In the wisdom of God, the revelation of his will was given in the Hebrew tongue, with an alphabet of twenty-two letters, some of which, as inscribed on the Moabite stone, b.c. 900, are identical in form and sound with those now used in English books. This Hebrew alphabet, so simple that a child might learn it in a day, has never been lost or forgotten. The Hebrew language in which the Oracles of God were given to man, has never become a dead language. Since the day when the Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai, there never has been a day or hour when the language in which it was written was not known to living men, who were able to read, write, and expound it. And the Hebrew is the only language of those ages that has lived to the present time, preserving the record of a divine revelation, and being conserved by it through the vicissitudes of conflict, conquest, captivity, and dispersion; while the surrounding idolatrous nations perished in their own corruption, and their languages and literature were buried in oblivion. In later ages, when the gospel of the Son of God was to be proclaimed to all mankind, another language was used as a vehicle for its communication. The bulk of the Israelitish race, through their captivities and eternal associations, had lost the knowledge of the holy tongue, and had learned the languages of the Gentiles among whom they dwelt; and now as their corporate national existence was to be interrupted, and they were to be dispersed among the peoples of the earth, the Hebrew language was not a fit channel for conveying this revelation to the Gentile world. Hence the same wise Providence which chose the undying Hebrew tongue for the utterances of the prophets, selected the Greek, which was at that time, more nearly than any other, a universal language, as the medium through which the teachings of the Saviour and the messages of the apostles should be sent forth to mankind. This language, like the Hebrew, has maintained its existence,—though it has been somewhat changed by the flight of years,—and the modern Greek spoken in Athens to-day is substantially the Greek of 1800 years ago.