This language will soon be universal; by common consent it will become the language of the world. All the changes going on among nations forecast its ubiquity. China, by an imperial decree, has just added to her language 700 English words. Her sons by the thousand are with us, and by the thousand they are learning our mother tongue. The Japanese, till a few years ago, carried on their foreign correspondence through the Dutch, but now they have changed to the English. Besides, in the 50,000 schools in Japan English is being taught. If science has an answer for this strange phenomenon, so have we. Ours is, that it is the will of Heaven. Confusion of tongues came at Babel as a punishment. By this means Heaven scattered the unwilling descendants of Noah. When Noah came forth from the Ark, God bade him multiply and replenish the earth—that is, fill it up. Babel, however, was built as a monument of centralisation, for the builders gave as a reason for building it, “Lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth.” By a confusion of tongues they were scattered. Since then we have had some 1,500 distinct languages, and some 3,500 colloquials, or say 5,000 different forms of speech. At the present time 600 of the primary are dead, so that there are about 900 languages now spoken on all the earth, with about 2,500 colloquials.
When these means have answered their end—namely, to make us occupy all parts of the earth—then they will die out. It then follows that as the world fills, languages must disappear. So they do. The English and German were the last languages to come into existence. No new ones are now being made. Alphabets are increasing, because missionaries are reducing spoken languages among the heathen into a written form. The Bible is translated into two hundred different tongues. This itself will only lead the millions back to English. All ship papers are now made out in English excepting the French, and no doubt they will soon have to follow in the wake.
The day of Pentecost foreshowed the universality of some language. Pentecost was a type, and the English is the antitype. The strangers from Phrygia, Pamphylia, Libya, Pontus, and Cappadocia, mingled with the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cretes, and Arabians. They all heard the Gospel in their own tongue. The different tongues make a wall of division, making them strangers one with another; but the Holy Ghost took away this wall, and they were all face to face, able to understand one another. The same power that here multiplied the gift of tongues—giving to some several—surely could give to Adam one. Away with a faith that cannot give God credit with being the Author of language.