A MAN, bidding farewell to a departing friend, says in an off-hand style, "Well; go to the land of promise; dig gold; make your everlasting fortune; then come home and enjoy it." Here are two misnomers. A delusive earthly land of promise, little like the heavenly Canaan. A miserable everlasting, that hangs upon a thread and is at the mercy of every wind that blows.
An enterprising publisher says jocosely to a literary character, "Come, now, write a first-rate novel; I will publish it, and we will both make our everlasting fortunes." A mortal man talk of making his own everlasting fortune! The true Christian has indeed an everlasting fortune; but it is not his own work. His Surety has settled it upon him, and it is laid up for his eternal inheritance.
"Everlasting fortune!" A noble expression, penetrated with a grand idea. It is full of hope, full of promise, full of immortality; yet see how low it has fallen. It means only a lump of gold weighing 150 pounds; at most a ton; or perhaps twenty thousand dollars in the bank. Must our beautiful mother-tongue be allowed to slide into such degeneracy? These degraded words inflict an injury upon society, even though they should never be welcomed into a moral tale, or be fastened, like nails, into the columns of a dictionary.
Pure language has more to do with pure thought, pure morals, pure religion, than most people imagine. It lies deep among the influences that form character. It is interfused with ideas, feelings, and principles, so that we insensibly lower our standard, if we degrade our language. We become what we utter. Language was made in heaven; and our own glorious dialect is hallowed by sacred associations with a long train of bards, prophets and apostles, whose inspired thoughts have been transfused into it, till it has become instinct with life and majesty.
Angels might shed tears of sorrow to see it, enfeebled and polluted, giving its divinest words, and deepest meanings, to express the worldly ends and aims of ambition and avarice.