology upon narrow and uninformed minds was felt in philology—if we can call the linguistic studies of those days philological. As the proclamation of the One God was made to the world in Hebrew, and as the grand generalities of the Mosaic record of creation were recorded in that language, it was assumed by many worthy and really learned men, at whose fond fancy we may smile but should not sneer, that Hebrew was the original speech of the human race; that it was bestowed upon man directly by divine beneficence; and that all the languages of the earth were derived from that in which the ten commandments were first written. Infinite labor, years of toilsome study, almost endless efforts of perverted ingenuity were given to the mistaken effort to establish this point, which was regarded by these in-the-dark-working linguists as one, almost if not quite, of religious importance. Now we know that the Hebrew language is totally, radically different from all the Indo-European languages; that they have no kinship whatever, and are as unlike as if they were spoken on two separate planets by creatures of different species. And besides, we know that Hebrew is not even in the position of a parent speech, but is one of a small, although very important family, the Semitic, and that in this family its position is that of a cadet.

The consequence in linguistic study of the discovery of Sanskrit, which was chief in importance, was not so much the establishment of kindred among all the languages of Europe, although that was very important, as the proof that they were not (with notable exceptions) derived the one from the other, but that they all were sprung from a common stock, to which the principal of them must be traced, not through one another, but directly. Thus the Danes and the Germans lie close together, and there is some likeness in substance between their languages, and a little in form; but it will not do to attempt to trace the Danish and the other Scandinavian languages to the German, or through the German to an older tongue. It is found that of the Scandinavian languages and the German, neither is derived from the other, but that both are the offspring of a lost elder speech, Teutonic or Gothic, of which the Mæso-Gothic is the oldest representative of which there are any remains. It is also found that the Latin language is not derived from the Greek, did not come through it, but that both Latin and Greek come independently from either a common branch of the old Aryan tongue, or directly from that tongue itself. Moreover it is now pretty well established to the total subversion of previous theories, that the Latin represents, or at least retains, older forms of the parent language than are to be found in Greek. This, however, is not true as to syntax, grammar, in which Latin diverges much more than Greek does from that approximation to the original language which we find in Sanskrit.

Let us glance at this subject of grammar; in doing which, without going into dry detail, or even into the niceties of construction, we may by the examination of one or two salient facts trace very clearly the connection of some of the most important and divergent branches of Indo-European speech. Every educated boy who has passed through a classical grammar school will remember his surprise, not to say his disgust, at finding, after mastering toilfully a little Latin, that when he entered upon the study of Greek, he found the Greek verb very unlike the Latin in its conjugation, and much more complicated. It has a middle voice which is reflective in its signification. For example, _etupsa_ means I struck, _etuphth_e_n_, I was struck, but _etupsam_e_n_, I struck myself. It has in tenses not only present, perfect, future, and so forth, but a first perfect and a second perfect, a first plu-perfect and a second plu-perfect, a first future and a second future, and, moreover, two pestilential contrivances called the first and second aorists. Besides this, every tense has not only a singular and a plural number, but a dual number, by which the action or the being, or the suffering, is confined to two persons—a sort of grammatical buggy. The nouns, the pronouns, the adjectives, the very articles, have also this dual number. This is a fact, an oppressive, mysterious, unrelated fact with which the young student is brought face to face, and into conflict with which he enters, wondering at the cause of this bountiful dispensation of grammar. When Sanskrit was discovered, it was found that this middle voice, these first and second perfects, and futures, and first and second aorists, these dual numbers of verbs, nouns, and what not, were Sanskrit as well as Greek, and were nearly two thousand years older than any Greek writing that exists. But they are found not only in Sanskrit and in Greek. In the Mæso-Gothic, which, as we have seen is our earliest representative of one of the two great European divisions of Aryan speech, to the other of which the Greek belongs—it, the Greek, having separated itself at a time long before the historical period—in this Mæso-Gothic we have also the middle voice, the dual number, and tenses and inflections multitudinous. These grammatical facts bind, and without other evidence would bind, the Greek, the Teutonic or Gothic, and the Sanskrit languages in a bond of kinship.

It had been supposed by classical scholars, and the supposition yet lingers among them, that these Greek double perfects and futures, these aorists, and these middle voices and dual numbers, were the fruit of a great genius for language and literary expression, that they had been elaborated and painfully produced in the successive development of the Greek intellect—which indeed was one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the world. But the discovery of Sanskrit has shown us that these grammatical excrescencies were mere relics of a past; things that the Greek poets and philosophers found made to their hands, and which they must use whether they would or no. Nor are we relieved from the necessity of this inference and its consequences by the fact that Sanskrit is a highly elaborated language, and has been the object of religious care and veneration on the part of profound grammarians for many centuries. Its grammar has been thus solicitously preserved and minutely studied _because_ it was involved with the Brahminical religion. Its origin dates back in the darkness of savagery. The Mæso-Goths, who had no Greek intellect or refinement, had in their language also the dual number, the middle voice, and the swarming inflections. Nor only so. In a corner of Scythian Europe, in Cimmerian darkness, were, and are, a rude people, the Lithuanians, who lie between the Prussians and the Russians, who had no literature, whose language was not even written until it was furnished with characters by strangers so late as the sixteenth century, who had not advanced intellectually beyond the making of folk-songs and ballads, whose very national existence was hardly more important than that of Comanches or Piutes; and yet these people had the dual number, the variety of inflection, and the complicated grammar of the old speech. It had merely come down to them as it had come to the Mæso-Goths, and to the Greeks, and to the Brahmins, from the early days of the Aryan people and their language. Simply this, and nothing more.

