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though not a shade of doubt rests on this, from the pointing of many passages of Scripture, and from the whole meaning of life as developed in the broad, social, and affectionate light of the gospel; but the simple yet intense Scriptural idea of heaven as the union of those who love one another in Christ. Friendship will have pure objects, purged from all human weaknesses in the flame of the love of Christ. The family of Bethany, the brothers James and John, and the Marys, will meet each other again; but we are only told, in the Bible, that they loved Christ. That was enough.

Mr. Whately throws out a brief opinion, that the ministry of the blessed saints in acts of beneficence to man, is not entirely opposed to the tone of Scripture, although there is nothing in the way of positive proof. But he does not say, that the secret ministrations of God's love through these spiritual messengers, are ever made known to men themselves. Pure spirit could not manifest itself to men's bodily senses; could not be seen, or felt, or heard; could not speak, or lift, or strike. If it made itself known in any way through a material agency, it must appear in the body, and no one has yet risen from the dead except by miracle. God himself, as a spirit, has never yet been seen, or felt, or heard, by the bodily sense. "For a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." And even if the departed spirit visited earth again, it would not be to make revelations of the future state. The work of redemption could not be aided by this. They have Moses and the prophets,"-Christ and his gospel," and they would not be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." There is no necessity at all for any departed spirit to come back here to tell us anything. We have enough for our salvation, consolation, profoundest reason, and eternal responsibility. It would be bringing in human after Divine testimony,—a flickering ghost after "the strong Son of God." The susceptibilities of many respectable people, in these days, are taken up in the revelations of departed spirits. They do not, in some instances, look beyond them, to God and Christ. They rely on them, and make them their religion. They are comforted and strengthened by their appearances or messages. They would have the world

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to be guided by them, and to depend upon them. But to rely on human beings, whether in or out of the body, is to neglect and reject a Divine Mediator; for the Mediator could not be a mere man, or an angel; and we are sometimes reminded of the apostle's words: "let no man beguile you of your reward, in a worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind; and not holding the Head." That debatable ground between soul and body, where corporeal nerves and tissues run into their vanishing points of union with mind, has not yet been explored, and cannot be, perhaps, thoroughly. Science will clear up these mists of spiritualism, and of every new revelation, and the future state will be left, as the Bible sublimely left it, even its glories seen "as through a glass darkly."

The book closes with two sensible chapters on "a Christian death, and its preparation." There are many mistakes, even among intelligent believers, the author thinks, respecting a Christian departure. It is an error, according to his view, to suppose that there can be any such thing as the sudden death of the true Christian. If one be a loving, active Christian, he is always prepared for death; and it is thus in any man's power to secure himself against sudden death. Especially to prepare to die, is an unnecessary idea to the living Christian. We are hardly so ready to assent to the writer's opinion, that the approach of death should ever be concealed from an irreligious man, for the sake of leaving him a calm mind for religious choice and thought. We are reminded of the close of one of Wordsworth's thoughtful sonnets on a man condemned to suffer death : "Then mark him, him who could so long rebel, The crime confessed, a kneeling penitent Before the altar, where the sacrament

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Softens his heart, till from his eyes outwell

Tears of salvation. Welcome death! while Heaven

Does in this change exceedingly rejoice;

While yet the solemn heed the State hath given
Helps him to meet the last tribunal's voice
In faith, which fresh offences, were he cast
On old temptations, might forever blast.”

There is much in the certain prospect of death which will make men think; while the slightest hope of life, often serves as the stronghold of continued impenitence.

ARTICLE VIII.

THE SCIENCE OF ETYMOLOGY.

BY REV. BENJAMIN W. DWIGHT, M. A., BROOKLYN, N. Y.

