On the Study of Words | Page 5

they
cannot have a better account of their lives, than to let them run out and
slide away, to pass them over and to baulk them, and as much as they
can, to take no notice of them and to shun them, as a thing of
troublesome and contemptible quality. But I know it to be another kind
of thing, and find it both valuable and commodious even in its latest
decay, wherein I now enjoy it, and nature has delivered it into our
hands in such and so favourable circumstances that we commonly
complain of ourselves, if it be troublesome to us or slide unprofitably
away.'] they are only 'pastime'; they serve only, as this word confesses,
to pass away the time, to prevent it from hanging, an intolerable burden,
on men's hands: all which they can do at the best is to prevent men
from discovering and attending to their own internal poverty and
dissatisfaction and want. He might have added that there is the same
acknowledgment in the word 'diversion' which means no more than that
which diverts or turns us aside from ourselves, and in this way helps us
to forget ourselves for a little. And thus it would appear that, even
according to the world's own confession, all which it proposes is--not to
make us happy, but a little to prevent us from remembering that we are
unhappy, to pass away our time, to divert us from ourselves. While on
the other hand we declare that the good which will really fill our souls
and satisfy them to the uttermost, is not in us, but without us and above
us, in the words which we use to set forth any transcending delight.

Take three or four of these words--'transport,' 'rapture,' 'ravishment,'
'ecstasy,'--'transport,' that which carries us, as 'rapture,' or 'ravishment,'
that which snatches us out of and above ourselves; and 'ecstasy' is very
nearly the same, only drawn from the Greek. And not less, where a
perversion of the moral sense has found place, words preserve
oftentimes a record of this perversion. We have a signal example of this
in the use, or rather misuse, of the words 'religion' and 'religious' during
the Middle Ages, and indeed in many parts of Christendom still. A
'religious' person did not then mean any one who felt and owned the
bonds that bound him to God and to his fellow-men, but one who had
taken peculiar vows upon him, the member of a monastic Order, of a
'religion' as it was called. As little did a 'religious' house then mean, nor
does it now mean in the Church of Rome, a Christian household,
ordered in the fear of God, but a house in which these persons were
gathered together according to the rule of some man. What a light does
this one word so used throw on the entire state of mind and habits of
thought in those ages! That then was 'religion,' and alone deserved the
name! And 'religious' was a title which might not be given to parents
and children, husbands and wives, men and women fulfilling faithfully
and holily in the world the duties of their several stations, but only to
those who had devised a self-chosen service for themselves. [Footnote:
A reviewer in Fraser's Magazine, Dec. 1851, doubts whether I have not
here pushed my assertion too far. So far from this, it was not merely the
'popular language' which this corruption had invaded, but a decree of
the great Fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215), forbidding the further
multiplication of monastic Orders, runs thus: Ne nimia religionum
diversitas gravem in Ecclesia Dei confusionem inducat, firmiter
prohibemus, ne quis de cetero novam religionem inveniat, sed
quicunque voluerit ad religionem converti, unam de approbatis
assumat.]
But language is fossil history as well. What a record of great social
revolutions, revolutions in nations and in the feelings of nations, the
one word 'frank' contains, which is used, as we all know, to express
aught that is generous, straightforward, and free. The Franks, I need not
remind you, were a powerful German tribe, or association of tribes,
who gave themselves [Footnote: This explanation of the name Franks
is now generally given up. The name is probably a derivative from a

lost O.H.G. francho, a spear or javelin: compare A.S. franca, Icel.
_frakka_; similarly the Saxons are supposed to have derived their name
from a weapon--seax, a knife; see Kluge's Dict. (s.v. _frank_).] this
proud name of the 'franks' or the free; and who, at the breaking up of
the Roman Empire, possessed themselves of Gaul, to which they gave
their own name. They were the ruling conquering people, honourably
distinguished from the Gauls and degenerate Romans among whom
they established themselves by their independence, their love of
freedom, their scorn