done sundry things alike questionable in policy and in justice. He captured Moultan. He won the bloody and long-contested victory of Chillianwallah. He effected the entire overthrow of Sikh forces-the Dispersion of the Affghan tribes-the Conquest of Rangoon, and the Annexation of Oude. Many will be found to question alike the equity and the policy of these deeds, but happily there are some deeds inscribed on his roll of fame which none will question. He has opened up the Inland Navigation of India! He has constructed Railways over extensive tracts of the Peninsula! He has instituted district schools! He has sanctioned the Abolition of Sutteeism ! He has introduced the Penny Postage! He has stood forth as the enemy of Polygamy, and finally, he has inaugurated the Magnetic Telegraph amid the time-worn monuments of a semi-civilization which reaches back to a period earlier than the dawn of European history, and has been stereotyped from time immemorial! The electric Telegraph, the most beautiful and surprising invention of the age, when combined as it is with so many evangelizing influences, sent forth from our Bible, our Tract, and our Missionary Societies, must ere long, under the dispensation of the Spirit, produce the most important revolutions in the Social condition of India. The subtle and penetrating intellect of Hindustan will not long remain the Slave of Hinduism, after being familiarized with the habits of thought which prevail among Christian nations. Gradually, a new literature containing a large infusion of Christian sentiment is being introduced, and the facilities for intercourse between mind and mind, must stimulate the intellect of India in every place, from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas.

With the Railway and Telegraph, another expedient of modern civilization, as already intimated, has been introduced. The system of cheap and uniform Postage has been introduced on a far larger scale than in England. A letter is now conveyed from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, from Scinde to the borders of the Birman Empire, for the sum of three farthings. Ceylon is to be admitted to the benefits of the new and cheap means of diffusing intelligence over the Eastern world. Not only is it to enjoy the benefits of the new postal arrangements, but it is to be united by Magnetic Telegraph with the main-land, and "the time is already looked upon as near, when the Telegraph will cross the Mediterranean, run along the Red Sea, and the coasts of the Indian Ocean, and unite London and Calcutta in hourly communication." What would the immortal Burke say to all this if he were alive? Certain it is, that he would no longer reproach us with having raised no monument to indicate that our ascendancy in India was that of stronger over feebler minds, and of a superior over an inferior type of Civilization.

Nor are the feats of this, the most glorious of man's inventions likely long to be confined to any particular country, whether in the East or West, North or South. During the past year, Professor Morse, the great Telegraphist among our brethren on the other side of the Atlantic, visited this country, with the view of uniting the Telegraphic systems of England and America, by an iron cable stretched across the Atlantic. The Atlantic has, in modern times, performed the same part which, in former ages, was performed by the Mediterranean, in

the diffusion of Civilization over the face of the Globe. It was on the bosom of the Atlantic that Columbus floated to the realising of his speculation concerning the existence of a Western World; the Atlantic was chosen as the scene of the first great experiment on the adaptation of steamers for long voyages, and for the navigation of stormy seas and oceans, but the events of the past year clearly show that it is destined in a few months, to be the theatre of still greater wonders. The iron cable of the electrician will soon stretch from America to Great Britain, connecting the great centre of the cotton trade in this Country, with its great seat on the banks of the Mississippi, and that again, with the most distant tributaries of this mighty river in the far West. Nor will these triumphs of Genius stop here. They will be extended, in every direction, until all parts of the world of commerce shall have been brought into contact by these mysterious wires. As our reader has already seen, contemporaneously with these efforts to unite British and American progress by the Iron cable of civilization, other labourers are at work in other fields with kindred objects. They are "busily engaged in fixing the train roads for the electric spark between the European continent and the northern shores of Africa. This limit once obtained; the lightning-thought can flash freely in its course, across the old land of the Egyptian, whether by the Red Sea or across the plains of Mesopotamia, to the cities of our Eastern Empire, and in due time, no doubt to the great centres of Chinese commerce. Nor is this all. The line which had been laid down from London in one direction, will soon be carried to the city of the Californian gold-digger. The corresponding wire, on which we have just marked a few Stations, will then be borne across the Chinese Seas and the Northern Pacific-touching, it may be, on its way at the mysterious empire of Japan, and will be linked on at San Francisco to the western chain. Then it will happen that a man may benerate a spark at London which, with one fiery leap, will return hack under his hand and disappear, but in that moment of time, it will gave encompassed the planet on which we are whirling through space into eternity. That spark will be a human thought."

