t along with this revival. Happily another movement
accompanied, or at least followed hard on this; a movement in England
essentially national; and which stirred our people at far deeper depths
of their moral and spiritual life than any mere revival of learning
could have ever done; I refer, of course, to the Reformation. It was
only among the Germanic nations of Europe, as has often been remarked,
that the Reformation struck lasting roots; it found its strength
therefore in the Teutonic element of the national character, which also
it in its turn further strengthened, purified, and called out. And thus,
though Latin came in upon us now faster than ever, and in a certain
measure also Greek, yet this was not without its redress and
counterpoise, in the cotemporaneous unfolding of the more fundamentally
popular side of the language. Popular preaching and discussion, the
necessity of dealing with truths the most transcendent in a way to be
understood not by scholars only, but by 'idiots' as well, all this
served to evoke the native resources of our tongue; and thus the
relative proportion between the one part of the language and the other
was not dangerously disturbed, the balance was not destroyed; as it
might well have been, if only the Humanists{45} had been at work, and
not the Reformers as well.

The revival of learning, which made itself first felt in Italy, extended
to England, and was operative here, during the reigns of Henry the
Eighth and his immediate successors. Having thus slightly anticipated in
time, it afterwards ran exactly parallel with, the period during which
our Reformation was working itself out. The epoch was in all respects
one of immense mental and moral activity, and such never leave the
language of a nation where they found it. Much is changed in it; much
probably added; for the old garment of speech, which once served all
needs, has grown too narrow, and serves them now no more. "Change in
language is not, as in many natural products, continuous; it is not
equable, but eminently by fits and starts"; and when the foundations of
the national mind are heaving under the power of some new truth, greater
and more important changes will find place in fifty years than in two
centuries of calmer or more stagnant existence. Thus the activities and
energies which the Reformation awakened among us here--and I need not
tell you that these reached far beyond the domain of our directly
religious life--caused