Chapter III: Part 3

Very curious is the determination which some words, indeed many, seem to manifest, that their poetry shall not die; or, if it dies in one form, that it shall revive in another. Thus if there is danger that, transferred from one language to another, they shall no longer speak to the imagination of men as they did of old, they will make to themselves a new life, they will acquire a new soul in the room of that which has ceased to quicken and inform them any more. Let me make clear what I mean by two or three examples. The Germans, knowing nothing of carbuncles, had naturally no word of their own for them; and when they first found it necessary to name them, as naturally borrowed the Latin 'carbunculus,' which originally had meant 'a little live coal,' to designate these precious stones of a fiery red. But 'carbunculus,' word full of poetry and life for Latin-speaking men, would have been only an arbitrary sign for as many as were ignorant of that language. What then did these, or what, rather, did the working genius of the language, do? It adopted, but, in adopting, modified slightly yet effectually the word, changing it into 'Karfunkel,' thus retaining the framework of the original, yet at the same time, inasmuch as 'funkeln' signifies 'to sparkle,' reproducing now in an entirely novel manner the image of the bright sparkling of the stone, for every knower of the German tongue. 'Margarita,' or pearl, belongs to the earliest group of Latin words adopted into English. The word, however, told nothing about itself to those who adopted it. But the pearl might be poetically contemplated as the sea-stone; and so our fathers presently transformed 'margarita' into 'mere-grot,' which means nothing less. [Footnote: Such is the A.S. form of _margarita_ in three versions of the parable of the Pearl of Great Price, St. Matt. xiii. 45; _see Anglo-Saxon Gospels_, ed. Skeat, 1887.] Take another illustration of this from another quarter. The French 'rossignol,' a nightingale, is undoubtedly the Latin 'lusciniola,' the diminutive of 'luscinia,' with the alteration, so frequent in the Romance languages, of the commencing 'l' into 'r.' Whatever may be the etymology of 'luscinia,' it is plain that for Frenchmen in general the word would no longer suggest any meaning at all, hardly even for French scholars, after the serious transformations which it had undergone; while yet, at the same time, in the exquisitely musical 'rossignol,' and still more perhaps in the Italian 'usignuolo,' there is an evident intention and endeavour to express something of the music of the bird's song in the liquid melody of the imitative name which it bears; and thus to put a new soul into the word, in lieu of that other which had escaped. Or again--whatever may be the meaning of Senlac, the name of that field where the ever-memorable battle, now better known as the Battle of Hastings, was fought, it certainly was not 'Sanglac,' or Lake of Blood; the word only shaping itself into this significant form subsequently to the battle, and in consequence of it.

One or two examples more of the perishing of the old life in a word, and the birth of a new in its stead, may be added. The old name of Athens, 'Athaevai,' was closely linked with the fact that the goddess Pallas Athêne was the guardian deity of the city. The reason of the name, with other facts of the old mythology, faded away from the memory of the peasantry of modern Greece; but Athens is a name which must still mean something for them. Accordingly it is not 'Athaevai now, but 'Avthaevai, or the Blooming, on the lips of the peasantry round about; so Mr. Sayce assures us. The same process everywhere meets us. Thus no one who has visited Lucerne can fail to remember the rugged mountain called 'Pilatus' or 'Mont Pilate,' which stands opposite to him; while if he has been among the few who have cared to climb it, he will have been shown by his guide the lake at its summit in which Pontius Pilate in his despair drowned himself, with an assurance that from this suicide of his the mountain obtained its name. Nothing of the kind. 'Mont Pilate' stands for 'Mons _Pileatus_,' the '_capped_ hill'; the clouds, as one so often sees, gathering round its summit, and forming the shape or appearance of a cap or hat. When this true derivation was forgotten or misunderstood, the other explanation was invented and imposed. [Footnote: [The old name of Pilatus was _Fractus Mons_, 'broken mountain' from its rugged cliffs and precipices. _Pilatus_ did not become general till the close of the last century.]] An instructive example this, let me observe by the way, of that which has happened continually in the case of far older legends; I mean that the name has suggested the legend, and not the legend the name. We have an apt illustration of this in the old notion that the crocodile ([Greek: krokodeilos]) could not endure saffron.

I have said that poetry and imagination seek to penetrate everywhere; and this is literally true; for even the hardest, austerest studies cannot escape their influence; they will put something of their own life into the dry bones of a nomenclature which seems the remotest from them, the most opposed to them. Thus in Danish the male and female lines of descent and inheritance are called respectively the sword-side and the spindle-side. [Footnote: [In the same way the Germans used to employ _schwert_ and _kunkel_; compare the use of the phrases _on ða sperehealfe_, and _on ða spinlhealfe_ in King Alfred's will; see Kemble, _Codex Diplomaticus_, No. 314 (ii. 116), Pauli's _Life of Alfred_, p. 225, Lappenberg's _Anglo-Saxon Kings_, ii. 99 (1881).]] He who in prosody called a metrical foot consisting of one long syllable followed by two short (-..) a 'dactyle' or a finger, with allusion to the long first joint of the finger, and the two shorter which follow, whoever he may have been, and some one was the first to do it, must be allowed to have brought a certain amount of imagination into a study so alien to it as prosody very well might appear.

