wards is perfectly fair and just, and that he has demolished it by a reductio ad absurdum as complete and unanswerable as it is possible for the human mind to construct. In conclusion, we would propound a serious problem to the friends and followers of President Edwards. If he does not teach the doctrine of fatalism, will any of his disciples undertake to show wherein his system, or his position, or his arguments, differ from those of universally acknowledged fatalists? We do not fear to assert, that the scheme of Hobbes and Collins is, in all material respects, precisely the same with that of President Edwards. If any man will show a real difference between them, we will either confess our error, or else stand before the world convicted and condemned for our obstinacy. Let it not be supposed that we have thrown out a mere idle challenge. If any man will accept it, and undertake to point out a difference between the system of Edwards and that of Hobbes, we will pledge ourselves to show, that they are identically the same. So far as we can see, the only difference between them is, that the one has been baptized into the name of religion, and thereby had those many sins washed away, which all Christian men have concurred in imputing to the other. Let some other and greater difference be made to appear, or where, we demand, is the justice of branding the name and memory of Hobbes with the odious stigma of atheism, for holding the very doctrine which, in Edwards, is made the test and the standard of orthodoxy? We have spoken plainly, because we have spoken in what we conceive to be the cause of truth. If we know ourselves, we have not the least desire to fasten upon Edwards, or upon any other man, the odious charge of fatalism; but we do feel a deep and earnest desire, inconceivably stronger than the love of life itself, that the holy religion of Jesus Christ should be left to stand upon its own eternal and immutable foundation, and not be made to turn for support to the weak and tottering philosophy of Atheism. What concern hath Christ with Belial, or what communion hath light with darkness? Let the friends of truth, of the pure and undefiled truth, as it is in Jesus, see to it, that they do not hug the philosophy of Atheism to their bosoms, from the weak fear that the interests of orthodoxy may be made to suffer by the rejection and the repudiation of it. ARTICLE VI. SKETCH OF CHANGES IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By Rev. GEORGE C. BECKWITH, Boston. THE history of language is a history of mankind. It developes their original affinities; it marks their early migrations, and the subsequent intermixture of different tribes; it embodies the prominent peculiarities of national character; it shows their transition from barbarism to civilization, and traces their progress in the arts and sciences, in morality and religion, in literature, philosophy, and all kinds of knowledge. Language is a mirror of the human mind, and reflects a pretty just image of its peculiar features in all ages and countries. As the instrument of mind in its various operations, as the principal medium through which it acts on other minds, as the great storehouse of inventions, discoveries and improvements, treasured up for posterity, it forms an index to the character of nations, and serves not only to transmit the acquisitions of one age and country to another, but to throw light on the early and doubtful periods of history. "The similitude and derivation of languages afford," says Dr. Johnson, "the most indubitable proof of the traduction of nations, and the genealogy of mankind. They add physical certainty to historical evidence, and often apply the only evidence of ancient migrations, and of the revolutions of ages which left no written monuments behind them."* "The real character of a nation," says a critic less known, but equally acute, * Letter to William Drummond. "will not be thoroughly understood by one who is a perfect stranger to their tongue; for, whatever regards the religion, the laws, the constitution, and the manners of a people, operates powerfully on their sentiments, and these have a principal effect, first, on the associations of ideas formed in their minds, in relation to character and to whatever is an object of abstract reflection; secondly, on the formation of words, and combination of phrases, by which these associations are expressed." Addison considers our language as showing "the genius and natural temper of the English," and thinks it possible "to carry the same thought into other languages, and deduce a great part of what is peculiar to them from the genius of the people who speak them. It is certain the light talkative humor of the French has not a little infected their tongue, which might be shown by many instances; as the genius of the Italians, which is so much addicted to music and ceremony, has moulded all their words and phrases to those particular The stateliness and gravity of the Spaniards shows itself to perfection in the solemnity of their language; and the blunt honest humor of the Germans sounds better in the roughness of the High-Dutch, than it would in a politer tongue. uses. A history of our own language, in whatever light considered, would be highly curious and instructive; but we sha give only a few specimens taken from different and distan. periods, just to exemplify some of the changes through which it has actually passed, and show to what fluctuations it may still be liable. As Britain was probably first peopled by adventurers from France, its original language was doubtless essentially the same with the Gallic; but the Britons were so nearly exterminated by their successive conquerors, that only few and very faint traces of the native tongue remain in either the ' Dr. Campbell's Dissertations prefixed to his Translation of the Gospels. Disser. II., Part I. words or the idiom of the present English.* Our language is a dialect of the Teutonic, and akin to the tongues spoken throughout the northern countries of Europe. Its principal elements were brought from the continent by the Saxons, who obtained possession of the British island in the fifth century; it received a slight tincture from the Danes, who invaded England in the ninth century; but it was greatly and permanently modified by the Norman conquest, (1067,) and the subsequent introduction of Norman French as the language of the court, and of all legal transactions and records. As a specimen of the ancient Anglo-Saxon, we copy an early translation of the Lord's prayer. "Faeder ure thu the eart on heofenum, si thin nama ge halgod. To-becume thin rice. Gewurthe thin willa on eorthan, swa swa on heofenum. Urne daeghwamlican hlaf syle us to daeg. And forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgifath urum gyltendum. And ne ge laedde thu us on costnunge, ac a lys us of yfele." Near the close of the seventh century, the same prayer ran thus in Saxon; "Uron Fader thic arth in heofnas, sic gehalgud thin noma, so cymeth thin ric. Sic thin willa sue is heofnas, and in cortho," etc. About two centuries after this, and more than one hundred and fifty years before the Norman conquest, we find the Lord's prayer thus translated, with only a slight difference in orthography from the preceding version : "Thue ur Fader the *On this point, however, there is, as might be expected on such a subject, no small diversity of opinions. Horne Tooke (Diversions of Purley, Vol. II. 311,) says that "our language has absolutely nothing from the Welsh," or original British; but Ellis, (in his Metrical Romances, quoted by Todd,) asserts, that "near one-third of our language is of Welsh origin ;" while Dr. Johnson (Hist. of the Eng. Lang.,) thinks "we have so few words which can, with any probability, be referred to British roots, that we justly regard the Saxons and Welsh as nations totally distinct ;" and Dr. Drake, (Orig. cf the Eng. Lang.,) modifying all these statements, declares, that the "British has little or no resemblance to the English. Many of their terms have gained admission among us; but their idioms and genius are as radically and essentially different as any two languages can possibly be." The opinion of Dr. Noah Webster, is not materially different from that of Drake. eart on heofenum, si thin nama gehalgod; cume thin rice si thin willa on eorthan swa, swo on heofenum," etc. The same prayer, about one hundred years after the Norman conquest, or near the middle of the twelfth century, was thus paraphrased in rhyme : Ure Fader in heaven rich; Thy name be halyed ever lich; Evar in yearth been it also." The foregoing specimens are all pretty pure Anglo-Saxon, and contain few, if any, foreign words or idioms. It is difficult to ascertain and fix the precise period of transition from Saxon to English; but when the Saxons and Normans began, near the close of the twelfth century, to lay aside their mutual antipathies, and to use in amity a common language and literature, then the English, with nearly nine-tenths of its words from the Saxon, and the rest principally from the Danish, Norman and Latin, commenced the nucleus of its present character. The following song in praise of the cuckoo, said to be the oldest one extant in the English Language, is supposed to have been written before the year 1250: |