The fact upon this subject is that as we look backward through history we find that grammar increases as civilization and culture diminish; or, to put it conversely, that as culture increases and civilization becomes more elaborate and complex, grammar diminishes and simplifies, and gradually passes away. The traits once regarded as special and distinguishing excellencies of the Greek language, its dual number, its middle voice, its double tenses, and to the horror of some of the classical scholars among my readers, if I am honored by any such—I add, even the aorists, are not signs of a high development of language, but mere relics of barbarism. They are so in the Greek, just as they are so in the Mæso-Gothic and in the Lithuanian languages. They had no relation whatever to the power, the subtlety and the loftiness of the Greek intellect; they were not a necessary means nor even a happily adapted tool for the work of that intellect in literature, in art, and in philosophy; although it is not to be denied that the Greek intellect did leave its impress upon the Greek language. The Greeks were the great people that they were simply because they were Greeks; we know not why; just as the Lithuanians were and remained Lithuanians, we know not why. In the one case the complicated instrument of expression had no more to do with the splendid achievements of which it was the medium than in the other it had to do with the rudeness which it did not help to refine, or the obscurity to which it lent no luster.

It is proper that I should say to my readers that in proclaiming this I am teaching heresy. This is not orthodoxy, but my doxy. I am willing to confess, like one who went long before me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose, that I speak as a fool; but I shall be content with the final verdict that shall be passed upon me, whatever it may be.

Emphasizing for the moment the fact that this grammar which increases with barbarism and which diminishes with civilization, coexists only with inflection and depends upon it, and that its diminution in the Latin development of Aryan speech as compared with the Greek, was a purely rational, although perhaps an unconsciously rational, movement, let us defer the further consideration of this subject until another occasion.

One minute but very largely significant fact connected with the Latin and Greek languages, which will be appreciated to a certain degree at least by every schoolboy who has studied those languages, may here properly be set forth and considered. In Latin, the name of the supreme god, whose name in Greek is Zeus, is Jupiter. Now _Jupiter_ is no form of _Zeus_. It can not “come from” Zeus by any mode of phonetic modification or decay. Moreover, the declension of _Jupiter_ through the various substantive cases is notably irregular. It is:

_Nom._ Jupiter, Jupiter. _Gen._ Jovis, of Jupiter. _Dat._ Jovi, to or for Jupiter. _Accus._ Jovem, Jupiter (objectively). _Voc._ Jupiter, O, Jupiter. _Abl._ Jove, with, in, from, or by Jupiter.

Now, _Jovis_, _Jovi_, _Jovem_ and _Jove_ can not be formed from Jupiter. _Jovis_ is no more a real case of _Jupiter_ than _ours_ is a real case of _we_. How came the simple name of this god, used absolutely or in the way of invocation, to be _Jupiter_, and yet when used possessively to be _Jovis_, datively _Jovi_, etc.? To the young student of Latin this is a barren, brutal fact with which he is confronted, and which he is obliged to accept and to remember. It has no relation to any other fact. So at least it was forty years ago, as I and my contemporaries can testify.[B] But _Jovis_, although it can not be derived from Jupiter may be derived from or at least connected with _Zeus_. In fact it is so derived or connected. The supreme god of the Latin and the Greek mythology was the same god, and he had originally the same name, which was Dyus, or some like form. But the Latins did not derive this personage of their mythology _from_ the Greeks, nor take his name from them, as it was once assumed they did. This is shown by the name they gave him, _Jupiter_; yet that very name, unlike as it is to _Zeus_, and impossible to be derived from it, has in it the witness of identity of origin. The fact is that the Latins and the Greeks derived both their conception of the supreme god and his name from a common source; a fact which has been revealed by the discovery of Sanskrit.

In the mythology of the Vedas, the sacred books of the Brahmins, which are written in Sanskrit, the supreme god, the _primum mobile_ of divine power is _Dyaus_, which is from the root _dyu_, meaning to beam, to emit light. Dyaus is therefore the sky god, a record and an expression of the recognition of divinity in the heavens.[C] So both to the Greeks and the Latins the supreme divinity was originally the sky god. Now, _Dyaus_ and _Zeus_ are the same word with little phonetic modification. But whence comes _Jupiter_? Hence. We have seen above that the Sanskrit word for father is _pitri_, which seems to be corrupted from _pàtri_, a protector,[D] and the simple union of these two words gives us, _Dyaus-patri_, which, as an earlier, if not an original form, of _Zeus-pater_, or _Ju-piter_, would be an unexceptional etymology. We are however not left to conjecture nor to etymological construction for the origin of this name; for, according to Max Müller, in the Veda _Dyaushpitar_ or _Dyupitar_ become almost as much one word as Jupiter in Latin. Here we have the otherwise anomalous Latin _Jupiter_ completely accounted for, not only in accordance with etymology and reason, but by positive historical evidence. To the Latins _Jupiter_ was merely a name, coming to them they knew not whence nor how; but they had received it in a direct line of communication from their Aryan forefathers, who were also the forefathers of the writers of the Sanskrit Vedas. Yet more; when the Roman said _Jupiter_ he merely called his supreme god the Heavenly Father. So near, in the very idea of divinity, does the evidence found in the history of language bring the modern Christian to the primitive pagan.

