THE faculty of speech, by which man is distinguished from the inferior creation, appears to have been exercised before the dispersion from Babel, without the tendency to infinite and perplexing variety. This is so much its present character, that our great English lexicographer apologizes for the imperfection of his performance, by the inconstancy of language itself. "While some words are budding, others are falling away," &c.

The original unity of language appears to us now a greater marvel than the variety consequent on the confusion of tongues. Such, however, is the recorded fact. "The whole earth was of one language (margin, lip), and of one speech (words)." But the Lord confounded their language, that they should not understand one another's speech. "So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence (Babel) upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city." (Gen. xi. 1, 9.) Much might be said to show that this building and dispersion apply chiefly to the descendants of Ham, who (chap. x. 10) began to build Babel. Dathe favours the idea that the tower, erected on an extensive plain, was intended as a beacon, a centre point of union, the effect of which would have been to counteract the command to replenish the earth, by congregating mankind in one huge mass. The fact, however, is, that while so much similarity may be traced between many of the tongues of the various nations dispersed, as to indicate a existed as to fulfil the Divine purpose. Diverse tongues have, common origin, yet such a practical difference has all along nations for long ages, and of greatly impeding the progress

of both truth and error.

This diversity cannot, either in accordance with the sacred

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narrative, or in the view of its practical effects, be considered otherwise than as a curse. It does not, like the countless variety of animals and flowers, serve a peculiar purpose in glorifying the Creator and fulfilling His design. Among the blessings which we may, perhaps, under the ultimate condition of God's people, look for, will be the reversal of this sentence. They may yet have a future unity of language, as of pure doctrine and holy worship. In Zephaniah iii. 9, we read, "For then will I turn to the people a pure language (lip), that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent (shoulder)." This may, indeed, refer rather to purity, than identity of language; still the tendency is in the direction of "one speech"-the primitive form. And the same may possibly be indicated by St. Paul's expression, (1 Cor. xiii. 8), "Whether there be tongues they shall cease:" the necessity for them shall be done away.

During the happiest period of the early church, when they were all of one heart, at the Pentecostal effusion, a remedy was provided for the obstacle to the progress of the gospel presented by the diversity of tongues. Not a miraculous unity of language or of hearing, but a wondrous and intuitive power of speaking in previously unknown tongues. This gift appears to have continued in the church during the lives of the apostles; at all events, until St. Paul's correspondence with the Corinthians. (1 Cor. xii.-xiv.) It became abused, and was now probably withdrawn in consequence, as well as because it had fulfilled its purpose. The seeds of divine truth had been sown among the nations of the known world by the apostles, and it never became extinct. Care was taken by multiplying translations, and by dispersing them among the churches, in the times consequent upon the oral teaching of the first preachers of the faith, to secure the purity of the gospel; which, before the decease of the apostles, had, in the Pauline phrase, been "preached to every creature under heaven." It has never ceased to exist in some feeble measure in the nations thus first blest.

It would appear that some believers were endued with the power of speaking languages which they could not themselves interpret, such interpretation being a distinct gift; and that the miraculous gifts, being used promiscuously in the public assemblies, were unprofitable. Nevertheless, the consequence of the withdrawal of these gifts by the restraining power of the Spirit soon became felt'; and the small progress of the gospel among the barbarian hordes of Europe, middle Asia, and the vast populations of India and China, may be traced to this source. The irruption of the northern barbarians upon the Roman empire, ending in the incorporation of these tribes into its communities, rendered their conversion, humanly

speaking, easier; and in time the Romish hierarchy reared. its head over them all. And now that church endeavoured to preserve its supremacy by the token of one languagethe Latin-in divine worship; and this, being one counterfeit of the true unity, is a most distinctive mark of the beast; corresponding with the most probable solution of the enigma of its mysterious number and name-Lateinos. (Rev. xiii. 18.)

The attempt at a forced unity of language has, however, signally failed in bringing the nations of the earth, if it were ever sincerely desired, into an intelligent and harmonious union. It has produced among the nations which owned the sway of Rome considerable, though far from perfect, uniformity of worship in the bond of ignorance, but not "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." As long as religion is viewed as a kind of magical machinery, and men are supposed to be saved by outward signs of faith, not by the inward work and guidance of the Spirit, this artificial oneness of speech may be convenient. But when men begin to inquire, the diversity of their minds will show itself in spite of outward conformity. Hence, among the learned, even in the Romish church, there has ever been a substantial difference of opinion on a great variety of points on which the human mind is exercised, notwithstanding the visible semblance of unity. The Latin became only, as the language of the learned, the convenient vehicle of their controversies, but it was inaccessible to the vulgar. And thus, through the middle ages, the diversity of tongues in the nations, and the conventional unity of the church, served the purposes of priestcraft in concealing its own weakness, its disbelief of the monstrous legends and dogmas dealt out to the barbarian. It concealed, too, its own bitter internal hostility carried on under the garb of unity, and it helped to perpetuate the power of the clergy over the consciences of men.