He did the same in another not very poetical region who invented the Latin law-term, 'stellionatus.' The word includes all such legally punishable acts of swindling or injurious fraud committed on the property of another as are not specified in any more precise enactment; being drawn and derived from a practice attributed, I suppose without any foundation, to the lizard or 'stellio' we spoke of just now. Having cast its winter skin, it is reported to swallow it at once, and this out of a malignant grudge lest any should profit by that which, if not now, was of old accounted a specific in certain diseases. The term was then transferred to any malicious wrong whatever done by one person to another.

In other regions it was only to be expected that we should find poetry. Thus it is nothing strange that architecture, which has been called frozen music, and which is poetry embodied in material forms, should have a language of its own, not dry nor hard, not of the mere intellect alone, but one in the forming of which it is evident that the imaginative faculties were at work. To take only one example--this, however, from Gothic art, which naturally yields the most remarkable-- what exquisite poetry in the name of 'the rose window' or better still, 'the rose,' given to the rich circular aperture of stained glass, with its leaf-like compartments, in the transepts of a Gothic cathedral! Here indeed we may note an exception from that which usually finds place; for usually art borrows beauty from nature, and very faintly, if at all, reflects back beauty upon her. In this present instance, however, art is so beautiful, has reached so glorious and perfect a development, that if the associations which the rose supplies lend to that window some hues of beauty and a glory which otherwise it would not have, the latter abundantly repays the obligation; and even the rose itself may become lovelier still, associated with those shapes of grace, those rich gorgeous tints, and all the religious symbolism of that in art which has borrowed and bears its name. After this it were little to note the imagination, although that was most real, which dictated the term 'flamboyant' to express the wavy flame-like outline, which, at a particular period of art, the tracery in the Gothic window assumed.

'Godsacre' or 'Godsfield,' is the German name for a burial-ground, and once was our own, though we unfortunately have nearly, if not quite, let it go. What a hope full of immortality does this little word proclaim! how rich is it in all the highest elements of poetry, and of poetry in its noblest alliance, that is, in its alliance with faith-- able as it is to cause all loathsome images of death and decay to disappear, not denying them, but suspending, losing, absorbing them in the sublimer thought of the victory over death, of that harvest of life which God shall one day so gloriously reap even there where now seems the very triumphing place of death. Many will not need to be reminded how fine a poem in Longfellow's hands unfolds itself out of this word.

Lastly let me note the pathos of poetry which lies often in the mere tracing of the succession of changes in meaning which certain words have undergone. Thus 'elend' in German, a beautiful word, now signifies wretchedness, but at first it signified exile or banishment. [Footnote: On this word there is an interesting discussion in Weigand's _Etym. Dict._, and compare Pott, _Etym. Forsch._ i. 302. _Ellinge_, an English provincial word of infinite pathos, still common in the south of England, and signifying at once lonely and sad, is not connected, as has been sometimes supposed, with the German _elend_, but represents Anglo-Saxon _ae-lenge_, protracted, tedious; see the _New English Dictionary_ (s.v. _alange_)] The sense of this separation from the native land and from all home delights, as being the woe of all woes, the crown of all sorrows, little by little so penetrated the word, that what at first expressed only one form of misery, has ended by signifying all. It is not a little notable, as showing the same feeling elsewhere at work, that 'essil' (= exilium) in old French signified, not only banishment, but ruin, destruction, misery. In the same manner [Greek: nostimos] meaning at first no more than having to do with a return, comes in the end to signify almost anything which is favourable and auspicious.

Let us then acknowledge man a born poet; if not every man himself a 'maker' yet every one able to rejoice in what others have made, adopting it freely, moving gladly in it as his own most congenial element and sphere. For indeed, as man does not live by bread alone, as little is he content to find in language merely the instrument which shall enable him to buy and sell and get gain, or otherwise make provision for the lower necessities of his animal life. He demands to find in it as well what shall stand in a real relation and correspondence to the higher faculties of his being, shall feed, nourish, and sustain these, shall stir him with images of beauty and suggestions of greatness. Neither here nor anywhere else could he become the mere utilitarian, even if he would. Despite his utmost efforts, were he so far at enmity with his own good as to put them forth, he could not succeed in exhausting his language of the poetical element with which it is penetrated through and through; he could not succeed in stripping it of blossom, flower, and fruit, and leaving it nothing but a bare and naked stem. He may fancy for a moment that he has succeeded in doing this; but it will only need for him to become a little better philologer, to go a little deeper into the story of the words which he is using, and he will discover that he is as remote as ever from such an unhappy consummation, from so disastrous a success.

For ourselves, let us desire and attempt nothing of the kind. Our life is not in other ways so full of imagination and poetry that we need give any diligence to empty it of that which it may possess of these. It will always have for us all enough of dull and prosaic and commonplace. What profit can there be in seeking to extend the region of these? Profit there will be none, but on the contrary infinite loss. It is _stagnant_ waters which corrupt themselves; not those in agitation and on which the winds are freely blowing. Words of passion and imagination are, as one so grandly called them of old, 'winds of the soul' ([Greek: psyches anemoi]), to keep it in healthful motion and agitation, to lift it upward and to drive it onward, to preserve it from that unwholesome stagnation which constitutes the fatal preparedness for so many other and worse evils.

LECTURE III.

ON THE MORALITY IN WORDS.

