W. B. Godbey - Enter His Rest

ut in the Hebrew and Greek, which are now dead languages. God, in His providence, after the Scriptures were
written in those beautiful and learned languages, took them out of the world, so that people could not corrupt
them, as they do every spoken language. But we have this grand thesaurus of God's precious truth revealed for
the salvation of a lost world, to which we can go and drink of the water of life, limpid and pure, as it leaps from
the fountain, gushing out beneath the throne of God. You can never drink at these fountains unless you learn
those original languages; but you will be dependent on translators. That is all right as far as salvation is
concerned.
If we drink from the bucket which the translators carried from the fountain, we will never die of thirst, yet, for a
thousand reasons I have not space here to mention, we should much prefer to drink at the fountain itself.
(2) We need the Latin and the Greek languages to qualify us to understand the English, four-fifths of which
are taken from those languages. In our great, beautiful, versatile and voluminous Anglo-Saxon tongue we have
only twenty-three thousand Saxon words, which constitute the nucleus of the great language, comprising the
vast vocabulary of a hundred and fifty thousand words, and that vocabulary rapidly increasing. I have no doubt
but that the English language which is so rapidly spreading over the whole earth and is now the popular
language of the world, so that other nations want their children to learn it, will be the language of the world
during the glorious Millennium, whose rising aurora now thrills the hearts of many waiting and longing
pilgrims. You never can be very proficient in the great English language without a thorough study of Latin and
Greek.
The Alexandrian conquest, B. C. 325, put the Greek language in all the governments under heaven; therefore it
was universal in the days of Christ and His apostles. The Roman conquest did the same for the Latin language
three hundred years subsequently. Consequently not only the English, but all other languages in present use are
so largely taken from those tongues that we need those fundamental languages preparatory to the study of all the
modern. A Greek and Latin scholar will learn any of the languages in India much more easily and quickly than
the people who have not received a classical education. If you desire thoroughness in any other language, the
quickest and surest route is through the meandering halls of classical lore.
(3) We need the Latin and Greek to qualify us for real proficiency in the sciences, all of which we have to
study in the nomenclature of these languages. We never can be learned in any sense without studying the
sciences, all of which require us constantly to use the dead languages which will be so difficult to learn and
retain in the memory in case we have never studied them. For example, zoology, which teaches us all about the
animal kingdom, is from zoon, an animal, and logos, science; therefore it means the science of animals.
Astronomy is from astron, a star, and nomos, law; therefore it means the law of the stars. Whereas the sciences
are all expounded in the Greek language, the great bulk of words used in public orations and written
dissertations are from the Latin.
If you would master languages so as to have command of words and easy fluency of speech, it is really
indispensable that you study the Latin and Greek, which constitute the boundless thesaurus and illimitable
vocabulary of universal language.
(4) We are living in by far the most literary age the world has ever known. During the by-gone ages you
could count on your fingers the prominent authors of all nations. Now they are rapidly becoming an
innumerable host, flooding the world with literature. It is certainly a glorious privilege to participate in the
prevailing aspiration to large usefulness. The study of the Latin and Greek, and actual proficiency in the same, is
really indispensable to qualification for efficient authorship.
But you may raise the question of financial inability to acquire these languages. This is really imaginary on your
part. That is a circumstance in your favor and not against you. If you had plenty of money it would be difficult
for you to resist the temptation to luxuriate and prodigalize; if not to actually fall by dissipation and even
debauchery, thus withering and blighting all your hopes of scholarship and usefulness. Read the biographies of
the great scholars and you will find they all had to contend with meager finances, if not actual pauperism, from
the beginning of their educational course. I was a student twenty-one years, and a constant witness of these
phenomena, I. e., the failure and often the wreckage of the rich students, and the brilliant achievements and
college honors conferred upon the poor. So rejoice in your poverty and thank God for thus, in His providence,