THE RHEMISH BIBLE. 39 of the words which we read at Heb. xiii. 16, namely, "To do good and to communicate forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased," we read as follows, which are the words of the Rhemish: "Beneficence and communication do not forget; for with such hosts God is promerited"! Who does not feel that if our version had arrayed itself in such diction as this, had been composed in such Latin-English as this, our loss would have been great and enduring-one which would have searched into the whole religious life of our people, and been felt in the very depths of the national mind? There was indeed something still deeper than love of sound and genuine English at work in our translators, whether they were conscious of it or not, which hindered them from sending the Scriptures to their fellow-countrymen dressed out in a semi-Latin garb. The Reformation, which they were in this translation so mightily strengthening and confirming, was just a throwing off, on the part of the Teutonic nations, of that everlasting pupilage in which Rome would have held them; an assertion at length that they were come to full age, and that not through her, but directly through Christ, they would address themselves unto God. The use of the Latin language as the language of worship, as the language in which the Scriptures might alone be read, had been the great badge of servitude, even as the Latin habits of thought and feeling which it promoted had been the great helps to the continuance of this servitude, through long ages. It lay deep then in the very nature of their cause that the reformers should develop the Saxon, or essentially national, element in the language; while it was just as natural that the Roman catholic translators, if they must translate the Scriptures into English at all, should yet translate them into such English as should bear the nearest possible resemblance to the Latin Vulgate, which Rome, with a very deep wisdom of this world, would gladly have seen as the only one in the hands of the faithful. Let me again, however, recur to the fact that what our reformers did in this matter, they did without exaggeration; even as they had shown the same wise. moderation in still higher matters. They gave to the Latin side of the language its rights, though they would not suffer it to encroach upon and usurp those of the Teutonic part of the language. It would be difficult not to believe, even if all outward signs said not the same thing, that there are great things in store for the one language of Europe which is thus the connecting link between the North and the South, between the languages spoken by the Teutonic nations of the North and by the Romance nations of the South; which holds on to both; which partakes of both; which is as a middle term between both. It has been often thought that the English church, being in like manner double-fronted, looking on the one side toward Rome, being herself truly catholic, looking on the other toward the protestant communions, being herself also protesting and reformed, may yet in the providence of God have a great part to play for the reconciling of a divided Christendom. And if this ever should be so-if, in spite of our sins and unworthiness, so blessed a task should be in store for herit will not be a small help and assistance thereunto, that the language in which her mediation will have to JACOB GRIMM ON ENGLISH. 41 be effected is one wherein both parties may claim their own; in which neither will feel that it is receiving the adjudication of a stranger, of one who must be an alien from its deeper thoughts and habits, because an alien from its words, but a language in which both recognise very much of that which is deepest and most precious of their own. Nor is this merit which I have just claimed for our English the mere dream and fancy of patriotic vanity. The scholar who in our days is most profoundly acquainted with the great group of the Gothic languages in Europe, and a passionate lover, if ever there was such, of his native German-I mean Jacob Grimmhas expressed himself very nearly to the same effect, and given the palm over all to our English in words which you will not grudge to hear quoted, and with which I shall bring this lecture to a close. After ascribing to our language " a veritable power of expression, such as perhaps never stood at the command of any other language of men," he goes on to say: "Its highly spiritual genius, and wonderfully happy development and condition, have been the result of a surprisingly intimate union of the two noblest languages in modern Europe, the Teutonic and the Romance. It is well known in what relation these two stand to one another in the English tongue; the former supplying in far larger proportion the material groundwork, the latter the spiritual conceptions. In truth, the English language, which by no mere accident has produced and upborne the greatest and most predominant poet of modern times, as distinguished from the ancient classical poetry (I can, of course, only mean Shakespeare), may with all right be called a world language; and, like the English people, appears destined hereafter to prevail with sway more extensive even than its present over all the portions of the globe.* For in wealth, good sense, and closeness of structure, no other of the languages at this day spoken deserves to be compared with it—not even our German, which is torn, even as we are torn, and must first rid itself of many defects, before it can enter boldly into the lists, as a competitor with the English."t * A little more than two centuries ago, a poet, himself abundantly deserving the title of "well-languaged," which a contemporary or near successor gave him, ventured in some remarkable lines timidly to anticipate this. Speaking of his native tongue, which he himself wrote with such vigor and purity, though wanting in the fiery impulses which go to the making of a first-rate poet, Daniel exclaims : "And who, in time, knows whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores To enrich unknowing nations with our stores? ↑ Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache, Berlin, 1852, p. 50. LIVING AND DEAD LANGUAGES. 43 LECTURE II. GAINS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. It is not for nothing that we speak of some languages as living, of others as dead. These epithets are not severally mere synonyms for 'spoken' and 6 unspoken,' however we very often esteem them no more. Some languages are living, or alive, in quite a different and in a much higher sense than this; showing themselves to be so by many infallible proofs -by motion, growth, acquisition, loss, progress, and decay. A living language is one in which a vital, formative energy is still at work; a dead language is one in which this has ceased. A living language is one which is in the course of actual evolution; which is appropriating and assimilating to itself what it anywhere finds congenial to its own life, multiplying its resources, increasing its wealth; which at the same time is casting off useless and cumbersome forms, dismissing from its vocabulary words of which it finds no use, rejecting from itself by a reactive energy the foreign and heterogeneous which may for a while have been forced upon it. I would not assert that in the process of all this it does not make mistakes. In the desire to simplify it may let go distinctions which were not useless, and which it would have been better to retain; its acquisitions are not all gains; it some |