Is man of a divine birth and of the stock of heaven? coming from God, and, when he fulfils the law of his being, and the intention of his creation, returning to Him again? We need no more than the words he speaks to prove it; so much is there in them which could never have existed on any other supposition. How else could all those words which testify of his relation to God, and of his consciousness of this relation, and which ground themselves thereon, have found their way into his language, being as that is the veritable transcript of his innermost life, the genuine utterance of the faith and hope which is in him? In what other way can we explain that vast and preponderating weight thrown into the scale of goodness and truth, which, despite of all in the other scale, we must thankfully acknowledge that his language never is without? How else shall we account for that sympathy with the right, that testimony against the wrong, which, despite of all aberrations and perversions, is yet the prevailing ground-tone of all?

But has man fallen, and deeply fallen, from the heights of his original creation? We need no more than his language to prove it. Like everything else about him, it bears at once the stamp of his greatness and of his degradation, of his glory and of his shame. What dark and sombre threads he must have woven into the tissue of his life, before we could trace those threads of darkness which run through the tissue of his language! What facts of wickedness and woe must have existed in the one, ere such words could exist to designate these as are found in the other! There have never wanted those who would make light of the moral hurts which man has inflicted on himself, of the sickness with which he is sick; who would persuade themselves and others that moralists and divines, if they have not quite invented, have yet enormously exaggerated, these. But are statements of the depth of his fall, the malignity of the disease with which he is sick, found only in Scripture and in sermons? Are those who bring forward these statements libellers of human nature? Or are not mournful corroborations of the truth of these assertions imprinted deeply upon every province of man's natural and spiritual life, and on none more deeply than on his language? It needs but to open a dictionary, and to cast our eye thoughtfully down a few columns, and we shall find abundant confirmation of this sadder and sterner estimate of man's moral and spiritual condition. How else shall we explain this long catalogue of words, having all to do with sin or with sorrow, or with both? How came they there? We may be quite sure that they were not invented without being needed, and they have each a correlative in the world of realities. I open the first letter of the alphabet; what means this 'Ah,' this 'Alas,' these deep and long-drawn sighs of humanity, which at once encounter me there? And then presently there meet me such words as these, 'Affliction,' 'Agony,' 'Anguish,' 'Assassin,' 'Atheist,' 'Avarice,' and a hundred more--words, you will observe, not laid up in the recesses of the language, to be drawn forth on rare occasions, but many of them such as must be continually on the lips of men. And indeed, in the matter of abundance, it is sad to note how much richer our vocabularies are in words that set forth sins, than in those that set forth graces. When St. Paul (Gal. v. 19-23) would range these over against those, 'the works of the flesh' against 'the fruit of the Spirit,' those are seventeen, these only nine; and where do we find in Scripture such lists of graces, as we do at 2 Tim. iii. 2, Rom. i. 29- 31, of their contraries? [Footnote: Of these last the most exhaustive collection which I know is in Philo, _De Merced. Meret._ Section 4. There are here one hundred and forty-six epithets brought together, each of them indicating a sinful moral habit of mind. It was not without reason that Aristotle wrote: 'It is possible to err in many ways, for evil belongs to the infinite; but to do right is possible only in one way' (_Ethic. Nic._ ii. 6. 14).] Nor can I help noting, in the oversight and muster from this point of view of the words which constitute a language, the manner in which its utmost resources have been taxed to express the infinite varieties, now of human suffering, now of human sin. Thus, what a fearful thing is it that any language should possess a word to express the pleasure which men feel at the calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to the existence of the thing. And yet such in more languages than one may be found. [Footnote: In the Greek, [Greek: epichairekakia], in the German, 'schadenfreude.' Cicero so strongly feels the want of such a word, that he _gives_ to 'malevolentia' the significance, 'voluptas ex malo alterius,' which lies not of necessity in it.] Nor are there wanting, I suppose, in any language, words which are the mournful record of the strange wickednesses which the genius of man, so fertile in evil, has invented. What whole processes of cruelty are sometimes wrapped up in a single word! Thus I have not travelled down the first column of an Italian dictionary before I light upon the verb 'abbacinare' meaning to deprive of sight by holding a red-hot metal basin close to the eyeballs. Travelling a little further in a Greek lexicon, I should reach [Greek: akroteriazein] mutilate by cutting off all the extremities, as hands, feet, nose, ears; or take our English 'to ganch.' And our dictionaries, while they tell us much, cannot tell us all. How shamefully rich is everywhere the language of the vulgar in words and phrases which, seldom allowed to find their way into books, yet live as a sinful oral tradition on the lips of men, for the setting forth of things unholy and impure. And of these words, as no less of those dealing with the kindred sins of revelling and excess, how many set the evil forth with an evident sympathy and approbation of it, and as themselves taking part with the sin against Him who has forbidden it under pain of his highest displeasure. How much ability, how much wit, yes, and how much imagination must have stood in the service of sin, before it could possess a nomenclature so rich, so varied, and often so heaven-defying, as that which it actually owns.

