ead of the English language is one of the wonders of the age.
The English language is spoken at the present time by nearly
200,000,000 people; each year sees large additions to the group of
English-speaking peoples. In the Philippines more people to-day speak
the English language than spoke the Spanish language after three
hundred years of Spanish rule.

"In all higher education in India, English is compulsory; in the
secondary schools in India, English is taught. In China, the government
has made English a part of the regular curriculum. In Japan, the
students are eager to learn English. It is the avenue through which the
missionary frequently is able to reach the educated classes. In Syria,
one of the boys in the classroom wrote on the blackboard, 'God is love'
in his own language, thirty boys followed, each writing the text in his
own language; yet these boys sooner or later will all speak the English
language. A speaker at the Edinburgh Conference declared that some
missionaries read the Lord's command as though it were written 'Go and
teach all nations the English language.' Macaulay says that whoever
knows the English language has 'ready access to the vast intellectual
wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and stored
in the course of ninety generations.' The English language is the
language of liberty, of law, of morals, of high ideals. The English
Bible, which has molded Anglo-Saxon civilization, is making no small
impress on world civilization.

"The Greek language became the vehicle in which the gospel story was
borne to the educated world of the first century. The English language
seems destined in the providence of God to be the bearer of the
gospel to the races of the twentieth century."

The following table indicates the remarkable growth during the
nineteenth century of the English language as compared with other
tongues. The estimates are given by Mulhall and John Bartholomew of
Edinburgh and appear in the 1912 _World Almanac_.

1801 1901

French 31,450,000 52,100,000

German 30,320,000 84,200,000

Italian 15,070,000 34,000,000

Spanish 26,190,000 46,500,000

Portuguese 7,480,000 15,000,000

Russian 30,770,000 85,000,000

English 20,520,000 130,300,000

In the light of these figures the total given by Dr. Halsey quoted
above