to fit it to abide there, is this faith in Christ. Therefore the apostles trusted it with a sublime and single confidence. Therefore let us trust it too. There is nothing in anything without it. With it the church will sail through its troubles and abide in purity and strength.

The governmental peril however remains, and requires, as we freely admit, some more thorough consideration than we are now prepared to give it.

It is a peril which our churches, by their democratic organization, are peculiarly exposed to. The Congregational denomination, when it opens its communion to a believer, gives him (with the exception in some cases of women and minors) political rights in the church. We have not made that distinction between what may be called the covenant rights of the Church Catholic and the political rights of the church local which in most of the denominations is so carefully guarded. With the exception made above, a Congregational church member is invested with ecclesiastical power and becomes a church ruler. He votes on all questions. As the matter now stands, he has an influence in framing the Articles of Faith.

It would certainly be an act of sublime confidence in the simple principle of faith for any church to commit all its powers to those whose one qualification to administer them is this. It may prove in practice that such universal suffrage in the kingdom of God is the true policy. But should it be found that such a liberal policy would endanger too much the govern ment or the church, there is nothing to prevent the separation being made between the covenant rights of membership in the Church Catholic and the political rights which would then be conferred by the local church on a mere limited body whom they conceive to be qualified to wield them.

In fact, the traditional policy of the Congregational churches did this in withholding a vote from women and minors. A more arbitrary and indefensible measure it would be hard to imagine. And a denomination which to this day has not shaken off the habit entirely, could certainly have nothing to say against committing its political rights to a restricted body with superior qualifications.

We are not yet willing to undertake the advocacy of such a

measure. We only allude to it to show that should the churches throw themselves on the free charter which has been given them, they would still have it in their power to reserve in their own hands the administration of those ecclesiasticopolitical forms which it might be found unsafe to commit to believers in the first and simple stages of their Christian progress.

At all events, it can never be safe to allow the questions of local church government to overpower the liberty or the rights of the Church of the covenant and the sacraments as founded by Christ. It can never be safe to appeal to the political exigencies of a local organization in extenuation of a curtailment of those rights and of those privileges which all denominations exist only to foster and to cherish.

ARTICLE VII.-THE STUDY OF WORDS.

WHEN we designate a person as a brilliant speaker, we are not merely employing a figure of speech; we are using an idiom and expressing an idea belonging to an antiquity beyond our tracing, and probably among man's primeval conceptions. The same Greek word* means both man and light, and it is derived from a verbal root+ which means both speak and shine. These correspondences imply that man is the light of this lower world, and that it is through speech that he shines. It is in accordance with this linguistic phenomenon that in the records of Divine revelation, the Author of Christianity is called equally the Word of God and the Light of the World.

We propose, in this Article, to speak of the light that there is in words, their importance as not merely means, but as subjects of study and instruction, as often condensing in themselves more knowledge than they can convey by their accustomed uses. Men have embodied in their words a profounder wisdom than their own,-have, like all great architects, "built better than they knew." There are many words whose very form is full of instruction, many words in common use, in which we virtually recognize great truths that we practically ignore,-many which are enduring monuments of marked epochs in human thought or experience, many which in their deflection form their pristheir abuse superseding their native use are tokens of perverted sentiments or retrograde movements, and thus stand as finger-posts pointing the way to reform and

tinė sense

progress.

We sometimes hear of the making of new words by individual speakers or writers. This never takes place. Words are not made; they grow. An individual may, indeed, coin a word to express some conception of his own; but unless society needs it, he cannot give it currency. It must strike the public ear and mind; else it perishes on the tongue or pen that vainly strives to give it birth. But if it be a word that meets an actual

* φῶς.

+ Φάω, whence bc . Φημί and Φαίνω.

want, fills a real void, and if in structure it be adapted to its use, then he who first gives it currency is but the spokesman of the community. It is they, not he, who really create it; for receptivity is a much more essential factor in word-creation than invention is. For instance, the American term squatter is marvelously expressive. The man who first uttered it gave precise form to the idea for which thousands were wanting a suitable term, and it was hardly spoken before it was on every one's tongue. As an instance of the opposite kind, a clique of influential literary men, many years ago, coined from a wellknown Greek verb,* denoting appropriate, the English verb spheterize, designed to bear the same meaning and to serve at need as a euphemism for steal. They spoke it; they wrote it; they talked about it. It seemed to them, and it really is, very apt. They, too, were men of weight and authority in letters, and could accomplish as much as any men of their time; but they could not give it currency. There was no felt need, no vacant niche, no posture of things had arisen to crave a new term; and the word never passed beyond their own circle. By and by, in connection with some novel development of selfishness which demands a new name, some one man, perhaps an obscure man, will take it up, and a thousand tongues will by acclamation bid it welcome into the body of classical English.

Let us now look at some of the classes of instructive words. In the first place, proper names are almost always descriptive, historical, or both. In this country, and in colonies generally, there are many imported names, and these, though often without local appropriateness, are in most instances historical, indicating some intimate connection of the early fortunes of the new place with the original situs of the name. Thus, for instance, there is a region of New Hampshire where the towns almost all have Irish names. There is nothing now to distinguish these towns from the rest of the State, except that the surnames of the few surviving descendants of the oldest families still betoken the fact that a large colony of the Scotch Irish were the first settlers of that region.

Names are almost always significant in their original sites. To refer to a few familiar and well-known instances, the Medi

* Σφετερίζομαι.

terranean Sea defines by its name its land-locked expanse; the White, Green, and Rocky Mountains, their predominant characteristics; Lake Champlain, its French discoverer; Mesopotamia, its position between two rivers; Greenland, the gorgeous though brief verdure of its coast when first seen in midsummer; the Carolinas, the popularity of the English queen when they were settled; Providence, the religious trust of its founder. The beautiful town of Brookline in Massachusetts was at first the Precinct of Muddy Brook (muddy no longer), and when it became a town, that same brook was one of its lines or boundaries. Chester and caster, as terminations, mark the sites of fortified camps (castra), generally Roman,-Doncaster, the camp on the Don; Lancaster, on the Lune; Winchester, on the Itchin, softened into Win; Colchester, on the Colne; Chichester, alone, as we think, not a Roman camp, but the camp of Cissa, an Anglo-Saxon chieftain. In like manner, the termination castle (as also burgh or borough) denotes the site of some ancient castle or fort, the prefix being a memorial of its builder's name, its geographical situation, or some salient fact in its history. Ford is a ford, Bradford, the broad ford; Orford, the ford of the Ore; Oxford, the ford crossed by oxen, or rather, by an ox on which a devout nun forded the Isis to escape the amorous pursuit of King Edward.

We hardly need remind our readers how significant are all our numerous Indian names, always appropriate, sometimes highly poetical, as Cuyahora, glancing water, for Trenton Falls, and Astenroga, thunder-rock, for what is now degraded into Little Falls, an insignificant cataract indeed, but with inexpressibly grand rock-scenery around it.

The names of persons are equally significant. The first or Christian name, which is in every instance the proper name, corresponding to the only name when there was but one, was originally a title descriptive of the person, or of some fact, idea, or association connected with his birth. The Hebrew names so used were at first often conferred with special significance; there is not one of them which has not a distinct and strong meaning; and the very many in which the syllables El and Jah occur all have a religious reference, connecting the Divine name with some individual circumstance, trait, or aspiration. The