What an age of wonders is this! How facilities rise up as by magic for the diffusion of Commerce over the face of the earth! But these things have a more important aspect. These mighty creations of genius have a moral as well as a commercial bearing. The Missionary will find his way whither mercantile enterprise conducts the trader every million added to the value of our Commerce with foreign nations will represent so much newly-acquired power for acting on the Nations of Heathendom and of Antichrist; every new field of Commerce will serve as a new indication of the purpose of the Deity, that our race and country should enter more largely into the great enterprize of subduing the world to King Jesus. No opportunity of doing good to mankind should be lost ;-no particle of power, wasted! The intellect, the wealth, the enterprize, the opportunity, the sympathies, the prayers of our race should all be laid under tribute; should constantly be laid under tribute, for the promotion of the spiritual interests of the nations. Who that regards the responsibility of Britain from this stand-point but will pray in the words of the Psalmist, Let thy

work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish thou the work of our hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish thou it!

THE LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE.

In treating of the languages of the Bible it may be necessary to premise that learned men divide the whole number of languages that are, or ever have been, spoken, into several chief families. Of these by far the most important are-First, the Indo-Germanic family, including Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, and German, with nearly all European tongues. And secondly, the Shemitic, including Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic or Syriac.

Of this latter family, the Arabic has been the most cultivated; and, being the language in which the Koran is written, is known to Mussulmen all over the world.

The Hebrew, called the sacred tongue, because in it nearly all the Old Testament is written, seems to have been spoken in a comparatively small district; perhaps only in Palestine, Phoenicia, and the immediate neighbourhood. It is called Hebrew, because it was the language of the people of that name; and they appear to have been so designated, from Heber; who being the last patriarch, before the dispersion from Babel, must have possessed an authority (as speaking to an undivided people) which no succeeding patriarch could have had.

The term Hebrew language does not, however, occur in the Old Testament. There it is called the language of the Jews, as at 2 Kings xviii. 26, or the lip of Canaan, as at Isaiah xix. 8.

Most probably this was the language of Canaan, before Abraham came into it. For we observe that his relatives on the other side of the Euphrates spoke another tongue (Gen. xxxi. 47,) and in the narrative of the intercourse between the Hebrews and the people of the land, there is no allusion to any difference of speech. Then again, the names of places in Canaan, from the very earliest times, have all a meaning in Hebrew, but not in any other language; and in the few existing records of the dialect of the idolatrous part of the land, as in the Phoenician, on coins discovered at Tyre, and Malta; and in the daughter of the Phoenician, namely the Punic or Carthaginian, preserved in a Latin comedy of Plautus (Ponulus v. 1, 2), we find a form of speech identical with the Hebrew. And lastly, and very convincingly, as showing that the Hebrew was indigenous to a country placed like Palestine, the same word is used both to denote both Sea and West.

In this language, the whole of the Old Testament is written, with the exception of parts of the Books of Ezra and Daniel. And it is remarked how little change the language underwent during the thousand years over which the composition of the book extended. This is due to the natural inflexibility of the language itself; isolation of the people from the rest of the world; the influence of the Pentateuch in fixing it; and the general belief in its sacredness. For these reasons, the language of Moses is subtantially the same as that of Malachi, in spite of some antique phrases in the former, and the gradually increasing admixture of Syrian with all the writers that succeeded Isaiah.

The Hebrew died out, as a spoken language, at, or soon after the Babylonish captivity, and was replaced by the Syrian or Aramaic, which was the language of their conquerors, the Assyrians and Babylonians. This was the language in which Eliakim begged Rab-shakeh to speak to the people in Jerusalem, because they did not understand it, as the chiefs themselves did. It seems clear therefore that the language of Syria began to penetrate

Israel after this time; and, when the Jews remained for two generations in Babylon, they must have lost, nearly, if not entirely, all recollection of their former speech. For Ezra seems to have interpreted the words of the Law to them, on their return. (Neh. viii. 8.) While yet from the fact of Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi, continuing to write in Hebrew, we may conclude it had not quite disappeared; as we know it had a little later at the time of Alexander's conquests.

The language that took its place was much more widely spread: it is called Syrian in the English translation of the Bible, as at 2 Kings xviii. 26. Dan. ii. 4. But it is usual now to call it Aramaic, since Aram is the real Biblical word for Syria, and seems to have designated the country North and East of the Euphrates, from which Abraham had originally emigrated, and where afterwards arose that fierce and conquering race which founded Nineveh and Babylon. It used to be called Chaldee, but erroneously; as the only place, where the tongue of the Chaldeans is mentioned, is at Dan. I. 4: and there it manifestly means a language peculiar to a priestly caste at Babylon, not to the whole people.

At the time of our Lord, this was the native language of Palestine; and occurs in our Testaments, in the words Ephphatha, Talitha Cumi, Eli Eli lama Sabacthani, &c. This was also the language of the inscription on the cross, and of St. Paul's speech as recorded at Acts xxii. Although in both these instances the Hebrew is mentioned, there is no doubt that it is the modern, not the ancient, language that is meant.

