245 
given t° others care but little about it : a faculty they never 
had, they never miss. And a faculty that none ever had 
cannot be even conceived, any more than we can conceive a 
sixth sense or could conceive a fifth, if we had but four I 
well remember conversing, some years ago, with a boy who was 
born blind ; he was about 16 or 17 years old, highly intelligent, 
well informed, and well educated. I put this case to him— 
(suppose a, person, having the power to give you eyesight 
Sr 5 u 0 a “i!i Pai “ ° r inconven ience, Should 
say to you John, which would you rather have— the ability 
to see, or five pounds ? He raised his sightless eyeballs 
upwards in the act of reflection, for a few seconds, and replied 
I think I would rather have the five pounds” ! This is an 
jX mcC F Xf 7 literal . faot - The boy’s name was 
for th f Blind ' and he WaS “ lnmate ° f the UIster Institution 
From all these considerations I find myself constrained to 
conclude, quite independently of Scripture, that speech was 
not ol human invention. I am constrained to conclude that 
the universal existence of speech among savage tribes, 
though m a poor and imperfect form— testifies (as they them- 
selves testify), not to the elevation to which they have risen, 
but to the degradation to which they have fallen: not to 
what they have acquired, but to what they have lost. Just as 
a once beautiful face, though marred by accident or disease— 
though even overspread by the pallor of death, will still retain 
^.T* l m f am . e °* s ° f lts former comeliness— so, even in the 
debased and benighted savage, all trace is not lost of what 
man once was. Speech, Heaven’s direct bestowment, in one 
conHn, f0rm ^ surviTes the deca 7 of all else, and ever 
continues a mark and memento of man’s high origin. 
Yes : reason and Revelation alike tell us that when our first 
oiher not°in d XX ° f Pa radise they communed with each 
that thev /“ d , f P ant ° mime > m heaven-born speech; and 
that they learnt to speak just as much as the bee learnt to 
construct its cell the spider to weave its web, or the spTrrow 
ta P u ff \tT/n rTh t0P t bmld , her nest ' No mortal instructor 
‘ & ht them they had no rudimentary training to go throuo-h 
—no long apprenticeship to serve. Their lesson was the 
lesson of an instant, for their Creator was their Teacher. 
TV hat this primitive language was we know not. Hereafter 
perhaps, we may know. The language of Eden may in a 
aW And 6 ° Ur rV f P r itted t0 dwe11 111 the Paradise 
above. And, as the Apostles of old « spake with other 
