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III.] simply as a person of superior age and experience to oversee the concerns of a Christian community. These are but ordinary examples of the indefinite mutability of words, such as might be culled out of every sentence which we speak. Let us look at one or two further instances, which go back to a remoter period in the history of speech, and illustrate more fully the normal processes of word-making.

The word moon, with which are akin the names for the same object in many of the languages connected with our own, comes from a root (mâ) signifying 'to measure', and, by its etymology, means 'the measurer'. It is plainly the fact—and one of some interest, as indicating the ways of thinking of our remote ancestors—that the moon was looked upon as in a peculiar sense the measurer of time: and, indeed, we know that primitive nations generally have begun reckoning time by moons or months before arriving at a distinct apprehension of the year, as an equally natural and more important period. By an exception, the Latin name luna (abbreviated from luc-na) means 'the shining one.' In both these cases alike, we have an arbitrary restriction and special application to a single object of a term properly bearing a general sense; and also, an arbitrary selection of a single quality in a thing of complex nature to be made a ground of designation for the whole thing. In the world of created objects there are a great many "measurers", and a great many "shining ones"; there are also a great many other qualities belonging to the earth's satellite, which have just as good a right as these two to be noticed in her name: yet the appellation perfectly answers its purpose; no one, for thousands of years, has inquired, save as a matter of learned curiosity, what, after all, the word moon properly signifies: for us it designates our moon, and we may observe and study that luminary to the end of time without feeling that our increased knowledge furnishes any reason for our changing its name. The words for 'sun' have nearly the same history, generally designating it as 'the brilliant or shining one', or as 'the enlivener, quickener, generator'. There are hardly two other objects within the ordinary range of human observation more essentially unique than