This name _Dyaus_, or _Zeus_, is also regarded by some of the most eminent philologists as identical with the name of the Eddic god Tyr and the Saxon word Tiw, and as present in our _Tues_-day or _Tiws_-daeg. It may be so; but specialists who may claim submissive deference as to matters of fact within their specialty are often led by enthusiasm into theory and speculation which respect for their learning does not oblige us to accept.

But space fails me, and with a brief exposition of a very few points of my previous paper this one must be closed.

The records of possession left in the names of places by advancing tribes of Aryans may be well illustrated by two names more widely known, perhaps, than any other two in the world—Thames and Avon. Now, both these names mean merely river, running water. Why, then, do we say the river Thames and the river Avon; which is merely to say in each case the river River. Simply because our English (or Anglo-Saxon) forefathers going to England and conquering it, found those streams so called by the natives. In the old Welsh (Celtic) which was spoken in ancient Britain both _tam_ or _tama_ and _afon_ mean a river, and the rude and simple people naturally called the running water nearest them merely the river. When there was but one theater in London, and when there was but one in New York, in each case it was called merely the theater, without any other name, which indeed was needless. But when the Anglo-Saxons heard the stream on which London stands called _tam_, and that on which Stratford stands called _afon_, those words did not mean running water to them; they were mere names; and names they have remained. There are no less than nine rivers in England called Avon (merely because they were _the_ river to the old Britons in their neighborhood); and _tam_ is found in composition in names of places (Tamworth, Tamarton) with the same meaning. The Celts have left these name-traces upon hills, forests, and streams, not only in England, but all over southern and western Europe. Other families have left similar vestiges. A moderate illustration of this one point would require a paper by itself. In this way the march and the dwelling places of the principal divisions of the great race can be discovered.

It was said in the foregoing paper that the development and the various stages of knowledge attained by the Aryans had left traces in the history of their language; and it was remarked that the facts that words for boat and oars are common to all the languages of the race, while those which pertain to navigation are radically unlike, shows that before the great separation took place, the Aryans had rowed small boats on rivers, but knew nothing of ships and deep-sea sailing. From similar evidence we infer that they never saw salt water before the separation; for at that time they did not know the oyster, which is found in the Caspian Sea. The name _oyster_ is common to all the European peoples, ancient as well as modern (Latin _ostrea_, Greek _ostreon_, with the meaning bone, shell); but in Sanskrit the word for the much eaten bivalve is _pushtika_. Plainly the southeastern moving and the northwestern moving Aryans severally named the oyster after they had parted. It is also remarkable that the only tree of which the name is common to all the Indo-European peoples, Asiatic as well as European, is the birch; the name of which in Sanskrit is _bhúrja_ (observe how like in sound the two words are); and that this tree is the most widely dispersed of all the forest flora, and is found in great variety and large quantity in Central Asia.

In most of the examples of etymology given in this paper the likeness between the recent and the remote has been more or less apparent to eye or ear on slight examination. It must not however be supposed that the history of a word is limited by such palpable bounds. On the contrary etymology, which when trustworthy proceeds step by step accounting for, but accepting every clearly established change, leads the inquirer in numberless instances into regions at first far beyond his ken. One illustrative instance must suffice: The French word for water is _O_. It is spelled _eau_; but that is not to the purpose; a word is a sound, not the name of an assemblage of signs called letters. Now this sound _O_, or _eau_, comes directly from the Latin _aqua_, in which there is no trace of it; and in which, moreover, there are, as will be seen, sounds of a marked character which have been wholly swept away. The course of derivation or degradation was this: _Aqua_ by the common change of _u_ to _v_, became _aqva_, which passed by phonetic decay into _ava_, and this by a common vowel change become _eve_, which in turn, by a common diphthongal extension, broadened into _eave_, the _v_ in which changing back again into _u_ gave _eaue_, of which the body, _au_, came to represent the whole word, which at last reached the simple vowel sound _o_. In like manner the Greek _pente_, the French _cinq_, the English _five_, and the Sanskrit _pancan_ may all be traced to the same root, _pani_, the hand, with its five fingers; the English _tooth_ and the Latin _dens_ are from the same root (indeed it has been extracted), and so are _coucher_ and _locus_, and even _galaxy_ and _lettuce_. That I may not seem to tantalize my reader I will give the easy explanation of the last paradox-like assertion. The bond between the two words is in the Latin word for milk, _lac_, and the kindred Greek word for the same fluid, _gala_; the old forms having been severally _lact_ and _galact_. The galaxy is the milky-way, and lettuce is the juicy, milky plant; the Old French name of which (from which ours comes) was _laictuce_, which itself represented the Latin _lactuca_.

* * * * *

The reader having now seen some few characteristic illustrations of the methods, the course, and the revelations of philology in regard to the language of the Aryan peoples, we are ready to examine the history and the structure of English.

