Arthur Davis's life work, then, was that of a student and interpreter of Hebrew. It is a profoundly interesting fact that, in our age, movements have been set on foot in more than one direction for the revival of languages which were dead or dying. We see before our eyes Welsh and Irish in process of being saved from extinction, with the hope perhaps of restoring their ancient glories in poetry and prose. Such movements show that our time is not so utilitarian and materialistic as is often supposed. A similar revivifying process is affecting Hebrew. For centuries it has been preserved as a ritual language, sheltered within the walls of the Synagogue; often not fully understood, and never spoken, by the members of the congregations. Now it is becoming in Palestine once more a living and spoken language. Hebrew is one example among many of a language outliving for purposes of ritual its use in ordinary speech. A ritual is regarded as a sacred thing, unchanging, and usually unchangeable, except as the result of some great religious upheaval. The language in which it is framed continues fixed, amid the slowly developing conditions of the workaday world. Often, indeed, the use of an ancient language, which has gradually fallen into disuse among the people, is deliberately maintained for the air of mystery and of awe which is conveyed by its use, and which has something of the same effect upon the intellect as the "dim religious light" of a cathedral has upon the emotions. Further, it reserves to the priesthood a kind of esoteric knowledge, which gives them an additional authority that they would desire to maintain. So we find that in the days of Marcus Aurelius an ancient Salian liturgy was used in the Roman temples which had become almost unintelligible to the worshippers. The ritual of the religion of Isis in Greece was, at the same period, conducted in an unknown tongue. In the present age Church Slavonic, the ecclesiastical language of the orthodox Slavs, is only just intelligible to the peasantry of Russia and the neighbouring Slav countries. The Buddhists of China conduct their services in Sanscrit, which neither the monks nor the people understand, and the services of the Buddhists in Japan are either in Sanscrit or in ancient Chinese. I believe it is a fact that in Abyssinia, again, the liturgy is in a language called Geez, which is no longer in use as a living tongue and is not understood. But we need not go to earlier centuries or to distant countries for examples. In any Roman Catholic church in London to-day you will find the service conducted in a language which, if understood at all by the general body of the congregation, has been learnt by them only for the purposes of the liturgy.