f is more than Germany, France, and Spain put together.
The English language is divided only into two governments, but the other
six are divided into twenty-six, all of which governments are bitter one
toward the other; each trying to supplant one another, while England and
the United States are at peace, and will ever remain so. In one hundred
years from now the English language will be spoken by a thousand million
people. Thus we need no stretch of fancy to see that what the prophet
speaks of in the text will be accomplished in due time.

This language will soon be universal; by common consent it will become
the language of the world. All the changes going on among nations
forecast its ubiquity. China, by an imperial decree, has just added to
her language 700 English words. Her sons by the thousand are with us,
and by the thousand they are learning our mother tongue. The Japanese,
till a few years ago, carried on their foreign correspondence through the
Dutch, but now they have changed to the English. Besides, in the 50,000
schools in Japan English is being taught. If science has an answer for
this strange phenomenon, so have we. Ours is, that it is the will of
Heaven. Confusion of tongues came at Babel as a punishment. By this
means Heaven scattered the unwilling descendants of Noah. When Noah came
forth from the Ark, God bade him multiply and replenish the earth--that
is, fill it up. Babel, however, was built as a monument of
centralisation, for the builders gave as a reason for building it, "Lest
we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth." By a confusion of
tongues they were scattered. Since then we have had some 1,500 distinct
languages, and some 3,500 colloquials, or say 5,000 different forms of
speech. At the present time 600 of the primary are dead, so that there
are about 900 languages now spoken on all the earth, with about 2,500
colloquials.

When these means have answered their end--namely, to make us occupy all
parts of the earth--then they will die out. It then follows that as the
world fills, languages must disappear. So they do. The English and
German were the last languages to come into existence. No new ones are
now being made. Alphabets are increasing, because missionaries are
reducing spoken languages among the heathen into a written form. The
Bible is translated into two hundred different tongues. This itself will
only lead the millions back to English. All ship pape