Then further I would bid you to note the many words which men have dragged downward with themselves, and made more or less partakers of their own fall. Having once an honourable meaning, they have yet with the deterioration and degeneration of those that used them, or of those about whom they were used, deteriorated and degenerated too. How many, harmless once, have assumed a harmful as their secondary meaning; how many worthy have acquired an unworthy. Thus 'knave' meant once no more than lad (nor does 'knabe' now in German mean more); 'villain' than peasant; a 'boor' was a farmer, a 'varlet' a serving-man, which meaning still survives in 'valet,' the other form of this word; [Footnote: Yet this itself was an immense fall for the word (see _Ampère, La Langue Française_, p. 219, and Littré, _Dict. de la Langue Française_, preface, p. xxv.).] a 'menial' was one of the household; a 'paramour' was a lover, an honourable one it might be; a 'leman' in like manner might be a lover, and be used of either sex in a good sense; a 'beldam' was a fair lady, and is used in this sense by Spenser; [Footnote: _F. Q._ iii. 2. 43.] a 'minion' was a favourite (man in Sylvester is 'God's dearest _minion_'); a 'pedant' in the Italian from which we borrowed the word, and for a while too with ourselves, was simply a tutor; a 'proser' was one who wrote in prose; an 'adventurer' one who set before himself perilous, but very often noble ventures, what the Germans call a glücksritter; a 'swindler,' in the German from which we got it, one who entered into dangerous mercantile speculations, without implying that this was done with any intention to defraud others. Christ, according to Bishop Hall, was the 'ringleader' of our salvation. 'Time-server' two hundred years ago quite as often designated one in an honourable as in a dishonourable sense 'serving the time.' [Footnote: See in proof Fuller, _Holy State_, b. iii. c. 19.] 'Conceits' had once nothing conceited in them. An 'officious' man was one prompt in offices of kindness, and not, as now, an uninvited meddler in things that concern him not; something indeed of the older meaning still survives in the diplomatic use of the word.

'Demure' conveyed no hint, as it does now, of an overdoing of the outward demonstrations of modesty; a 'leer' was once a look with nothing amiss in it (_Piers Plowman_). 'Daft' was modest or retiring; 'orgies' were religious ceremonies; the Blessed Virgin speaks of herself in an early poem as 'God's wench.' In 'crafty' and 'cunning' no _crooked wisdom_ was implied, but only knowledge and skill; 'craft,' indeed, still retains very often its more honourable use, a man's 'craft' being his skill, and then the trade in which he is skilled. 'Artful' was skilful, and not tricky as now. [Footnote: Not otherwise 'leichtsinnig' in German meant cheerful once; it is frivolous now; while in French a 'rapporteur' is now a bringer back of _malicious_ reports, the malicious having little by little found its way into the word.] Could the Magdalen have ever bequeathed us 'maudlin' in its present contemptuous application, if the tears of penitential sorrow had been held in due honour by the world? 'Tinsel,' the French 'etincelle,' meant once anything that sparkled or glistened; thus, 'cloth of _tinsel_' would be cloth inwrought with silver and gold; but the sad experience that 'all is not gold that glitters, that much showing fair to the eye is worthless in reality, has caused that by 'tinsel,' literal or figurative, we ever mean now that which has no realities of sterling worth underlying the specious shows which it makes. 'Specious' itself, let me note, meant beautiful at one time, and not, as now, presenting a deceitful appearance of beauty. 'Tawdry,' an epithet applied once to lace or other finery bought at the fair of St. Awdrey or St. Etheldreda, has run through the same course: it at one time conveyed no suggestion of _mean_ finery or _shabby_ splendour, as now it does. 'Voluble' was an epithet which had nothing of slight in it, but meant what 'fluent' means now; 'dapper' _was_ what in German 'tapfer' _is_; not so much neat and spruce as brave and bold; 'plausible' was worthy of applause; 'pert' is now brisk and lively, but with a very distinct subaudition, which once it had not, of sauciness as well; 'lewd' meant no more than unlearned, as the lay or common people might be supposed to be. [Footnote: Having in mind what 'dirne,' connected with 'dienen,' 'dienst,' commonly means now in German, one almost shrinks from mentioning that it was once a name of honour which could be and was used of the Blessed Virgin Mary (see Grimm, _Wörterbuch_, s. v.). 'Schalk' in like manner had no evil subaudition in it at the first; nor did it ever obtain such during the time that it survived in English; thus in _Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight_, the peerless Gawayne is himself on more than one a 'schalk' (424, 1776). The word survives in the last syllable of 'seneschal,' and indeed of 'marshal' as well.] 'To carp' is in Chaucer's language no more than to converse; 'to mouth' in _Piers Plowman_ is simply to speak; 'to garble' was once to sift and pick out the best; it is now to select and put forward as a fair specimen the worst.

This same deterioration through use may be traced in the verb 'to resent.' Barrow could speak of the good man as a faithful 'resenter' and requiter of benefits, of the duty of testifying an affectionate 'resentment' of our obligations to God. But the memory of benefits fades from us so much more quickly than that of injuries; we remember and revolve in our minds so much more predominantly the wrongs, real or imaginary, men have done us, than the favours we owe them, that 'resentment' has come in our modern English to be confined exclusively to that deep reflective displeasure which men entertain against those that have done, or whom they fancy to have done, them a wrong. And this explains how it comes to pass that we do not speak of the 'retaliation' of benefits at all so often as the 'retaliation' of injuries. 'To retaliate' signifies no more than to render again as much as we have received; but this is so much seldomer practised in the matter of benefits than of wrongs, that 'retaliation' though not wholly strange in this worthier sense, has yet, when so employed, an unusual sound in our ears. 'To retaliate' kindnesses is a language which would not now be intelligible to all. 'Animosity' as originally employed in that later Latin which gave it birth, was spiritedness; men would speak of the 'animosity' or fiery courage of a horse. In our early English it meant nothing more; a divine of the seventeenth century speaks of 'due Christian animosity.' Activity and vigour are still implied in the word; but now only as displayed in enmity and hate. There is a Spanish proverb which says, 'One foe is too many; a hundred friends are too few.' The proverb and the course which this word 'animosity' has travelled may be made mutually to illustrate one another. [Footnote: For quotations from our earlier authors in proof of many of the assertions made in the few last pages, see my _Select Glossary of English Words used formerly in senses different from their present_, 5th edit. 1879.]

