they there? We may be quite sure that they were not invented without
being needed, and they have each a correlative in the world of
realities. I open the first letter of the alphabet; what means this
'Ah,' this 'Alas,' these deep and long-drawn sighs of humanity, which
at once encounter me there? And then presently there meet me such words
as these, 'Affliction,' 'Agony,' 'Anguish,' 'Assassin,' 'Atheist,'
'Avarice,' and a hundred more--words, you will observe, not laid up in
the recesses of the language, to be drawn forth on rare occasions, but
many of them such as must be continually on the lips of men. And indeed,
in the matter of abundance, it is sad to note how much richer our
vocabularies are in words that set forth sins, than in those that set
forth graces. When St. Paul (Gal. v. 19-23) would range these over
against those, 'the works of the flesh' against 'the fruit of the
Spirit,' those are seventeen, these only nine; and where do we find in
Scripture such lists of graces, as we do at 2 Tim. iii. 2, Rom. i. 29-
31, of their contraries? [Footnote: Of these last the most exhaustive
collection which I know is in Philo, _De Merced. Meret._ Section 4.
There are here one hundred and forty-six epithets brought together,
each of them indicating a sinful moral habit of mind. It was not
without reason that Aristotle wrote: 'It is possible to err in many
ways, for evil belongs to the infinite; but to do right is possible
only in one way' (_Ethic. Nic._ ii. 6. 14).] Nor can I help noting, in
the oversight and muster from this point of view of the words which
constitute a language, the manner in which its utmost resources have
been taxed to express the infinite varieties, now of human suffering,
now of human sin. Thus, what a fearful thing is it that any language
should possess a word to express the pleasure which men feel at the
calamities of others; for the existence of the word bears testimony to
the existence of the thing. And yet such in more languages than one may
be found. [Footnote: In the Greek, [Greek: epichairekakia], in the