[A] Here and elsewhere I use italic letters to spell a Greek word; doing so because it is quite possible that many intelligent and inquiring readers who may look to me, as to a fellow-student, for a little help, may be unacquainted with the Greek alphabet, and the force of its various characters. We are obliged to use this letter in Russian and Sanskrit; why not in Greek? As to that however there is one notable and often recurring difficulty in the use of an alien alphabet: the short _e_ is one letter, _epsilon_, and the long _e_ another, _eta_ (pronounced _aytah_). The sound and value of the latter is that of the French or Italian _e_; that is the name sound of English _a_, without the slight _e_ sound, with which we close it. This sound—the long _e_ (or _a_)—I have endeavored to indicate by using for it a Roman letter. Strictness would demand other like indications of sound which must be passed by with this allusion.

[B] And so I find it turning to a Latin grammar for schools published in 1871. I do not refer to grammars like Madvig’s.

[C] See Max Müller, “Science of Language,” vol. ii, pp. 468-472.

[D] Monier Williams’ Sanskrit Grammar, p. 70.

HOME STUDIES IN CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS.

BY PROF. J. T. EDWARDS, D.D.

Director of the Chautauqua School of Experimental Science.

WATER.—PHYSICAL PROPERTIES.

A glance at the map of our earth at once reveals the preponderance of water. Three-fourths of its surface is covered by the ocean, and if we divide the globe into northeastern and southwestern halves, one of the hemispheres will consist almost entirely of water. Yet there was a time when the ocean was still more extensive and covered islands and continents; even the loftiest mountain peaks were beneath the sea. We shall presently see how important an agency water became in moulding the earth and making it habitable for man. The lakes and rivers also constitute no small part of many lands, and even in the air, invisible streams are ever flowing, for “all the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come thither they return again.” The summer’s heat is the power, and the air its instrument, by which vapors, fogs, clouds and rain are lifted and borne back to the mountains and again scattered over the plains.

WATER AS AN ARCHITECT—WORLD-BUILDING.

In the divine hand water has been used as the material with which to shape the earth, even as a workman employs his files, emery and diamond dust to shape the objects upon which he labors. At first the earth was characterized by one dead level—a wide, desolate, fire-scarred plain; then the mountains were upheaved, the depths were broken up, and, no longer resting in their quiet beds, everywhere rolled down the slopes, and by mere attrition, wore away the firm rocks and bore the material into the plains below; all valleys have thus been made. Some are still in process of formation. Far out in the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Indian Ocean, the Mississippi and the Ganges are pouring their sediment and building future continents. Sometimes, where the volume of water was great, or the mountains steep, mighty gorges were carved out, like the river-bed below Niagara, the tremendous cuts of the Congo, or the awful cañons of the Colorado, some of which are five thousand feet in depth. Ceaseless waves beat upon the shore, powdered the rocks, and made the soft beaches; tides ebbed and flowed, and slowly wrought their changes. In addition to the _wearing_ action of the water, which arises from the smoothness of its molecules, and the slight cohesion of its particles, thereby causing ceaseless motion, it possesses a wonderful solvent power. Solution arises from the fact that the adhesion between a liquid and a solid is greater than the cohesion between the molecules of the solid; whenever this is the case the latter will be dissolved. If water is heated, this action will be intensified; such was its condition in the early geologic ages, and this explains the extraordinary rapidity with which rocks were then dissolved. Beautiful grottoes were formed like that of Antiparos, vast caverns, such as those along the coasts of Scotland, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, and the Wyandotte of Indiana. It is a curious paradox which appears in this story of world-building that the New World was really the oldest in process of formation, and that the tallest mountains were the latest upheaved.

WATER AS AN ARTIST.

If we will stop and remember for a moment how often the painter and poet dwell upon _variety_ in landscapes, we shall appreciate more fully the artistic work of water. We have already seen that by dissolving the rocks, the way was prepared for all verdure, and not less truly did it round the hills and carve the gorges, as well as smooth the outlines, which add so much to nature’s charms. Nor is this all. In the running brook, the sparkling cascade, the white foam of the cataract, the deep blue of the sea, the matchless variety and beauty of the clouds, we may behold the grandest exhibitions of color and form. There is endless variation in the tint, light and shade of water, owing to many causes. That this is true one will easily see in studying Church’s “Icebergs,” a picture of wonderful color and beauty, although one would scarcely expect these qualities in such a subject. Time would fail to describe the numberless forms of beauty displayed by water; it glitters in the dewdrop, shimmers in the wave, rounds the cheek of beauty, colors the rose, and paints the rainbow on the arching sky.

WATER AS A LABORER.

Water was early made to labor for man. Of the various forms of energy which he employs, animal, steam, electricity, wind, water, the last is probably the most inexpensive. It is a singular fact that all national progress and efficiency have depended largely upon proximity of water. Seas, indenting bays, sounds, rivers early bore the commerce of the world, and formed the medium for interchange of ideas, inventions, arts and literature. The little peninsulas of Italy and Greece, with their broken coast-line, developed a hardy race of seamen, who penetrated to the remotest parts of the then known world. The story of the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece is one of the earliest, as it is one of the most beautiful traditions of antiquity.

Look at that sturdy little island in the north Atlantic, whose people have so utilized the ocean that “she has dotted the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drum beat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous strain of the martial airs of England.” We build many hopes for the prosperity of our own country upon the fact of our extensive coast-line, which gives us one mile of shore-line to every one hundred and four square miles of surface, while that of Europe, which is far more favored in this respect than any other division of the world, has only one mile of coast for every two hundred and twenty-four square miles of surface. Water furnishes the most convenient and mobile instrument for applying gravity. As it flows on its way to the sea, everywhere it is made to turn the thousand busy wheels of industry, so that it used to be said that every pound of water in the Blackstone and Merrimac rivers did a pound of work before it reached the sea. The physical property of water which makes it in this connection so useful is, that it presses equally in all directions; it can therefore be adjusted with great ease to the sinuosities of tubes, water-wheels and kindred appliances. We also use it as a convenient power for obtaining pressure by means of the hydrostatic press.

