guage is very much a live language. It is impossible for those who do not understand it to comprehend its possibilities with the deaf, its powerful influence on the moral and social happiness of those deprived of hearing, and its wonderful power of carrying thought to intellects which would otherwise be in perpetual darkness.
But those who do understand it and know the deaf never fail to acknowledge its place in the lives of those who can not hear and to appreciate its importance as a factor in their happiness. Whether they favor one or another of the methods of educating the deaf, they recognize the very great value of signs in social intercourse among the deaf, and its necessity in the pulpit and on the platform.
By means of the sign language the deaf child is enabled to comprehend subjects which his limited vocabulary would never enable him to do while dependent upon speech and reading alone. With the aid of an interpreter the deaf may enjoy lectures, sermons, plays, and all else while one of an audience, save, alone, music. Without signs they would be shut out from the full enjoyment of intellectual treats such as these. While in spiritual matters, signs enable the minister to reach thousands where any other method of communication would reach the few. Spiritual truths told and explained in the language of signs reach the understanding and the conscience of the deaf child as no other means can possibly do.
