: The Chautauquan Vol. 05 May 1885 No. 8 by Chautauqua Institution Chautauqua Literary And Scientific Circle Flood Theodore L Editor - Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Periodicals; Chautauqua Institution Periodicals

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Transcriber's Note: This table of contents of this periodical was created for the HTML version to aid the reader.

REQUIRED READING FOR MAY.

ENGLISH AS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE.

BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D.

There is another sense in which scholars speak of a universal language. There has always been in our Aryan tribe a leading literary language. Once it was Sanskrit; perhaps at a later time it was Persian; later it was Greek; later it was Latin. This Aryan tribe of ours has made the greater part of the history of the last 3,000 years; to-day it is the history-making and literature-making tribe. Great tracts of older history--Babylonian, Arabian, Egyptian--lie outside of the Aryan movements; but Persian, Greek, Roman, German, French, Spanish, English and American history lie in the Aryan line. Now, then, within this line some one Aryan language has always enjoyed a literary predominance. For other than literary purposes, some one of our family of languages has at one time or another had an extended currency. For something like two centuries French, for example, has been the language of diplomacy. We are probably passing out of a period which has lasted for half a century, of the predominance of German as a language of research, especially of metaphysical and grammatical study. These examples will suffice to show what is meant by our problem. In trade and practical invention English is, in this modified sense, a universal language. What I undertake to measure is this: the probability that, at a not distant time, English will be universal in more senses than any other Aryan language was ever before used. Some careful observers believe that this is the present position of the language--that it is now universal to an extent quite beyond all precedent. I think that as a literary, political and commercial language, English has a fair prospect of universal use within the Aryan tribe, and a better prospect than any other tongue of coming into use for these purposes all over the globe.

SUNDAY READINGS.

SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

The heart here, the Father yonder, and the universe of man and matter as the meeting place between them, is the whole scope and the whole poetry of the Sermon on the Mount. The preacher shears off all the superfluities and externals of worship and of action, that he may show, in its naked simplicity, the communion which takes place between the heart as worshiper and God as hearer. The righteousness he inculcates must exceed that "of the Scribes and the Pharisees." The man who hates his brother, or calls him "Raca," is a murderer in deed.... Oaths are but big sounds; the inner feelings are better represented by "yea, yea, nay, nay." That love which resides within will walk through the world as men walk through a gallery of pictures, loving and admiring, and expecting no return. The giving of alms must be secret. The sweetest prayer will be solitary and short. One must fast, too, as if he fasted not. The enduring treasures must be laid up within. Righteousness must be sought before, and as inclusive of all things; life is more precious than all the means of it. The examination and correction of faults must begin at home. Prayer, if issuing from the heart, is all powerful. The essence of the law and the prophets lies in doing to others as we would have others do to us. Having neglected the inner life, the majority have gone to ruin, even while following fully and devotedly external forms of faith and worship. The heart must, at the same time, be known by its fruits. It is only the good worker that shall enter the heavenly kingdom. These truths, in fine, acted upon, these precepts from the Mount, heard and kept--become a rock of absolute safety, while all beside is sand now, and sea hereafter.

They say it is an ill mason that refuseth any stone; and there is no knowledge but in a skillful hand serves, either positively as it is, or else to illustrate some other knowledge, ... because people by what they understand, are best led to what they understand not.

But the chief and top of his knowledge consists in the Book of books, the storehouse and magazine of life and comfort, THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.... In the Scriptures he finds four things: precepts for life, doctrines for knowledge, examples for illustration, and promises for comfort. These he hath digested severally.

It is exceedingly important, therefore, that all the Christian gifts and graces should be possessed in purity of spirit, uncontaminated by any unholy mixtures of an earthly nature. The mere suggestion that they have merit of themselves and separate from the God who gives them, if it be received with the least complacency, necessarily inflicts a deep wound. They are accordingly held in purity of spirit, and with the divine approbation, only when their tendency is to separate the soul from everything inward and outward, considered as objects of complacency and of spiritual rest, and to unite it more closely to God.... We do not find the parent, who has that degree of affection for his child which may be called entire or perfect love, making his love a distinct object of his thoughts, and rejoicing in it as such a distinct object; that would not be the genuine operation of perfect love. If his love is perfect, he has no time and no disposition to think of anything but the beloved object toward which his affections are directed. His love is so deep, so pure, so fixed and centered upon one point, that the sight of self, and of his own personal exercises, is lost. It ought to be thus in the feelings which we exercise toward God; and undoubtedly such will be the result, when the religious feeling has reached a certain degree of intensity; that is to say, when the feeling is perfect, the mind is not occupied with the feeling itself, but with the object of the feeling. The heart, if we may so express it, seems to recede from us; it certainly does so as an object of distinct contemplation; and the object of its affections comes in and takes its place. O, the blessedness of the heart, that, free from self and its secret and pernicious influences, sees nothing but God; that recognizes, even in its highest gifts and graces, nothing but God; that would rather be infinitely miserable with God, if it were possible, than infinitely happy without him!

All science is simply a perception of the laws of God--a discovery of what he designed when he spread out the heavens and gemmed the infinity of space with its myriad of worlds. The laws of light are simply the power with which the Creator invested it. All we can do is to find what he has written on its wings. The law of magnetism is the subtle power and the mode of action with which God has touched the loadstone. The laws of astronomy, what are they but the thoughts of God, as he projected worlds into space, and gave to them their orbits and their periods?... Of nature in all its expanse, of all created powers, visible and invisible, hath not God said, "All are yours?" Are we not "heirs of God and joint heirs of Jesus Christ?"

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