How mournful a witness for the hard and unrighteous judgments we habitually form of one another lies in the word 'prejudice.' It is itself absolutely neutral, meaning no more than a judgment formed beforehand; which judgment may be favourable, or may be otherwise. Yet so predominantly do we form harsh unfavourable judgments of others before knowledge and experience, that a 'prejudice' or judgment before knowledge and not grounded on evidence, is almost always taken in an ill sense; 'prejudicial' having actually acquired mischievous or injurious for its secondary meaning.

As these words bear testimony to the _sin_ of man, so others to his _infirmity_, to the limitation of human faculties and human knowledge, to the truth of the proverb, that 'to err is human.' Thus 'to retract' means properly no more than to handle again, to reconsider. And yet, so certain are we to find in a subject which we reconsider, or handle a second time, that which was at first rashly, imperfectly, inaccurately, stated, which needs therefore to be amended, modified, or withdrawn, that 'to retract' could not tarry long in its primary meaning of reconsidering; but has come to signify to withdraw. Thus the greatest Father of the Latin Church, wishing toward the close of his life to amend whatever he might then perceive in his various published works incautiously or incorrectly stated, gave to the book in which he carried out this intention (for authors had then no such opportunities as later editions afford us now), this very name of '_Retractations_', being literally 'rehandlings,' but in fact, as will be plain to any one turning to the work, withdrawings of various statements by which he was no longer prepared to abide.

But urging, as I just now did, the degeneration of words, I should seriously err, if I failed to remind you that a parallel process of purifying and ennobling has also been going forward, most of all through the influences of a Divine faith working in the world. This, as it has turned _men_ from evil to good, or has lifted them from a lower earthly goodness to a higher heavenly, so has it in like manner elevated, purified, and ennobled a multitude of the words which they employ, until these, which once expressed only an earthly good, express now a heavenly. The Gospel of Christ, as it is the redemption of man, so is it in a multitude of instances the redemption of his word, freeing it from the bondage of corruption, that it should no longer be subject to vanity, nor stand any more in the service of sin or of the world, but in the service of God and of his truth. Thus the Greek had a word for 'humility'; but for him this humility meant--that is, with rare exceptions--meanness of spirit. He who brought in the Christian grace of humility, did in so doing rescue the term which expressed it for nobler uses and a far higher dignity than hitherto it had attained. There were 'angels' before heaven had been opened, but these only earthly messengers; 'martyrs' also, or witnesses, but these not unto blood, nor yet for God's highest truth; 'apostles,' but sent of men; 'evangels,' but these good tidings of this world, and not of the kingdom of heaven; 'advocates,' but not 'with the Father.' 'Paradise' was a word common in slightly different forms to almost all the nations of the East; but it was for them only some royal park or garden of delights; till for the Jew it was exalted to signify the mysterious abode of our first parents; while higher honours awaited it still, when on the lips of the Lord, it signified the blissful waiting-place of faithful departed souls (Luke xxiii. 43); yea, the heavenly blessedness itself (Rev. ii. 7). A 'regeneration' or palingenesy, was not unknown to the Greeks; they could speak of the earth's 'regeneration' in spring-time, of recollection as the 'regeneration' of knowledge; the Jewish historian could describe the return of his countrymen from the Babylonian Captivity, and their re-establishment in their own land, as the 'regeneration' of the Jewish State. But still the word, whether as employed by Jew or Greek, was a long way off from that honour reserved for it in the Christian dispensation--namely, that it should be the vehicle of one of the most blessed mysteries of the faith. [Footnote: See my _Synonyms of the N.T._ Section 18.] And many other words in like manner there are, 'fetched from the very dregs of paganism,' as Sanderson has it (he instances the Latin 'sacrament,' the Greek 'mystery'), which the Holy Spirit has not refused to employ for the setting forth of the glorious facts of our redemption; and, reversing the impious deed of Belshazzar, who profaned the sacred vessels of God's house to sinful and idolatrous uses (Dan. v. 2), has consecrated the very idol-vessels of Babylon to the service of the sanctuary.

Let us now proceed to contemplate some of the attestations to God's truth, and then some of the playings into the hands of the devil's falsehood, which lurk in words. And first, the attestations to God's truth, the fallings in of our words with his unchangeable Word; for these, as the true uses of the word, while the other are only its abuses, have a prior claim to be considered.

