Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 69. A Simple Universal Language

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Quiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return: 69. A Simple Universal Language



TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 69. A Simple Universal Language

Other Subjects in this Topic:

A Simple Universal Language

There is still another messenger,—a Book. It came gradually, growing as it came. It came through the other three messengers, the two already named, and the fourth one, yet to be spoken of. It has some great advantages over the two named,—it could go where they could not. It is a good traveller, going great distances, into remote places, and finding entrance into homes and inner secret chambers, and lone hours, where none other could go.

It has proved a better messenger. It has remained steady and true to its mission. It has been immune to moral diseases, to changes of moral atmosphere and climate, which have proved fatal to both of the other messengers. It has gone through fierce fire. But the actual fires could not burn it up. It still survived. It has, more lately, been going through yet subtler fires, but itself remains without the smell of fire upon its pages.

It came to its birth with the borning of the Hebrew nation. Like every child it gathered up into itself preceding generations, even as that nation did. It grew with the growth of the nation, some of its brightest pages coming out of the deepening shadows of the nation's decline. But it remains true and steady, while the family in which it found its first home went to pieces.

It came into a new increase of life and power with the new Church-messenger, which received it out of the failing hand of the old one, and took it into the new family life. It took on the life of Him whose earthly steps it traces, whose Spirit was the Teacher of the new Church messenger, and who gave to it the final seal of His own last message from out the upper glory. It is a Book like any other book; it is a Book wholly unlike every other; because it is more than a book,—it is a medium of the Holy Spirit's ministry. He is in it. There's a living Voice and Presence in these simple quiet pages.

There's a simple, rare wisdom in the language used in this silent, eloquent Book-messenger. The messenger was sent to all men, so its language must be one that all could understand. I am not thinking of the shape of its characters, and their sounds, but of what is a yet more difficult thing, its way of saying things. There is no more difficult task than to find a way of saying a thing that everybody can understand. One must always try to suit his way of saying things to the group he is talking with. What fits into the polished drawing-room gathering, or the university audience does not suit the slum mission or the street-corner crowd. The truth is the same; the way of saying and illustrating it is as really different as with different national languages.

Now to write a book that will find the mind and heart and conscience, alike of polished courtier, street peddler, university teacher and student, young child, farm labourer,—what a task! And to make its message come home alike to Westerner as to Oriental, to the astute, metaphysical Indian, the picture-speaking Arab and Chinese, as to the matter-of-fact aggressive Britisher and American,—this adds immensely to the task. Yet the Book must do just this if it is to fulfil its mission as a messenger to all men, and to be recognized by all men. What sort of language would do?

It may help us to appreciate the simple, rare wisdom in this Book's language to refresh our minds on a few points. There are certain differences of language quite familiar. We speak to the young child in the simplest language, using short words and short sentences. And especially we talk to a child in pictures, and talk with hands and face as well as with lips. Something that is a picture to the child's eye is used to convey an idea to its mind. As mature years are reached, this is gradually replaced with what we think of as maturer language, bigger words, longer sentences, fewer pictures, ideas presented abstractly. This has become so much the trained habit that it is much more difficult to speak acceptably in public to children. And when a public speaker with matured thought uses the simplicity of child-language, yet without childish-ness, it always brings a sense of pleasure and refreshment to his hearers. It takes much more study.

There is again a sharp difference between written and spoken language, between book-speech and common talk. The written is more formal, and proper, ruled by exacting rules, the sentences longer, more involved and more polished. The spoken is more free, the sentences shorter, the words crisper, with more fire and snap to them. The book language becomes highly conventionalized by generations of scholarly polishing. It is spoken by the few, even in our day when print is so common. The crowd talks in the shorter, crisper, less conventionalized speech. The written Latin of the middle ages was elaborate and eloquent, and unknown to the masses. The speech of the soldier, the merchant, the crowd on the street or road, was simpler and more pictorial. It was the spoken Latin, pronounced differently in different parts, that grew into French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese in the South of Europe, even as the common barbarian German grew into modern German, Swedish, English, and so on, in the North.

There is still another difference to be noted. The child language and the spoken language being picture languages have more to do with things as they look to the eye, less with how they came to look so; more with results; less, or not at all, with the processes and methods and analysis by which results are reached.



Now the world has divided itself up broadly into East and West, Orient and Occident. Each stands for an utterly distinct type of civilization, temperament, custom, and so on. The difference is so great as to seem without any point of contact. That difference is sharply marked in the way of expressing one's thoughts. The language of the Orient is a picture language; it sees results, not processes. The language of the Western World is less pictorial; it goes more to abstract ideas, and immeasurably more, almost wholly to processes. It dissects, and analyzes methods by which results are reached, and revels in logic. This is typical of the language of the West in contrast with the East, while what has been said of the language of childhood and the common mass remains true.

The Oriental language is not concerned with the analysis or method, but with the result, as given at the moment the picture is taken. The parable is an Eastern mode of teaching, and is at once intelligible to the Easterner. The Westerner commonly will try to hang some teaching on each minor point, and so get the parable tangled and confused. The Oriental grasps at once the one view of the picture, with its one main teaching or meaning.

So the Oriental language, this simpler picture language, is the common speech, not simply of the Orient but of the great mass of humanity. Of course it is adapted to the Orient, but it is adapted as well to the child-primitive peoples of Africa and other undeveloped races; to the children and the great mass of people of the whole world, and of course to the minority of book-trained people of the whole world as well.

And this is the language of this rare, Spirit-breathed Book of God. It can be a messenger to all, for it speaks the language of all. It comes as an open book, in this regard, not only to the Orient, but to the childhood, and the great mass of the people, of the Western World, and of all the world. It talks in the speech of common life, the street corner, the market place, and the social gathering. It speaks to Occident and Orient alike; for the Occidental can understand the language of the Orient, while the Oriental can only rarely, and even then with great difficulty, understand the language of the Occident.

There's still more and deeper here. Symbolical or pictorial language gives principles rather than details. Details change with the change of generations, and are different in different countries. Principles remain the same through all generations, and in all lands. There is extreme difficulty in writing a book that after thousands of years, or even hundreds of years, will not be out of date, and antiquated. Here is one secret, on the human side, of the freshness, most remarkable unparalleled freshness, of this Book. It is as fresh today, it takes hold of heart and mind and imagination today, just the same as when Ezra penned that One-hundred-and-nine-teenth Psalm, with its constant expression of delight over the Book that he had. The pictorial language, held true to itself, is peculiarly adapted to give just such freshness.

Our Western Church-world is full of a westernized system of interpretation of this Eastern Book. Its symbols, parables, and picture teachings have given rise to fanciful interpretation quite foreign to the Book itself. Its pictorial language is often taken with a painful literalness of meaning quite out of touch with the simple genius of picture language. If we would recognize this it would help greatly in reading this great simple Book.