You see the correctness of our position, that we can not positively assert a future active in the indicative mood.  Try and form to yourselves a phrase by which it can be done.  Should you succeed, you would violate a law of nature.  You would penetrate the dark curtain of the future, and claim to yourself what you do not possess, a power to declare future actions.  Prophets, by the help of the Almighty, had this power conferred upon them.  But in the revelation of the sublime truths they were instructed to make known, they were compelled to adopt human language, and make it agree with our manner of speech.

The only method by which we express a future event, is to make an assertion in the indicative mood, present tense, and to that append the natural consequence in the infinitive or unlimited; as, I am to go to Boston.  He is preparing to visit New-York.  The infinitive mood is always future to the circumstance on which it depends.

Mr. Murray says, that “tense, being the distinction of time, might seem to admit of only the present, past, and future; but to mark it more accurately, it is made to consist of six variations, viz.:  the present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, first and second future tenses.”  This more accurate mark, only serves to expose the author’s folly, and distract the learner’s mind.  Before, all was plain.  The past, present, and future are distinct, natural divisions, easily understood by all.  But what idea can a person form of an imperfect tense in action.  If there was ever such an action in the world, it was when grammarians =made= their grammars, which is, if I mistake not, according to their own authority, in the im-perfect tense!  I wrote a letter.  He read his piece well.  The scholar learn_ed_ and recit_ed_ his lesson perfectly; and yet learned, tho made perfect by the qualification of an adverb, is an imperfect action!

But this explains the whole mystery in the business of grammar.  We can here discover the cause of all the troubles and difficulties we have encountered in the whole affair.  When authors made their books, they did it imperfectly; when teachers taught them, it was imperfectly; and when scholars learned them, it was imperfectly!!  So at last, we have found the origin of this whole difficulty, in the grammars themselves; it was all imperfectly done.

But here, again, mirabile dictu! wonderful to tell, we are presented with a plu-perfect tense; that is,—­plus means more,—­a more than perfect tense!  What must that be?  If a thing is perfect, we can not easily conceive any thing beyond.  That is a ne plus ultra to all advancement—­there can be no more beyond.  If any change is introduced, it must be by falling from perfect back to imperfect.