Thus, some modern 'false prophets,' willing to explain away all such phenomena of the world around us as declare man to be a sinner, and lying under the consequences of sin, would fain have them to believe that pain is only a subordinate kind of pleasure, or, at worst, a sort of needful hedge and guardian of pleasure. But a deeper feeling in the universal heart of man bears witness to quite another explanation of the existence of pain in the present economy of the world--namely, that it is the correlative of sin, that it is _punishment_; and to this the word 'pain,' so closely connected with 'poena,' bears witness. [Footnote: Our word _pain_ is actually the same word as the Latin _poena_, coming to us through the French _peine_.] Pain _is_ punishment; for so the word, and so the conscience of every one that is suffering it, declares. Some will not hear of great pestilences being scourges of the sins of men; and if only they can find out the immediate, imagine that they have found out the ultimate, causes of these; while yet they have only to speak of a 'plague' and they implicitly avouch the very truth which they have set themselves to deny; for a 'plague,' what is it but a stroke; so called, because that universal conscience of men which is never at fault, has felt and in this way confessed it to be such? For here, as in so many other cases, that proverb stands fast, 'Vox populi, vox Dei'; and may be admitted to the full; that is, if only we keep in mind that this 'people' is not the populace either in high place or in low; and this 'voice of the people' no momentary outcry, but the consenting testimony of the good and wise, of those neither brutalized by ignorance, nor corrupted by a false cultivation, in many places and in various times.

To one who admits the truth of this proverb it will be nothing strange that men should have agreed to call him a 'miser' or miserable, who eagerly scrapes together and painfully hoards the mammon of this world. Here too the moral instinct lying deep in all hearts has borne testimony to the tormenting nature of this vice, to the gnawing pains with which even in this present time it punishes its votaries, to the enmity which there is between it and all joy; and the man who enslaves himself to his money is proclaimed in our very language to be a 'miser,' or miserable man. [Footnote: 'Misery' does not any longer signify avarice, nor 'miserable' avaricious; but these meanings they once possessed (see my _Select Glossary_, s. vv.). In them men said, and in 'miser' we still say, in one word what Seneca when he wrote,-- 'Nulla avaritia sine poena est, _quamvis satis sit ipsa poenarum_'-- took a sentence to say.] Other words bear testimony to great moral truths. St. James has, I doubt not, been often charged with exaggeration for saying, 'Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all' (ii. 10). The charge is an unjust one. The Romans with their 'integritas' said as much; we too say the same who have adopted 'integrity' as a part of our ethical language. For what is 'integrity' but entireness; the 'integrity' of the body being, as Cicero explains it, the full possession and the perfect soundness of _all_ its members; and moral 'integrity' though it cannot be predicated so absolutely of any sinful child of Adam, is this same entireness or completeness transferred to things higher. 'Integrity' was exactly that which Herod had _not_ attained, when at the Baptist's bidding he 'did many things gladly' (Mark vi. 20), but did _not_ put away his brother's wife; whose partial obedience therefore profited nothing; he had dropped one link in the golden chain of obedience, and as a consequence the whole chain fell to the ground.

It is very noticeable, and many have noticed, that the Greek word signifying wickedness (_ponaeria_) comes of another signifying labour (_ponos_). How well does this agree with those passages in Scripture which describe sinners as '_wearying themselves_ to commit iniquity,' as '_labouring_ in the very fire'; 'the martyrs of the devil,' as South calls them, being at more pains to go to hell than the martyrs of God to go to heaven. 'St. Chrysostom's eloquence,' as Bishop Sanderson has observed, 'enlarges itself and triumphs in this argument more frequently than in almost any other; and he clears it often and beyond all exception, both by Scripture and reason, that the life of a wicked or worldly man is a very drudgery, infinitely more toilsome, vexatious, and unpleasant than a godly life is.' [Footnote: _Sermons_, London, 1671, vol. ii. p. 244.]

How deep an insight into the failings of the human heart lies at the root of many words; and if only we would attend to them, what valuable warnings many contain against subtle temptations and sins! Thus, all of us have felt the temptation of seeking to please others by an unmanly _assenting_ to their opinion, even when our own independent convictions did not agree with theirs. The existence of such a temptation, and the fact that too many yield to it, are both declared in the Latin for a flatterer--'assentator'--that is, 'an assenter'; one who has not courage to say _No_, when a _Yes_ is expected from him; and quite independently of the Latin, the German, in its contemptuous and precisely equivalent use of 'Jaherr,' a 'yea-Lord,' warns us in like manner against all such unmanly compliances. Let me note that we also once possessed 'assentation' in the sense of unworthy flattering lip- assent; the last example of it in our dictionaries is from Bishop Hall: 'It is a fearful presage of ruin when the prophets conspire in assentation;' but it lived on to a far later day, being found and exactly in the same sense in Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son; he there speaks of 'abject flattery and indiscriminate assentation.' [Footnote: _August_ 10, 1749. [In the _New English Dictionary_ a quotation for the word is given as late as 1859. I. Taylor, in his _Logic in Theology_, p. 265, says: 'A safer anchorage may be found than the shoal of mindless assentation']] The word is well worthy to be revived.

Again, how well it is to have that spirit of depreciation, that eagerness to find spots and stains in the characters of the noblest and the best, who would otherwise oppress and rebuke us with a goodness and a greatness so immensely superior to our own,--met and checked by a word at once so expressive, and so little pleasant to take home to ourselves, as the French 'dénigreur,' a 'blackener.' This also has fallen out of use; which is a pity, seeing that the race which it designates is so far from being extinct. Full too of instruction and warning is our present employment of 'libertine.' A 'libertine,' in earlier use, was a speculative free-thinker in matters of religion and in the theory of morals. But as by a process which is seldom missed free-_thinking_ does and will end in free-_acting_, he who has cast off one yoke also casting off the other, so a 'libertine' came in two or three generations to signify a profligate, especially in relation to women, a licentious and debauched person. [Footnote: See the author's _Select Glossary_ (s.v.)]