This depends upon the principle that water transmits force equally in all directions; therefore, strange as it may appear, we meet the paradox that a little water will accomplish as much as a great quantity. Thus, if a slender upright tube be connected with the bottom of a large tank the water will stand at the same height in both, and consequently the trifling amount of water in the tube supports and balances the vast amount in the tank. Suppose the area of the tube were as one to ten thousand. Now, if we should apply the force of one pound on the surface of the water in the tube, an uplifting force of one pound would be communicated to every equal area of a piston resting upon the surface of the water in the tank; so it is evident that with the pressure of one pound we might raise ten thousand pounds.

There are few more interesting proofs that “Peace hath her victories, no less renowned than war,” than that found in the completion of the Erie Canal, whereby a path was made for the vast agricultural products of the west to the metropolis, and thence to all countries.

Re-read the story of that magnificent commemoration of human genius and effort, when, in New York harbor, Governor DeWitt Clinton joined in perpetual wedlock the lake and the sea.

An interesting illustration of the upward pressure of water in seeking its level may often be seen in the dry docks of our great seaport cities, where old ocean is frequently compelled to do heavy work for man by lifting his ships out of water. A vessel is on the shoals; after the storm has subsided a great number of empty air-tight casks are sunk around the ship and fastened to it. The gradual pushing of the water lifting against the casks slowly raises the vessel until she floats.

WATER AS A LAPIDARY.

Allusion has already been made to the erosive action of water. Every day observation will furnish us examples of this. The pebbles beneath our feet have been rounded and polished by this lapidary. The most beautiful specimens of its handiwork, however, are to be found in crystallization. Snow exhibits many lovely forms. If the flakes are caught on any dark surface we shall readily see that they are fashioned with great symmetry, starlike in form, on the plan of six diverging rays. There is an endless variety formed by additions made to these primaries. Not less beautiful are many of the forms of ice. The Mer-de-Glace of the Alps is pronounced by Prof. Tyndall one of nature’s most resplendent pieces of handiwork. If we may judge from all descriptions, the lofty spires and glittering sides of an iceberg furnish a spectacle sublime and terrible. The vast ice fields of the North, in spite of all their desolation, possess a mysterious charm.

The most favorable condition for the crystallization of any substance is its solution in water. It will thus appear that water is one great source of that marvelous beauty of form which we find in the mineral world. This process of nature may readily be repeated by dissolving alum, sugar, and similar substances, and crystallizing them on glass, or a string placed in the solution, and allowed to remain undisturbed. Bouquets of crystallized grasses are made in this way, often being colored afterward.

Almost all mineral substances can be crystallized, and some of the finest observations of the microscopist are made upon these objects.

Among the most interesting phenomena produced are those of polarized light, and many important deductions in medicine and chemistry are derived therefrom.

WATER AS A FARMER.

Solids are not the only substances which water is capable of taking to itself. Gases are also absorbed by it. A pint of water under one pressure of the atmosphere will absorb one pint of carbonic acid. It will take seven hundred pints of ammonia gas. This power of absorption belonging to water is of the greatest importance to agriculture. As the rain descends it frees the air from noxious gases, and carries them to the earth, where they are distributed to the rootlets of the plants; in this instance that which is death to the animal is life to the plant; it also rises in all vegetation, from cell to cell, by what is known as endosmosis. It moves freely through the porous earth by capillary attraction, the interstices of the earth really constituting a system of tubing through which the liquids freely circulate. When the earth becomes compact and hard the water can not so freely move through it; if the weather is dry, then follows another important result—the air, which always bears with it more or less moisture, especially in hot weather, can not pass through the soil and bring to the roots its gift of nutrition. Any one can perform the following experiment: Walk into the garden some morning when the season is dry and hot. You will often notice that the garden walk looks damp, while the spot that you hoed the day before, perhaps, seems dry, but if you will dig down a little way into each you will find that the loosened earth where you had worked, is moist, while the former is, below the surface, quite dry. Hence a practical inference of much value—the importance of frequently hoeing and loosening the earth, to facilitate the growth of plants, especially when the season is dry. The philosophy of this is, that the air freely passing through the loosened earth becomes cooled, and the moisture it contains is condensed, and remains to nourish the plant. A curious illustration of this fact is found in the prolific growth of watermelons, which are raised with the greatest success in dry sand, which is often so hot on the surface as to be painful to the hand; and yet a hundred pounds of watermelon contain ninety-eight pounds of water. The agricultural value of a country depends as much upon its water supply as upon the excellence of its soil. Here again we find one of the grandest endowments of “our heritage.” This is a land of sweet and abundant waters. Even those portions once considered worthless have been made of immense value by irrigation. Through our pastures flow crystal streams for the advantage of the dairy, as the production of good butter depends as much upon pure water as it does upon sweet grasses.

