The language nobody knows

I posted a link to the article Lilias Trotter and the Language Nobody Knows, by John Piper, on the EQUIP book club blog today, because of its connections to the missionary Lilias Trotter. It's quite a fascinating article on how words and reality relate and the importance of this in communicating the gospel, particularly across cultures. Here's a snippet of the quote from Lilias Trotter:

When we want a word for humility or hope or holiness, we can only borrow from the classical, dimly to be guessed at by ordinary readers. We write for a people yet unborn spiritually; the words will be understood when the realities for which they stand come to need expression. We have to make a spiritual language against the time it will be wanted. (I. Lilias Trotter, by Blanche A.F. Pigott, [London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott Ltd, n.d.], pp. 129-30)