Frederic William Farrar

An essay on the origin of language, based on modern researches, and especially on the works of M. Renan Frederic William Farrar

Of all the faculties wherewith God has endowed his noblest creature, none is more divine and mysterious than the faculty of speech. It is the gift whereby man is raised above the beasts; the gift whereby soul speaks to soul; the gift whereby mere pulses of articulated air become breathing thoughts and burning words; the gift whereby we understand the affections of men and give expression to the worship of God; the gift whereby the lip of divine inspiration uttering things simple and unperfumed and unadorned, reacheth with its passionate voice through a thousand generations by the help of God. Language is the sum total of those articulate sounds which man, by the aid of this marvellous faculty of speech, has produced and accepted as the signs of all those inward and outward phenomena wherewith he is made acquainted by sense and thought. These signs are "those shadows of the soul, those living sounds which we call words! and compared with them how poor are all other monuments of human power, or perseverance, or skill, or genius! They render the mere clown an artist, nations immortal, writers, poets, philosophers divine!" Let him who would rightly understand the grandeur and dignity of speech, meditate on the deep mystery involved in the revelation of the Lord Jesus as the Word of God.