Glance over one of the broad corn-fields of the West. What a wonderful contrivance is each stalk for gathering sunlight and moisture! Water constitutes eighty per cent. of that vast growth! The forces of the sunbeam, which are locked up in it, will be surrendered during the coming winter, to sustain and invigorate man and beast. Take two large goblets, one of which is nearly filled with water. Place on it a piece of card-board, through which a hole has been made, pass through the opening the roots of any growing plant, like a spray of bergamot. Cover the plant with the other goblet; in a few moments the inner surface of the upper goblet will be covered with moisture, showing that the roots have absorbed and the stomata or pores of the leaves have exhaled the moisture. In every land drouth is synonymous with want and famine. With glad festivals the Egyptians greet the rising of the Nile. The seven lean years of Joseph’s time were years of drouth. If M. De Lesseps should carry out his mighty project of overflowing the Sahara with the waters of the Mediterranean, that desert may yet bud and blossom like the rose. Growth is intimately connected with climate, and the latter depends not a little upon proximity to water. The beautiful lake region of the United States would be almost uninhabitable were it not for the gentle influence of these inland seas. They cool the air in summer and warm it in winter, thus forming a great equalizing influence and preventing extremes of temperature.

WATER AS PHILANTHROPIST.

Few things are more interesting and suggestive of a kind Providence than the plan by which water is supplied to the human family by underground currents, where it is kept cool in summer, and prevented from freezing in the winter. Natural pipeage is found almost everywhere in the earth, consisting of a layer of sand or gravel found between layers of clay or rock, which are practically impervious to water.

Where the upper layer is wanting springs appear. They often gush from the foot of the hills, but not unfrequently we find them on lofty summits. Human skill has sought for these hidden streams at great depths by means of Artesian wells, some of which are two thousand feet deep. It is claimed that the Chinese used them two thousand years ago for procuring gas and salt water. There is a famous Artesian well at Grenelle, Paris, which yields six hundred and fifty-six gallons of water per minute, while two of these wells in Chicago discharge four hundred and thirty-two thousand gallons a day. As Chicago is situated on a level prairie, this water must come from the high hills of Rock River, a hundred miles away. The water coming from these great depths is warm, one proof of the heated condition of the interior of the earth.

Horticulturists have in some places conducted this heated water by underground pipes through their gardens, and thus produced a semi-tropical vegetation.

Human contrivances for lifting water to higher elevations are various. Archimedes invented a screw for this purpose. The siphon, the chain pump, the ordinary lifting pump, the force pump, and some other inventions are applied to do this work. It would be a profitable exercise to study out the philosophy of these water lifters. You can also make them for yourself. The illustration of the forms of siphons and their various uses, for example, as given in this article, will well repay careful study.

Another way in which water acts as a friend to man, is in its hygienic effects. Think of the numberless uses of ice in summer, and how grateful to the fevered lips is ice! The invalid seeks in summer the cool sea breeze, freighted with its finely divided and stimulating salts and mineral vapors. In winter the genial atmosphere of Florida or the Gulf will fan the patient’s faded cheek. Or perhaps some health resort may be sought where there are mingled with the waters valuable medicinal restoratives. Vermont has the greatest number of these, but they are found at Sharon, Avon, Clifton, and Saratoga; while the hot springs of Arkansas have a great reputation, and who knows but what in some of the wonderful bath fountains of the West we may yet find what Ponce de Leon sought, the elixir which should transform old age into blooming youth. The latest new idea in medical practice is the hot water cure, which consists in drinking an indefinite amount of hot water whenever opportunity makes it possible. Public fountains are good temperance lectures.

One must travel in oriental lands, however, to learn all the sweet and beautiful significance of that one word, Water, which is so often used in the Bible as the best symbol of God’s abounding mercy.

NOTE.—The cuts in this article are from “Elements of Physics,” by Prof. A. P. Gage, the richest contribution to experimental philosophy printed in many years. Teachers as well as students will find it full of valuable suggestions.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[_November 2._]

We read of Payson, that his mind, at times, almost lost sense of the external world, in the ineffable thoughts of God’s glory, which rolled like a sea of light around him, at the throne of grace.

We read of Cowper, that, in one of the few lucid hours of his religious life, such was the experience of God’s presence which he enjoyed in prayer, that, as he tells us, he thought he should have died with joy, if special strength had not been imparted to him to bear the disclosure.

We read of one of the Tennents, that on one occasion, when he was engaged in secret devotion, so overpowering was the revelation of God which opened upon his soul, and with the augmenting intensity of effulgence as he prayed, that at length he recoiled from the intolerable joy as from a pain, and besought God to withhold from him further manifestations of his glory. He said, “Shall thy servant _see_ thee and live?”

We read of the “sweet hours” which Edwards enjoyed “on the banks of Hudson’s River, in secret converse with God,” and hear his own description of the inward sense of Christ which at times came into his heart, and which he “knows not how to express otherwise than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world; and sometimes a kind of vision … of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from all mankind, sweetly conversing with Christ, and rapt and swallowed up in God.”

We read of such instances of the fruits of prayer, in the blessedness of the suppliant, and are we not reminded by them of the transfiguration of our Lord, of whom we read, “As he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistening?” Who of us is not oppressed by the contrast between such an experience and his own? Does not the cry of the patriarch come unbidden to our lips, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him?”

