Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 4

280 THE CELTIC MAGAZINE.
in Celtic even by Paul. All over the civilized world knowledge of Greek was then, far
more thai, knowledge of French is now in Europe, an accomplishment of a gentleman;
so that the leading men in the Galatian churches would be able to understand a Greek
letter, as leading men in the Outer Hebrides can understand an English letter, — such aa '
may he sent to the churches of Long Island by the General Assembly. But no minister
who can speak Gaelic will think of preaching there in anything but Gaelic, the language
of the people, which alone they can take in with ease and pleasure. Now we are in-
formf d by Jerome that the Galatians spoke their own original tongue when he visited
them, four hundred years after they had listened to Paul. (The second of his prefaces
to his Commentary on Gal.)
Ireuaeus, in the preface to his great work on Heresies, apologises for the rustinessof
his Greek on the ground that ho has long been in familiar use only of the language of the
Celts. Greek must have been well known to many inhabitants of his district, whose
chief city, JMarseilles, was reckoned almost a Greek city, and Latin to many more, wit-,
ness the very name of the district, Provincia (Provence). But Celtic was the common i
Ifiuguage of the people there. It is the plan of Providence for the diffusion of the gospel
that the peoples should everywhere, so far as practicable, hear in "their own " respect-
ive "tongues the great things of God." A people's " own tongue," the mother tongue,
the language of home, fragrant with memories of home and of childhood with its won-
dering delights, has for the purposes of popular instruction and impression an inimitable
power ; especially when that tongue — like Greek, Hebrew, Gnrnian, Celtic— is one of
those original or uncompounded tonguts in which almost every word has a picture for
the imagination and a song for the heart. Hence Irenaeus, learned Oriental though he
was, in his pastoral labours would use only the language of the Celts. Hence our mis-
sionaries labour to attain free use of the mother tongues of heathenism. Hence the
Pentecostal effusion, of preparation for the grand campaign, was characterised by a'
miraculous gift of tongues. And there seems no good reason to regard as chimerical the
BUggestion that Paul for preaching purposes may have used the gift in Galatia.
Professor Macgregor concludes this part of liis Introduction thus : —
Unauthentic history, or vague unaccredited tradition, may suggest the not unplea-
sing thought that the Galatian church, though disappearing from the records of the new
kingdom, may have contributed to its progress. That progress was markedly rapid and,
great among Celts. Irenaeus, in a letter to the churches of Smyrna and Asia generally,'
about a persecution of the Celtic church of Lyons and Vienne, circa A.D. 171, describes;
a state of things implying that Christianity must then have been r(uoted in that district;
for some time. Not long after, Tertullian boasts that in (then Celtic) Britain Chris*]
has gone with His go.--pel farther than the Romans have been able to penetrate with fir«
and sword. This places a widespread Celtic Christianity within a lifetime of the apos-
tles : Irenaeu.s was a pupil of Polycarp of Smyrna, who had sat at the feet of John the
Divine. The Celtic churches (e.g. of the Scottish Culdees) long continued to retain somt
traces of Orientalism of origin, pointing towards Asia Minor as the source of Celtic
evangelization. And the heart as well as the imagination is gratified by the suggestion,
thus arising, that the Galatian churches may have sent the gospel to the Celtsuf Europe.
We learn from Jerome that in his day their spoken language was in substance what was
spoken by the Treviri — European Celts of Treves. There is a vague tradition about f
mysterious visitor who came to Britain with the gospel, round by the Straits of Gibraltai
from the Mediterranean Sea. May not this mysterious visitor have been a Christia* ol
Galatia, perhaps a convert of Paul and a student of this Epistle, who, driven by perse
cution or constrained by love of Clirist, bore the gospel from a Celtic laud near the
cradle of mankind, and preached it in the mother-tongue to that Britain which was th(
then recognised motherland of the Celts ?
The book is neatly got up in every respect, and, as already said, emi-
nently suited for the purpose for whicli it is intended.
McCHEYKE IN GAELIC— We understand that the Eey. Allai
Sinclair, Kenmore, is preparing for the press the Sixth Thousand of hi'
Gaelic Edition of M'Cheyne.