Look a little closely at the word 'passion,' We sometimes regard a 'passionate' man as a man of strong will, and of real, though ungoverned, energy. But 'passion' teaches us quite another lesson; for it, as a very solemn use of it declares, means properly 'suffering'; and a 'passionate' man is not one who is doing something, but one suffering something to be done to him. When then a man or child is 'in a passion,' this is no outcoming in him of a strong will, of a real energy, but the proof rather that, for the time at least, he is altogether wanting in these; he is _suffering_, not doing; suffering his anger, or whatever evil temper it may be, to lord over him without control. Let no one then think of 'passion' as a sign of strength. One might with as much justice conclude a man strong because he was often well beaten; this would prove that a strong man was putting forth his strength on him, but certainly not that he was himself strong. The same sense of 'passion' and feebleness going together, of the first as the outcome of the second, lies, I may remark by the way, in the twofold use of 'impotens' in the Latin, which meaning first weak, means then violent, and then weak and violent together. For a long time 'impotent' and 'impotence' in English embodied the same twofold meaning.

Or meditate on the use of 'humanitas,' and the use (in Scotland at least) of the 'humanities,' to designate those studies which are esteemed the fittest for training the true humanity in every man. [Footnote: [Compare the use of the term _Litterae Humaniores_ in the University of Oxford to designate the oldest and most characteristic of her examinations or 'Schools.']] We have happily overlived in England the time when it was still in debate among us whether education is a good thing for every living soul or not; the only question which now seriously divides Englishmen being, in what manner that mental and moral training, which is society's debt to each one of its members, may be most effectually imparted to him. Were it not so, were there any still found to affirm that it was good for any man to be left with powers not called out and faculties untrained, we might appeal to this word 'humanitas,' and the use to which the Roman put it, in proof that he at least was not of this mind. By 'humanitas' he intended the fullest and most harmonious development of all the truly human faculties and powers. Then, and then only, man was truly man, when he received this; in so far as he did not receive this, his 'humanity' was maimed and imperfect; he fell short of his ideal, of that which he was created to be.

In our use of 'talents,' as when we say 'a man of talents,' there is a clear recognition of the responsibilities which go along with the possession of intellectual gifts and endowments, whatever these may be. We owe our later use of 'talent' to the parable (Matt. xxv. 14), in which more or fewer of these are committed to the several servants, that they may trade with them in their master's absence, and give account of their employment at his return. Men may choose to forget the ends for which their 'talents' were given them; they may count them merely something which they have gotten; [Footnote: An [Greek: hexis], as the heathen did, not a [Greek: dorema], as the Christian does; see a remarkable passage in Bishop Andrewes' _Sermons_, vol. iii. p. 384.] they may turn them to selfish ends; they may glorify themselves in them, instead of glorifying the Giver; they may practically deny that they were given at all; yet in this word, till they can rid their vocabulary of it, abides a continual memento that they were so given, or rather lent, and that each man shall have to render an account of their use.

Again, in 'oblige' and 'obligation,' as when we speak of 'being obliged,' or of having 'received an obligation,' a moral truth is asserted--this namely, that having received a benefit or a favour at the hands of another, we are thereby morally _bound_ to show ourselves grateful for the same. We cannot be ungrateful without denying not merely a moral truth, but one incorporated in the very language which we employ. Thus South, in a sermon, _Of the odious Sin of Ingratitude_, has well asked, 'If the conferring of a kindness did not _bind_ the person upon whom it was conferred to the returns of gratitude, why, in the universal dialect of the world, are kindnesses called _obligations_?' [Footnote: _Sermons_, London, 1737, vol. i. p. 407.]

Once more--the habit of calling a woman's chastity her 'virtue' is significant. I will not deny that it may spring in part from a tendency which often meets us in language, to narrow the whole circle of virtues to some one upon which peculiar stress is laid; [Footnote: Thus in Jewish Greek [Greek: eleaemosnuae] stands often for [Greek: dikaosnuae] (Deut. vi. 25; Ps. cii. 6, LXX), or almsgiving for righteousness.] but still, in selecting this peculiar one as _the_ 'virtue' of woman, there speaks out a true sense that this is indeed for her the citadel of the whole moral being, the overthrow of which is the overthrow of all; that it is the keystone of the arch, which being withdrawn, the whole collapses and falls.

Or consider all which is witnessed for us in 'kind.' We speak of a 'kind' person, and we speak of man-'kind,' and perhaps, if we think about the matter at all, fancy that we are using quite different words, or the same words in senses quite unconnected. But they are connected, and by closest bonds; a 'kind' person is one who acknowledges his kinship with other men, and acts upon it; confesses that he owes to them, as of one blood with himself, the debt of love. [Footnote: Thus Hamlet does much more than merely play on words when he calls his father's brother, who had married his mother, 'A little more than _kin_, and less than _kind_.' [For the relation between _kind_ (the adj.) and _kind_ ('nature,' the sb.) see Skeat's Dict.]] Beautiful before, how much more beautiful do 'kind' and 'kindness' appear, when we apprehend the root out of which they grow, and the truth which they embody; that they are the acknowledgment in loving deeds of our kinship with our brethren; of the relationship which exists between all the members of the human family, and of the obligations growing out of the same.