* * * * *

The scriptural examples of prayer have, most of them, an unutterable intensity. They are pictures of _struggles_, in which more of suppressed desire is hinted than that which is expressed. Recall the wrestling of Jacob: “I will not let thee go except thou bless me;” and the “panting” and “pouring out of soul” of David: “I wail day and night; my throat is dried: … I wait for my God;” and the importunity of the Syro-Phœnician woman, with her “Yes, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs;” and the persistency of Bartimeus, crying out, “the more a great deal,” “Have mercy on me;” and the strong crying and tears of our Lord, “If it be possible—if it be possible!” There is no easiness of desire here. The scriptural examples of prayer, also, are clear as light in their objects of thought. Even those which are calm and sweet, like the Lord’s prayer, have few and sharply-defined subjects of devotion. They are not discursive and voluminous, like many uninspired forms of supplication. They do not range over everything at once. They have no vague expressions; they are crystalline; a child need not read them a second time to understand them. As uttered by their authors, they were in no antiquated phraseology; they were in the fresh forms of a living speech. They were, and were meant to be, the channels of living thoughts and living hearts.—_Phelps._

[_November 9._]

It is the highest stage of manhood to have no wish, no thought, no desire, but Christ—to feel that to die were bliss if it were for Christ—that to live in penury, and woe, and scorn, contempt, and misery, were sweet for Christ. To feel that it matters nothing what becomes of one’s self, so that our Master is but exalted—to feel that though like a sear leaf, we are blown in the blast, we are quite careless whither we are going, so long as we feel that the Master’s hand is guiding us according to his will; or rather, to feel that though like the diamond, we must be exercised with sharp tools, yet we care not how sharply we may be cut, so that we may be made brilliants to adorn _his_ crown. If any of us have attained to this sweet feeling of self-annihilation, we shall look up to Christ as if he were the sun, and we shall say within ourselves, “O Lord, I see thy beams; I feel myself to be—not a beam from thee—but darkness, swallowed up in thy light. The most I ask is, that thou wouldst live in me—that the life I live in the flesh may not be my life, but thy life in me; that I may say with emphasis, as Paul did, ‘For me to live is Christ.’” A man who has attained this high position has indeed “entered into rest.” To him the praise or the censure of men is alike contemptible, for he has learned to look upon the one as unworthy of his pursuit, and the other as beneath his regard. He is no longer vulnerable since he has in himself no separate sensitiveness, but has united his whole being with the cause and person of the Redeemer. As long as there is a particle of selfishness remaining in us, it will mar our sweet enjoyment of Christ; and until we get a complete riddance of it, our joy will never be unmixed with grief. We must dig at the roots of our selfishness to find the worm which eats our happiness. The soul of the believer will always pant for this serene condition of passive surrender, and will not content itself until it has thoroughly plunged itself into the sea of divine love. Its normal condition is that of complete dedication, and it esteems every deviation from such a state as a plague-mark and a breaking forth of disease. Here, in the lowest valley of self-renunciation, the believer walks upon a very pinnacle of exaltation; bowing himself, he knows that he is rising immeasurably high when he is sinking into nothing, and, falling flat upon his face, he feels that he is thus mounting to the highest elevation of moral grandeur.

It is the ambition of most men to absorb others into their own life, that they may shine more brightly by the stolen rays of other lights; but it is the Christian’s highest aspiration to be absorbed into another, and lose himself in the glories of his Sovereign and Savior. Proud men hope that the names of others shall but be remembered as single words in their own long titles of honor; but loving children of God long for nothing more than to see their own names used as letters in the bright records of the doings of the Wonderful, the Counselor.—_Spurgeon._

[_November 16._]

The peace of Christ, then, was the fruit of the combined _toil_ and _trust_, in the one case diffusing itself from the center of his active life, in the other from his passive emotions; enabling him in the one case to _do things_ tranquilly, in the other to _see things_ tranquilly. Two things only can make life go wrong and painfully with us; when we suffer or suspect misdirection and feebleness in the energies of love and duty within us or in the providence of the world without us; bringing, in the one case, the lassitude of an unsatisfied and discordant nature; in the other the melancholy of hopeless views. From these Christ delivers us by a summons to mingled toil and trust. And herein does his peace differ from that which “the world giveth”—that its prime essential is not ease, but strife; not self-indulgence, but self-sacrifice; not acquiescence in evil for the sake of quiet, but conflict with it for the sake of God; not, in short, a prudent accommodation of the mind to the world, but a resolute subjugation of the world to the best conceptions of the mind. Amply has the promise to leave behind him such a peace been since fulfilled. It was fulfilled to the apostles who first received it, and has been realized again by a succession of faithful men to whom they have delivered it.

The word “peace” denotes the absence of war and conflict; a condition free from the restlessness of fruitless desire, the forebodings of anxiety, the stings of eternity.… The first impulse of “the natural man” is, to seek peace by mending his external condition; to quiet desire by increase of ease; to banish anxiety by increase of wealth; to guard against hostility by making himself too strong for it; to build up his life into a future of security and a palace of comfort, where he may softly lie, though tempests beat and rain descends. The spirit of Christianity casts away at once this whole theory of peace; declares it the most chimerical of dreams, and proclaims it impossible even to make this kind of reconciliation between the soul and the life wherein it acts. As well might the athlete demand a victory without a foe. To the noblest faculties of the soul, rest is disease and torture. The understanding is commissioned to grapple with ignorance, the conscience to confront the powers of moral evil, the affections to labor for the wretched and oppressed; nor shall any peace be found till these, which reproach and fret us in our most elaborate ease, put forth an incessant and satisfying energy; till instead of conciliating the world, we vanquish it; and rather than sit still, in the sickness of luxury, for it to amuse our perceptions, we precipitate ourselves upon it to mould it into a new creation. Attempt to make all smooth and pleasant without, and you thereby create the most corroding of anxieties, and stimulate the most insatiable of appetites within. But let there be harmony within, let no clamors of self drown the voice which is entitled to authority there, let us set forth on the mission of duty, resolved to live for it alone, to close with every resistance that obstructs it, and march through every field that awaits it, and in the consciousness of immortal power, the sense of ill will vanish; and the peace of God well nigh extinguish the sufferings of the man. “In the world we may have tribulation; in Christ we shall have peace.”—_James Martineau._

