Exodus 4:10-13 And Moses said to the LORD, O my LORD, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since you have spoken to your servant… I. LANGUAGE IS OF DIVINE ORIGINAL. You may have been accustomed to consider it just as natural to man to speak as to walk; but this is a mistake. A child left to itself may learn to walk, but a child left to itself would never learn to speak; it would utter sounds, but it would never connect sounds with thoughts — it would never, that is, learn to express certain thoughts by certain sounds. It might invent some jargon of its own, but as to anything which should at all resemble even the elements of a language, and a system of sounds by which everything around us should be classified and defined, you will never think that this could be found in the accidental babblings of infancy; and however you may seek to account upon natural principles for the origin of language, we still venture to say, that unless you receive the Mosaic account of the Creation, there is no phenomenon so hopelessly inexplicable as language. Unless it be supposed that God formed man at first, and gave him the organs of speech, ay, and then taught him their use, and furnished him with words by which ideas should be expressed, language is the most unintelligible of prodigies; and you may search the universe and find nothing which you may not account for without God, if you can shut out His agency from the introduction of speech. And there is scriptural evidence of the fact, that God taught man language, or that the language first spoken was Divine in its origin. You will observe, that so soon as man was created God spake unto him; and thus the first use of words was to communicate the thoughts of God. But the thoughts of God must have been communicated in the words of God, and man could not have understood God's words, unless he had been first taught them of God; so that when on the very outset of human existence you find conversation held between man and his Maker, you are forced to conclude, that since on no supposition could man in such a brief space have invented a language, the employed language must have been Divine, and Adam must have received from God the earliest intimations of speech. II. EVERY CASE OF INABILITY TO SPEAK IS OF DIVINE APPOINTMENT. God has meted out to us our every endowment, whether of body or of mind; we are indebted for nothing to chance, for everything to Providence; and though it were beside our purpose to inquire into the reasons which may induce God to deny to one man the sense of sight, and to another the sense of hearing, we are as much bound to recognise His appointment in these bodily defects as in the splendid gifts of a capacious memory, a rich imagination and a sound judgment, which procure for their possessor admiration and influence. And when there shall come the grand clearing up of the mysteries and discrepancies of the present dispensation, we nothing doubt that the Almighty will show that there was a design to be answered by every deformed limb, and every sightless eyeball, and every speechless tongue, and that in regard both to the individual himself and to numbers with whom he stood associated, there has been a distinct reference to the noblest and most glorious of ends, in the closing up of the inlets of the senses, or in the yielding the members to disease or contraction. The deaf and dumb child shall be proved to have acted a part in the furtherance of the purposes of God, which it could never have performed, had it delighted its parents by hearkening to their counsels and pouring forth the music of its speech; the blind man and the cripple shall be shown to have been so placed in their pilgrimage through life, that they should have been decidedly disadvantaged, the one by sight, the other by strength. "Who maketh," then, "the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing or the blind? have not I the Lord?" Thine, O God, is the allowing upon earth the melancholy assemblage of those who seem but fractions of men; but wise and good, though unsearchable and past finding out, are all Thy ways and all Thy permissions. III. And there are two INFERENCES which you should draw from the facts thus established, and which we would press with all earnestness on your attention. 1. You discern, first of all, the extreme sinfulness of looking slightingly or with contempt on those who are afflicted with any bodily defect or deformity. Ridicule in such case, however disguised and softened down, is ridicule of an appointment of God; and to despise in the least degree a man because he possesses not the full measure of senses and powers, is to revile the Creator, who alone ordered the abstraction. 2. If we are indebted to God for every sense and every faculty, are we not laid under a mighty obligation to present our bodies a living sacrifice to our Maker? (H. Melvill, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Moses said unto the LORD, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. |
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