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raise thee to an honorable station." Of the value of night prayer he says in another place: "Verily the rising by night is more efficacious for steadfast continuance in devotion; for in the daytime thou hast long employment." (Ch. lxxiii.) The annual pilgrimage to Mecca is directly as well as indirectly enjoined: "God hath appointed the Caaba, the holy house, a place of pilgrimage for mankind; and hath ordained the sacred month, and the offering, and the ornaments hung in the holy house." (Ch. v.) "The holy temple of Mecca we have appointed for a place of worship unto all men. Call to mind when we gave the site of the house of the Caaba to Abraham; saying: Proclaim unto the people a solemn pilgrimage; let them come unto thee on foot and on every lean camel, coming from every different road, and prove the blessing of visiting this holy place." (Ch. xxii.) In connection with this sacred centre, the one hallowed among Jews and Christians was also exalted by Mohammed; so that now to the Mohammedan it is, as the name he gave, implies,-"El Kûds esh-Shereef "The Holy, The Chief Holy. Thus (chap. xvii.) the "Night Journey," opens: "Praise be unto him who transported his servant by night, from the sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem, the circuit of which we have blessed, that we might show some of our signs; for God is He who heareth and seeth."

The forms of Mohammedan worship hang like a loose cloak on the Turk, who received the religion of the prophet only from policy; that, as conqueror of the cultured Arab race, for four centuries established in his belief, he might hold an easier sway; and the power that reigns at Constantinople is now just as ready to receive the Frank religion as it was thirty years ago to adopt the Frank trousers and frock coat, provided policy recommends it. The Arab is a practical, quickminded race; once, in the days of Haroun el Raschid, the most able and curious in science, as the very names, Algebra, Alchymy, indicating the origin of our own higher Mathematics and Chemistry, bear witness; and the Arab, now eager for investigation, must soon grasp the truths in physical science and in spiritual revelation which will show the Koran to be

the work of a designing man, exposed to the errors of the day and people among whom he lived. The Persian is a highly reflective race; deeply thoughtful in the principles of mental and moral science, and in speculative religious questions; the people among whom Zoroaster arose, by whom Aristotelian philosophy is still studied, and to whom Gospel truth is full of strange interest when it breaks upon them. No one can ponder the inherent weakness of Mohammed's claim to inspiration, and his own attestation to the miraculous testimonials of Jesus, without seeing how the Koran must, like the Old Testament, prove a "primary school teacher to lead inquiring minds to Christ." No one can observe the weakness and dependence on Christian nations of the civil head of the Mohammedan world, without being struck with the Turk's own conviction, that the crescent is indeed waning, that it has never given forth but a reflected light, and that a sun of righteousness with healing in his beams is needed for man corrupted and degenerate as the once energetic Turk now is.

The gatherer of these gleanings from Mohammed's own statements as to his religious system, was fourteen years ago riding from Gaza to Jerusalem, surrounded by a strangely differing retinue of Christians from Egypt, Syria, and Armenia; of Jews from the neighboring towns of old Judea, and of Mohammedans from different regions; all going to the Holy City to spend the week sacred to the Jews as that of their Passover, to the Christians as their festival of Easter, and to the Mohammedan as the place of Mohammed's "Night Journey." The muleteer was a Turk, and cared not a straw for prayers towards Mecca, or any rite of his religion. The faithful bodyservant was an intelligent Arab, who seemed half ashamed of the forms of his worship, often neglecting them, and was curious in his inquiries as to the difference between Western and Eastern Christians. In the crowd there walked a man of noble form and intellectual brow; a Mohammedan dervish from Boghary on the east of Persia, who had gone on foot on a pilgrimage of months from Persia to Mecca, and finding no satisfaction of soul, was now on his way to "El Kûds esh Shereef" to seek relief there. His forlorn and sad aspect,

scorned by the nominal Christians around him, and little noticed even by his co-religionist, the Turk, drew the traveller's sympathy towards him; his satchel was tied to the load of a mule; bread and dates were distributed to him, as to the poor Coptic Christians from Egypt; and, at his asking, water for his ablutions at the hours of prayer was furnished from the skin water bottle. Not only at the appointed hour, but often in the night time bis broken cries in prayer were heard, as in touching accents he prayed to "Allah" for pardon and peace of soul. On the last day's journey a donkey was specially hired for him when, foot sore, he had fallen, and was bruised on the rocks. As the hotel door in the Sacred City was reached, he pressed his benefactor's hand, pouring forth thanks with streaming eyes. He was lost in a few moments in the thronging crowd that pressed past; and his face was seen no more. All that acts could do to commend the pure religion of Jesus had been done; and the conviction was strong and comforting that such men of God as Gobat at Jerusalem, with Christ's Gospel in their hands, must reach and win such minds as these.