In it are also written those parts of the Old Testament, which are not in Hebrew: viz. Daniel ii. 4, to vii. 28; and Ezra iv. 8, to 6, 18; and vii. 12-26. Also the ancient Chaldee paraphrases on the Bible, and the Talmud. And to the present day it is the sacred language of the Nestorians and Syrian Christians; even of those on the Malabar coast

of India.

The only other language that remains to be noticed is the Greek, in which, the whole of the New Testament is written: a peculiar dialect of which prevailed in Western Asia and Egypt, in consequence of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Its chief locality was Alexandria, where the first Ptolemies had transplanted most of the arts and sciences which used to flourish before in Athens. This dialect is therefore called Alexandrian Greek, and is distinguished from the language of the classics, by having engrafted on it, many Hebrew and other Oriental modes of expression; no doubt partly in consequence of the great numbers of Jews, who, from an early period, dwelt in Alexandria.

Even in Palestine, although Hebrew retained its place as the sacred language, and Syrian or Aramaic was spoken in the country parts, there is every probability that Greek was the ordinary speech of intercourse; and that it stood in the same relation to the native Aramaic, that English does to Welsh in Wales at the present day.

In this Alexandrian Greek is written the whole of the New Testament; the ancient Septuagint translation of the Old; and the works of Josephus and Philo. As it was the common language of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, it became necessarily the common language of all early Christians, who for some years were confined to that part of the world. And even when Christianity had reached Rome and the West, there is evidence that Greek (and not Latin, as might have been supposed) was, for a long time, the ecclesiastical tongue.

It is a matter of discussion whether our Lord and his Apostles spoke Greek or Aramaic; and it does not seem possible to pronouce a decided verdict on the question. It is likely enough that all the people of Palestine, except the most retired or the most ignorant, understood and used, both forms of speech. Hence the threefold inscription on the cross. In Aramaic

and Greek for the people: just as the public documents in Wales might be in Welsh and English:-and in Latin, because that was the official language of Pontius Pilate, and the government servants.

From the fact of some few Aramaic words of our Lord being preserved, we might conclude that he did not always speak in that tongue; and it must have been observed that when St. Paul addresses the people from the castle stairs in Hebrew (i.e. in Aramaic), they were pleased by this mark of respect to their native tongue; and had expected that he would rather speak Greek, which they understood equally well. On the other hand the question of the chief captain, "Canst thou speak Greek?" would seem to have originated the second question, "Art thou not that Egyptian?" as Greek was certainly the language of Egypt at that time; and therefore the chief captain supposed he was not an inhabitant of Palestine.

At any rate, there was certainly a distinction between Greek-speaking Jews, and others. For we notice in the Acts of the Apostles (chap. vi. &c.,) that some are called Hebrews and some Grecians. There is a difference of opinion as to whether the distinction consisted in the speech they used, or in the version of the Bible that they read. For while the Jews of Palestine, and eastward of that country, constantly used the original Hebrew Scriptures, only rendered into Aramaic at the very moment they were read; the Jews of Alexandria, and generally in the countries west of the Holy Land, seem not to have known the Hebrew, even in the synagogues, and to have used only the Greek Septuagint translation.

As Greek was the tongue of their Syrian oppressors in the time of the Maccabees, the Rabbis looked upon it with aversion, as being especially a profane tongue, fit only for entirely worldly business, but never to be intruded into the synagogue. This feeling was aggravated by the fact that the Jews of Alexandria-where chiefly Greek-speaking Jews abounded,had not only a translation of the Scriptures, which, they advanced almost to the same rank as the original: but even a temple of their own, which in some respects was permitted to rival the holy building in Jerusalem.

But, anyhow, Greek was the current language of the world at the time of the appearance of Christianity :-the language with which a man might travel from end to end of the Roman Empire. And there appears a special providence in the circumstance that the Gospel was sent forth at the very time when there was thus a universal language, in which to convey it. It was necessary to the free circulation of the message, that it should be written in the speech of the Empire, not in some local dialect. And the Grecians or Hellenists, though despised by the Palestine Jews, appear certainly, by means both of their more common tongue, and also of their greater enlightenment, to have been the part of Israel that most generally embraced the Gospel, and carried it into distant lands, away from its original cradle in Judea and Galilee. W. H. J.

DOMESTIC ASSOCIATIONS.

66 NOTHING BUT A BABY."

The bell of a village steeple tolled heavily, as the sinking sun reflected its gorgeous rays on every pane of the tall church windows. Through a street beautifully shaded by drooping elm-trees, moved a humble procession towards the hill which rose, dotted with monuments and tombstones, on the eastern side of the sanctuary. No hearse with nodding plumes, no long array of carriages, drawn by steeds in funeral trappings, heralded the the approach of a new dweller in the land of silence. One carriage, containing three women, a man and a little coffin, followed by a few toilworn artizans and wondering boys, constituted the funeral procession.