used as a noun to express a building used for public worship; for the services performed in it; for the whole congregation; for a portion of believers associated together; for the Episcopal order, etc.  It is also used as a verb.  Mr. Webster defines it, “To perform with any one the office of returning thanks in the church after any signal deliverance.”  But the word has taken quite a different turn of late. To church a person, instead of receiving him into communion, as that term would seem to imply, signifies to deal with an offending member, to excommunicate, or turn him out.

But I will not pursue this point any farther.  The brief hints I have thrown out, will enable you to discover how the meaning and forms of words are changed from their original application to suit the notions and improvements of after ages.  A field is here presented which needs cultivation.  The young should be taught to search for the etymology of words, to trace their changes and meaning as used at different times and by different people, keeping their minds constantly directed to the object signified by such verbal sign.  This is the business of philosophy, under whatever name it may be taught; for grammar, rhetoric, logic, and the science of the mind, are intimately blended, and should always be taught in connexion.  We have already seen that words without meaning are like shadows without realities.  And persons can not employ language “correctly,” or “with propriety,” till they have acquainted themselves with the import of such language—­the ideas of things signified by it.  Let this course be adopted in the education of children, and they will not be required to spend months and years in the study of an “art” which they can not comprehend, for the simple reason that they can not apply it in practice.  Grammar has been taught as a mere art, depending on arbitrary rules to be mechanically learned, rather than a science involving the soundest and plainest principles of philosophy, which are to be known only as developed in common practice among men, and in accordance with the permanent laws which govern human thought.

Verbs differ in the manner of forming their past tenses, and participles, or adjectives.  Those ending in ed are called regular; those which take any other termination are irregular.  There are about two hundred of the latter in our language, which differ in various ways.  Some of them have the past tense and the past participle the same; as,

Bid               Bid                 Bid
Knit              Knit                Knit
Shut              Shut                Shut
Let               Let                 Let
Spread            Spread              Spread, etc.

Others have the past tense and participle alike, but different from the present; as,

Lend              Lent                Lent
Send              Sent                Sent
Bend              Bent                Bent
Wend              Went                Went
Build             Built or builded    Built
Think             Thought             Thought, etc.

Some have the present and past tense and participle different; as,