ARTICLE III.-THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

[BY PROF. OSCAR HOWES, OF SHURTLEFF COLLEGE, ILL.]

It is natural that the rise and rapid growth of the Science of Language should invest with new interest a question which scarcely needed, however, to be rendered more attractivethe old and still new question as to the origin of language. Though, from a want of facts, no theory on this subject can claim for itself a strictly scientific basis, yet the pursuits and investigations of the student of language naturally and almost inevitably bring him face to face with this problem; and if he

allows his eye once to meet its sphynx-like gaze, it will be a vain task to try to escape its fascination. He must make his attempt at least at a solution.

When the facts in reference to any given subject are sufficiently numerous, thinking minds generally coincide as to the true theory. But when facts are scanty, the induction must necessarily be partial and imperfect. In the absence of facts, the deficiency must be supplied by speculation, and as speculation has no objective basis, theories must vary much as the minds of the individuals who form them. Hence the general rule, that the fewer the facts, the more numerous the theories. It is no matter of surprise, therefore, that men do not agree in their theories of the origin of language. We have, of course, no record which dates back to the commencement of human speech; nor has any nation or tribe of men been discovered not already possessing a fully developed language. Our knowledge, therefore, must, from the nature of the case, be prevented from ever reaching the highest degree of certainty. The fact that this subject has been specially prolific in apparently fruitless speculations, may not unnaturally raise a question in the minds of some as to the utility of consuming time in inquiries where induction must necessarily rest on so slender a basis of fact, and where, consequently, theory is so likely to run wild. But the human mind is so constituted as imperatively to demand a cause for every effect which comes under its observation. Though this craving is so strong as frequently to lead the mind in its eagerness to satisfy it to accept of inadequate and absurd theories, any injury which may have thus resulted is far more than compensated by the stimulus which this desire has lent to the investigation of truth. If, too, an inquiry derives dignity and importance from the magnitude of the effect which it seeks to explain, the inquiry into the origin of language necessarily takes its place by the side of the most interesting questions which can be presented to the human mind for solution. For certainly there is no more marvellous creation in this world of marvels than human speech. The only reason it has ceased to excite our wonder is because it has become so familiar.

But to him who rightly considers it, the power which we possess to convey accurately to each other all thought and emotion is second only in mysteriousness to the power of thought itself. What can be more truly wonderful than this fact of daily occurrence, that by a mere effort of the vocal organs an effort which it is in the power of a child to put forth, precisely the same thought, at the same moment of time, takes possession of hundreds of minds; that the thin and unsubstantial air-the idle wind which passes by, and we regard it not, as it rushes swiftly through its narrow passage takes on the exact form and impress of the still more impalpable thought, and, by the invisible aid of innumerable kindred airy messengers, transfers the impress, indefinitely multiplied but still unchanged, to all the minds in the many headed throng. It is not the mere mystery of the transmission of sound, though even this is beyond our comprehension, but that sound becomes freighted with intelligence, moulded to the expres sion of all the varied and complicated workings of the human mind, even to the subtlest fancies and the most delicate shades of emotion, and instead of the mere vague impressions that belong to all sound, conveying "thoughts that breathe" in "words that burn," and chaining and unchaining the passions of the human heart at will. It becomes the plastic medium of that infinitely varied interchange of thought and feeling which binds men together in social compact, and renders possible that unity of action and effort which has resulted in the splendid achievements of science and art.

It was not without a deep meaning, therefore, that Homer applied to man the epithet μépop, voice-dividing or articulating, as the characteristic which, above every thing else, distinguishes him from all the other inhabitants of the earth; since, without this crowning endowment, reason itself would be almost useless, and all the higher faculties of the mind would lack the exercise indispensable to their suitable development. In fact, man would no longer be man in the fullest and highest sense of the word. Language is thus seen to be not simply the medium for the expression of thought, but also the means and stimulus of thought; that without which thought would

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