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.
[Illustration: WATER SEEKING ITS LEVEL.]
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.
[Illustration: WATER TRANSMITS POWER EQUALLY IN ALL DIRECTIONS.]
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.
[Illustration: CAPILLARY ATTRACTION—WATER AND QUICKSILVER.]
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.
[Illustration: THE HYDROSTATIC PRESS—PRESSING COTTON.]
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.
[Illustration: SHOWING AN ORDINARY PUMP.]
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.
[Illustration: MANY FORMS OF SIPHONS.]
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.
[Illustration: SHOWING THAT PRESSURE DEPENDS UPON DEPTH.]
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.
[Illustration: SHOWING THE PRINCIPLE OF ARTESIAN WELLS.]
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.”