If you have leisure granted, and patience and disposition equal-ed to the task, you have my consent to go back and read this sentence over again.  You will find it has in it embodied much important information in relation to the use of have and the perfect tense.

LECTURE XIII.

ON VERBS.

Person and number in the agent, not in the action.—­Similarity of agents, actions, and objects.—­Verbs made from nouns.—­Irregular verbs.—­Some examples.—­Regular Verbs.—­Ed.—­Ing.—­Conjugation of verbs.—­To love.—­To have.—­To be.—­The indicative mood varied.—­A whole sentence may be agent or object.—­Imperative mood.—­Infinitive mood.—­Is always future.

I have said before that action can never be known separate from the actor; that the verb applies to the agent in an acting condition, as that term has been defined and should be understood.  Hence Person and Number can never attach to the verb, but to the agent with which, of course, the action must, in every respect, agree; as, “I write.”  In this case the action corresponds with myself.  But to say that write is in the “first person, singular number,” would be wrong, for no such number or person belongs to the verb, but is confined to myself as the agent of the action.

The form of the verb is changed when it agrees with the second or third person singular; more on account of habit, I apprehend, than from any reason, or propriety as to a change of meaning in the word.  We say, when using the regular second person singular, “thou writest,” a form rarely observed except in addresses to Deity, or on solemn occasions.  In the third person, an s is added to the regular form; as, “he writes.”  The old form, which was in general use at the time the common version of the Bible was published, was still different, ending in eth; as, he thinketh, he writeth.  This style, altho considerably used in the last century, is nearly obsolete.  When the verb agrees with the plural number it is usually the same as when it agrees with the first person; as, “We write, you write, they write.”  There are few exceptions to these rules.

Some people have been very tenacious about retaining the old forms of words, and our books were long printed without alteration; but change will break thro every barrier, and book-makers must keep pace with the times, and put on the dress that is catered for them by the public taste; bearing in mind, meanwhile, that great and practical truths are more essential than the garb in which they appear.  We should be more careful of our health of body and purity of morals than of the costume we put on.  Many genteel coats wrap up corrupt hearts, and fine hats cover silly heads.  What is the chaff to the wheat?

Even our good friends, the quakers, who have particularly labored to retain old forms—­“the plain language,”—­have failed in their attempt, and have substituted the object form of the pronoun for the agent, and say, “thee thinks,” for thou thinkest.  Their mistake is even greater than the substitution of you for thou.