Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/92

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yo CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. the results of the study when viewed in a prac- tical light appeared small and unsatisfactory — too small for the time devoted to it. If, indeed, the attack had been made, not upon the study of the language, but upon the method by which the language has been taught and studied in our schools, it would have been a just attack and might have resulted in greater good. But there is something better than the visible and tan- gible, the outward and the perishable. And the Greek language, with the immortal literature which it enshrines, has been prized and cher- ished most for its power to discipline the mind, to purify the intellectual vision, to liberate, re- fine, enrich, and ennoble the inward man, the immortal man. But in order that this dis- cipline, refinement, culture, mental wealth may be attained in the highest degree, the language must be acquired as a living language and made a part of the individual being so that it shall be a perennial source of life and strength and shall make the man once more a man forever. Born as we are, heirs to but a single tongue, on this side of the Atlantic, when we acquire a foreign tongue — the Greek, for instance — as it is acquired in our schools, the first degree of the mastery of the language consists in the ability to