Remember this, and then think again,—what is it which makes men different from all other living things we know of? Is it not speech—the power of words? The beasts may make each other understand many things, but they have no speech. These glorious things—words—are man’s right alone, part of the image of the Son of God—the Word of God, in which man was created. If men would but think what a noble thing it is merely to be able to speak in words, to think in words, to write in words! Without words, we should know no more of each other’s hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog;—without words to think in; for if you will consider, you always think to yourself in _words_, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand our own selves. Without words to write in, we could not know what our forefathers did;—we could not let our children after us know what to do. But, now, books—the written word of man—are precious heirlooms from one generation to another, training us, encouraging us, teaching us, by the words and thoughts of men, whose bodies are crumbled into dust ages ago, but whose words—the power of uttering themselves, which they got from the Son of God—still live, and bear fruit in our hearts, and in the hearts of our children after us, till the last day! But where did these words—this power of uttering our thoughts, come from? Do you fancy that men first, began like brute beasts or babies, with strange cries and mutterings, and so gradually found out words for themselves? Not they; the beasts have been on the earth as long as man; and yet they can no more speak than they could when God created Adam: but Adam, we find, could speak at once. God spoke to Adam the moment he was made, and Adam understood Him; so he knew the power and the meaning of words. Who gave him that power? Who but Jehovah—Jesus—the Word of God, who imparted to him the word of speech and the light of reason? Without them what use would there have been in saying to him, “Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge?” Without them what would there have been in God’s bringing to him all the animals to see what he would call them, unless He had first given Adam the power of understanding words, and thinking of words, and speaking words? This was the glorious gift of Christ—the Voice or Word of the Lord God, as we read in the second chapter of Genesis, whom Adam heard another time with fear and terror,—“The voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day.”—A text and a story strange enough, till we find in the first chapter of St. John the explanation of it, telling us that the Word was in the beginning with God—very God, and that He was the light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world. So Christ is the light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world. How are we to