But I observed just now that there are also words bearing on them the slime of the serpent's trail; uses, too, of words which imply moral perversity--not upon their parts who employ them now in their acquired senses, but on theirs from whom little by little they received their deflection, and were warped from their original rectitude. A 'prude' is now a woman with an over-done affectation of a modesty which she does not really feel, and betraying the absence of the substance by this over-preciseness and niceness about the shadow. Goodness must have gone strangely out of fashion, the corruption of manners must have been profound, before matters could have come to this point. 'Prude,' a French word, means properly virtuous or prudent. [Footnote: [Compare French _prude_, on the etymology of which see Schelar's _French Dict._, ed. 3 (1888)].] But where morals are greatly and generally relaxed, virtue is treated as hypocrisy; and thus, in a dissolute age, and one incredulous of any inward purity, by the 'prude' or virtuous woman is intended a sort of female Tartuffe, affecting a virtue which it is taken for granted none can really possess; and the word abides, a proof of the world's disbelief in the realities of goodness, of its resolution to treat them as hypocrisies and deceits.

Again, why should 'simple' be used slightingly, and 'simpleton' more slightingly still? The 'simple' is one properly of a single fold; [Footnote: [Latin _simplicem_; for Lat. _sim-_, _sin-_= Greek [Greek: ha] in [Greek: ha-pax], see Brugmann, _Grundriss_, Section 238, Curtius, _Greek Etym._ No. 599.]] a Nathanael, whom as such Christ honoured to the highest (John i. 47); and, indeed, what honour can be higher than to have nothing _double_ about us, to be without _duplicities_ or folds? Even the world, which despises 'simplicity,' does not profess to admire 'duplicity,' or double-foldedness. But inasmuch as it is felt that a man without these folds will in a world like ours make himself a prey, and as most men, if obliged to choose between deceiving and being deceived, would choose the former, it has come to pass that 'simple' which in a kingdom of righteousness would be a world of highest honour, carries with it in this world of ours something of contempt. [Footnote: 'Schlecht,' which in modern German means bad, good for nothing, once meant good,--good, that is, in the sense of right or straight, but has passed through the same stages to the meaning which it now possesses, 'albern' has done the same (Max Müller, _Science of Language_, 2nd series, p. 274).] Nor can we help noting another involuntary testimony borne by human language to human sin. I mean this,--that an idiot, or one otherwise deficient in intellect, is called an 'innocent' or one who does no hurt; this use of 'innocent' assuming that to do hurt and harm is the chief employment to which men turn their intellectual powers, that, where they are wise, they are oftenest wise to do evil.

Nor are these isolated examples of the contemptuous use which words expressive of goodness gradually acquire. Such meet us on every side. Our 'silly' is the Old-English 'saelig' or blessed. We see it in a transition state in our early poets, with whom 'silly' is an affectionate epithet which sheep obtain for their harmlessness. One among our earliest calls the newborn Lord of Glory Himself, 'this harmless _silly_ babe,' But 'silly' has travelled on the same lines as 'simple,' 'innocent,' and so many other words. The same moral phenomenon repeats itself continually. Thus 'sheepish' in the _Ormulum_ is an epithet of honour: it is used of one who has the mind of Him who was led as a sheep to the slaughter. At the first promulgation of the Christian faith, while the name of its Divine Founder was still strange to the ears of the heathen, they were wont, some in ignorance, but more of malice, slightly to mispronounce this name, turning 'Christus' into 'Chrestus'--that is, the benevolent or benign. That these last meant no honour thereby to the Lord of Life, but the contrary, is certain; this word, like 'silly,' 'innocent,' 'simple,' having already contracted a slight tinge of contempt, without which there would have been no inducement to fasten it on the Saviour. The French have their 'bonhomie' with the same undertone of contempt, the Greeks their [Greek: eyetheia]. Lady Shiel tells us of the modern Persians, 'They have odd names for describing the moral qualities; "Sedakat" means sincerity, honesty, candour; but when a man is said to be possessed of "sedakat," the meaning is that he is a credulous, contemptible simpleton.' [Footnote: _Life and Manners in Persia_, p. 247.] It is to the honour of the Latin tongue, and very characteristic of the best aspects of Roman life, that 'simplex' and 'simplicitas' never acquired this abusive signification.

Again, how prone are we all to ascribe to chance or fortune those gifts and blessings which indeed come directly from God--to build altars to Fortune rather than to Him who is the author of every good thing which we have gotten. And this faith of men, that their blessings, even their highest, come to them by a blind chance, they have incorporated in a word; for 'happy' and 'happiness' are connected with 'hap,' which is chance;--how unworthy, then, to express any true felicity, whose very essence is that it excludes hap or chance, that the world neither gave nor can take it away. [Footnote: The heathen with their [Greek: eudaimonia], inadequate as this word must be allowed to be, put _us_ here to shame.] Against a similar misuse of 'fortunate,' 'unfortunate,' Wordsworth very nobly protests, when, of one who, having lost everything else, had yet kept the truth, he exclaims:

'Call not the royal Swede _unfortunate_,
Who never did to _Fortune_ bend the knee.'