[_November 23._]

God is love; he who does not love him does not know him; for how can we know love without loving?… God who made all things in fact creates us anew every moment. It did not follow necessarily that because we were yesterday, we should exist to-day; we might cease to be, we might relapse into the nothingness from whence we came, if the same all-powerful hand who called us from it did not still sustain us. We are nothing in ourselves; we are only what God has made us to be, and that only while it pleases him. He has only to withdraw the hand which supports us in order to replunge us into the abyss of our nothingness, as a stone which one holds in the air falls from its own weight, as soon as the hand is unclosed which supports it. Thus do we hold existence only as the continual gift of God.…

It is not to know thee, oh God, to regard thee only as an all-powerful being who gives laws to all nature, and who has created everything which we see, it is only to know a part of thy being, it is not to know that which is most wonderful and most affecting to thy rational offspring. That which transports and melts my soul is to know that thou art the God of my heart. Thou doest there thy good pleasure.… Oh God! man does not know thee, he knows not who thou art. “The light shines in the midst of the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.” It is through thee that we live, that we think, that we enjoy the pleasures of life, and we forget him from whom we receive all these things.

Universal light! it is through thee alone that we see anything. Sun of the soul, who dost shine more brightly than the material sun! seeing nothing except through thee we see not thee thyself. It is thou who givest all things, to the stars their light, to the fountains their waters and their courses, to the earth its plants, to the fruits their flavor, to all nature its riches and its beauty, to man health, reason, virtue, thou givest all, thou doest all, thou rulest over all; I see only thee, all other things vanish as a shadow before him who has once seen thee. But alas! he who has not seen thee, has seen nothing, he has passed his life in the illusion of a dream; he is as if he were not more unhappy still, for as we learn from thy word, it were better for him if he had not been born.

For myself I ever find thee within me. It is thee who workest with me in all the good I do. I have felt a thousand times that I could not of myself conquer my passions, overcome my habits, subdue my pride, follow my reason, or continue to will what I have once willed. It is thou who gavest me this will, who preservest it pure; without thee I am like a reed, agitated by the wind. Thou hast given me courage, uprightness, and all the good emotions which I experience. Thou hast created within me a new heart which desires thy justice, and thirsts for thy eternal truth. I leave myself in thy hands; it is enough for me to fulfill thy all-beneficent designs, and in nothing to resist thy good pleasure, for which I was created. Command, forbid, what willest thou that I should do? What that I should do? Lifted up, cast down, comforted, left to suffer, employed in thy service, or useless to every one, I still adore thee, ever yielding my will, I say with Mary, “Be it unto me according to thy word.”—_Fénelon._

[_November 30._]

Remember what St. Paul saith, “Our life is hid with Christ in God.” … Five cordial observations are couched therein. First, that God sets a high price and valuation on the souls of his servants, in that he is pleased to hide them; none will hide toys and trifles, but what is counted a treasure. Secondly, the word hide, as a relative, imports that some seek after our souls, being none other than Satan himself, that roaring lion, who goes about seeking whom he may devour. But the best is, let him seek, and seek, and seek, till all his malice be weary (if that be possible), we can not be hurt by him whilst we are hid in God. Thirdly, grant Satan find us there, he can not fetch us thence; our souls are bound in the bundle of life, with the Lord our God. So that, be it spoken with reverence, God must first be stormed with force or fraud, before the soul of a saint sinner, hid in him, can be surprised. Fourthly, we see the reason why so many are at a loss, in the agony of a wounded conscience, concerning their spiritual estate: for they look for their life in a wrong place, namely, to find it in their own piety, purity, and inherent righteousness. But though they seek, and search, and dig, and dive never so deep, all in vain. For though Adam’s life was hid in himself, and he intrusted with the keeping of his own integrity, yet, since Christ’s coming, all the original evidences of our salvation are kept in a higher office, namely, hidden in God himself. Lastly, as our English proverb saith, “He that hid can find;” so God (to whom belongs the issues from death) can infallibly find out that soul that is hidden in him, though it may seem, when dying, even to labor to lose itself in a fit of despair.…

Surely as Joseph and Mary conceived that they had lost Christ in a crowd and sought him three days sorrowing, till at last they found him, beyond their expectation, safe and sound, sitting in the temple; so many pensive parents, solicitous for the souls of their children, have even given them up for gone, and lamented them lost (because dying without visible comfort), and yet, in due time, shall find them, to their joy and comfort, safely possessed of honor and happiness, in the midst of the heavenly temple and church triumphant in glory.—_Fuller._

GLIMPSES OF ANCIENT GREEK LIFE.

Selected from J. P. Mahaffy’s “Old Greek Life.”