THE very caption of this Article will astonish some and amuse others, who have been in the habit of regarding etymology as a mere mass of vagaries. That it has any such scope as to deserve the dignified name of a science, or any such interior frame-work of principles as to possess its essential nature, is quite beyond the general estimate of its character. In this country, indeed, and in England, as also in France and everywhere but in Germany, both vernacular and classical etymology are in the same rude, unmethodized state of first and partial discovery, in which chemistry and geology existed half a century ago. What facts are seen and appreciated appear to most, even of their admirers, but as isolated novelties and wonders, and have none of the charm or power of a splendid combination, of comprehensive and complicated affinities and relations.

Our modern languages are all derived from those of elder ages; and these are found, when subjected to thorough analysis, to have been derived, in their turn, from those anterior to them; while, on a wide and critical survey, all the tongues of the civilized world appear full of multitudinous correspondencies and connections.

The object of this Article will be realized, if the following topics, connected with the science of etymology, are presented in sufficient outline, viz.:

I.

The general proportions and relations of the subject. II. The history of classical and vernacular etymology. III. The constituent elements of etymology as a science. IV. Its determinative principles and tests.

V. Some of the advantages of the study of this science. I. The general proportions and relations of the subject. It has been often said, and truly, that the study of the Latin has a value in it, in its mere relations to our language, sufficient to authorize for this reason, without reference to many others also, the most zealous attention to its claims. But how can any deep scholarly insight into its relations to the English be gained, except in the light of a broad and complete classical etymology, which shall present the Latin truly, in all its manifold connections, not only with succeeding languages, but also with those which were antecedent and contemporary? This ancient language must be seen, in order to be seen rightly, while clothed in its own armor and bearing its own banners, not only leading other languages majestically in its train, but also moving in solemn and sublime march along the highway of ages, with the great people and languages that anticipated and accompa nied its glory and its doom. On account of the artistic treasures of the Greek language, and the firm, æsthetical influence of its higher literature upon those elect spirits who walk familiarly amid its Alpine wonders, an influence of which most American students of Greek, who are but dabblers in this tongue of the giants, have only heard by tradition, having never had a sensation of it themselves; it has come to be quite fashionable, in the scholastic world, to speak of that noble language in terms quite disparaging, at the same time, to the Latin. And our classical students generally have fallen, under the influence of this sort of perpetuated pedantry, into an almost universal habit of placing the Latin in contemptuous contrast with the Greek. Few see even that it has any large connection with the Greek; few of those who have grasped that great fact comprehend, from the want of a wide philological view of the three classical languages, in their mutual relations, the Sanscrit,

Greek, and Latin, what that connection is. But while its correspondencies with the Greek cover a vast array of details, and many of them when disclosed become immediately apparent to the eye, many more of them become delightfully clear to one, who, by applying the chemic tests of phonology, knows how to reduce at once both simple and comparative forms to their original analytical elements. The Latin and the Greek are closely affiliated languages, being of one common Pelasgic or Græco-Latin origin, and as such, greatly illustrative of each other; while, placed together like associated mirrors, they reflect with strange exactness and fulness of effect, the earlier Sanscrit, which is itself also a derived language, exhibiting not at all the ultimate origin of our present languages, but rather the farthest link backwards yet discovered in the chain of ascending relations and affinities. That chain of successive origination and derivation of all known languages runs backward from the centuries and countries of modern times, through one language and people after another, more and more perfect in its texture as it rises, until it ends ultimately in that lost mother-tongue which Adam spoke in Eden, which, as a matter of moral evidence, it is absolutely certain that he learned directly from God himself, since each man and generation succeeding him has learned to speak only from those who have preceded them. As in the material world man creates nothing, and only moulds and transforms substances and shapes already at hand, so in the world of language he only re-casts and transmutes the materials furnished him by an earlier age. The same race, bearing off the same original elements of speech in divided companies, into different climates, amid diversified scenes and skies and modes of life, will as certainly change and conform them, though insensibly, to the new atmospheres of their new life, each for itself, as that same race, departing into different zones, will erclong take on, in each, a different complexion, stature, and physiognomy, and adopt different food, employments, and dress, and also different dwellings, institutions, and customs.1

1 In Prichard's Natural History of Man, the curious reader will be interested

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