Rome still watches with jealous eye all openings of the mines of thought in the vernacular tongue. She still wraps herself in the hood and shroud of Latinity; happily for her less generally understood in the nineteenth than in the sixteenth century.

The rending of this veil, which (like that moral one upon the Jewish mind in reading the Old Testament) hid the word of God from the common people, or left them only such shreds and patches of it as were consistent with the policy of the church, was the first great token of the new era of human intelligence. Bede, Alfred, Wycliffe, Luther, in successive periods, opened portions of the sacred volume to the Saxon race, then in Britain and Germany; and the progress of evangelical truth, in any particular age or country, may be held to be almost identical with the amount of the knowledge of the scriptures in men's household words, their vernacular tongue,

Herein, however, we must still trace the hand of God, the work of the Spirit, in those learned persons who, born under the spell of Rome's sorcery, were enabled to scale off the film from their eyes, and to look with faith to the Saviour. Jerome's Latin Version was in the libraries of the monasteries, although the Hebrew and Greek originals were almost unknown; and even the portions quoted in the Fathers, and doled out in the Breviary, served to awaken curiosity in some earnest minds. It required another effort, however, to separate the precious from the vile, the inspired from the apocryphal; and this was effected by the same good providence which has all along guarded the sacred text. By the preservation of the Hebrew text, which contains only such portions as bear the marks of indubitable truth, the end has been gained. The study of the original text in the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Greek, was pursued very early in the sixteenth century, with the advantages derived from the art of printing; and the knowledge of those, then unknown, tongues was in this manner generally revived. The work of translation went on with that of the reformation, sometimes preceding, sometimes following after it, in particular countries; and yet both were mysteriously "let" by the crushing power of that predicted apostasy which, having nearly fulfilled its course, has at length, with undiminished hostility to the open Bible, found it needful to conform, in appearance at least, to the claims of the age, by promising new versions in the vernacular tongues!

If the sixteenth century was one of intellectual warfare with the great common enemy, Rome, the seventeenth was one of almost equally bitter contest between the emancipated tribes themselves. The century, therefore, passed away with little enlargement of the boundaries of the Christian church, or the circulation of the scriptures. Walton indeed produced his Polyglot; and the Syriac Version was brought to England by Sir Thomas Roe. Mutual persecution had driven men across the Atlantic; and the northern shores of the New Continent became peopled with those who spake a tongue entirely different from its aborigines, and the Southern Continent had been occupied by ruthless Romish adventurers in pursuit of gold. But all were too much intent on their own success to make any effective missionary efforts. But few European translations were made. Bishop Bedell produced the first in the native Irish; no further aggressions upon the domains of the Pope, the Turk or the Pagan, were accomplished. There was at length within our own island a period of religious freedom. The truth established in 1558 by Elizabeth, was asserted with a new principle of toleration in 1688. Good men began to look around them, and to find time and leisure to think of the heathen.

In the year 1694 we find archbishop Tillotson, in his sermon on Whitsunday, on the GIFT OF TONGUES, remarking, “The sixth and last thing which I propose to inquire into is, whether there be any necessity now, and consequent probability of the renewing of this miracle, in order to the conversion of infidels and the gaining over of those many and great nations in the remoter parts of the world, who are still strangers and enemies to the Christian religion. That which would induce a man to hope well in this case is, that without such a miraculous gift, there is little or no probability of the conversion of the infidel nations, unless God should be pleased, by some unexpected means, to bring over to Christianity some powerful prince, of great reputation for his wisdom and virtue, who by the influence of his example, and by his favour and countenance, might give advantages to the planting of it among his subjects. And yet, considering the inveterate and violent prejudices of men against a new religion, such an attempt would, in all human probability, be more likely to end in the ruin of the prince, and the undermining of his government, than in the establishment of a new religion. Of which kind there have been several instances very remarkable in Japan and Ethiopia, and perhaps in places and times nearer to us, and within our own memory."

The whole of the sermon, as well as another on the same subject, is very interesting, as showing the views of good men, standing on an eminence of authority and intelligence, at that important point of time when Protestant missions were unknown, but when the duty of them was beginning to be felt. The archbishop attributes the failure of those of Rome to their doctrine of reserve, and their conformity to idolatrous usages, practised to such a degree by the Jesuits in India as even to call for pontifical rebuke. And he suggests, that their cultivation of the poor and barren countries of the north would be a greater proof of zeal than their labours in the regions of gold and diamonds. Of such self-denying labours the Moravians were the first, of all Protestant churches, to give proof, in Greenland and among the slaves of the West Indies.

And

Shortly after Tillotson's sermon and decease, the two ancient Incorporated Societies were formed by Dr. Bray, Mr. Boyle, and others; and those institutions laboured on through the whole of the eighteenth century, not without success. they were the only signs of missionary life which our church exhibited. Bishop Wilson and his successor gave the Bible to the Manx in their own tongue. The opposition he met with, and the prejudices he had to encounter from those who thought themselves the representatives of the piety and churchmanship of England, are almost incredible. But there were few English missionaries; they were chiefly Germans. The gift of tongues was not poured out. The labours of eighteen centuries had