I was myself twelve years of age before ever I saw a Testament in any language. The first I was then introduced to was the Greek. Being in favour with my tutor, he took an interest in my progress, and the consequence was, to my gratitude and his praise, that no deviation from the exactness of grammatical technicality could possibly escape my observation. Soon as I arrived at the text wherein τα ιδια occurs, its irregularity, at once, flashed across my mind. I sought for an explanation, but it was in vain; my imagination set to work, but it was equally abortive. At length, in despair, I relinquished the pursuit, and never again troubled myself with it, or its solution, until recalled by its connection with the present inquiry. But it was not alone the peculiarity of gender that excited my circumspection, the phraseology, when translated, sounded so familiar to my ear, as to appear an old acquaintance under a new form. For, though I could then tolerably well express myself in English, the train of my reflections always ran in Irish. From infancy I spoke that tongue: it was to me vernacular. I thought in Irish, I understood in Irish, and I compared in Irish. My sentiments and my conceptions were _filtrated_ therein! As to dialectal idioms or lingual peculiarities, I had not, of course, the most remote idea. Whether, therefore, the expression coming to “His own” were properly a _Greek_ or an _English_ elocution, I did not, then, know either sufficiently well to determine; but that it was _Irish_ I was perfectly satisfied; my ear and my heart, at once, told me so. I now positively affirm that the _phrase is neither Hebrew_, _Greek_, nor _English_! And if you are not disposed to admit the information which it conveys,[559] to be an immediate communication from the Omnipotent, I have another very adequate mode of accounting for St. John’s having acquired it, and expressed it too in a phraseology so _essentially Oriental_. [Illustration] The three wise men--who came from the East to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him”[560]--to a mortal certainty imparted to him the intelligence! Here you see them with _crosses_ upon their crowns,[561] the religious counterparts of our _Irish shamrocs_![562] And surely, as Jesus was then but an infant, those mysterious devices were commemorative of His crucifixion, when “He came to His own,”--and not to that which occurred while He “dwelt among us,” a catastrophe which had not yet taken place! Nor is it alone this single phrase (τα ιδια) that I claim as Oriental--the five first verses of this Gospel, as at present arranged, appertain also thereto. They speak the _doctrine_ alike of the _Budhists_ and of the _Free-masons_; but in _diction_, and in _peculiarity_, in _tone_, in _point_, and _essence_, they are irrefragably _Irish_.[563]