Our grand old Bible : being the story of the Authorized version of the English Bible told for the tercentenary celebration

OUR
GRAND OLD

8

/l

| LIBRARY

I UNIVERSITY OF
\CALIFORNIA

OUR GRAND OLD BIBLE

OUR GRAND OLD
BIBLE

BEING THE STORY OF THE
AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE
ENGLISH BIBLE, TOLD FOR THE
TERCENTENARY CELEBRATION

BY

WILLIAM MUIR, M.A., B.D., B.L.

AUTHOR OF

'THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA
ETC.

MORGAN AND SCOTT LD.

12 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS
LONDON MCMXJ

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE CALL OF THE NEW ERA:

ITS OPPORTUNITIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES. With
Prefatory Note by Dr. GEORGE SMITH, C.I.E.

Being a Volume in Morgan & Scott's Missionary Series.
Cloth, 6s.

'It is the call to the Christian Church to arise with new energy,
thoughtfulness, and unity to the evangelization of the world. One could
scarcely find a better conspectus of what has already been done in
missionary work from the earliest times up to the present, and of what
we are now called to do, than in this volume.' — Dundee Advertiser.

' The book will inspire with a new devotion many who above all else
desire to witness and work for Christ in the short and swiftly passing
day of individual opportunity.' — The Christian.

MORGAN & SCOTT LD., 12, Paternoster Buildings, London.

TO THREE GOOD WOMEN,

BIBLE LOVERS AND BIBLE READERS,

MY MOTHER, MY SISTER, AND MY WIFE

390

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

IN TROD UCTION

The river of God — Ancient manuscripts and versions
— What we owe to the Authorized Version — Many
have contributed to our inheritance — Authorized
Version and Revised Version may be used side by
side — Bible never works by magic — Authorized
Version more like an original work than a trans-
lation— The Revisers' tribute — Bible given to be
translated ........ 1-9

BOOK /

The English Bible prior to the Authorized
Version

I. TRANSLATIONS OF PS ALTER AND OTHER
PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE

Caedmorts Paraphrases — Ealdhelm, Guthlac^ Egbert,
^.Ifric—The Venerable Bede — King Alfred-
Effects of Norman Conquest — Rome and the
Scriptures — William of Shoreham, Richard Rolle
— John of Trevisa — Sir Thomas More and
Wiclif- — Lechler*s summing-up .... 11-20

II. THE MORNING STAR OF THE ENGLISH
REFORMATION

Wiclif s greatness — His influence vaster than was
supposed — His career — His translation — Nicholas
of Hereford ; John Purvey — Translated from
Vulgate — Influence on the language — First to
translate the whole Bible into English . . 21-29

vii

viii CONTENTS

CBAP. PAGE

III. THE COMING OF THE PRINTING-PRESS
AND THE NEW LEARNING

The immense change printing made — Consecrated to
God's service — Cox ton and the ' Golden Legend' —
Fall of Constantinople scattering scholars — Erasmus
and his Greek New Testament — What it meant for
Tyndale — Complutensian Polyglot . . -31-39

IV. GOD'S WORD FOR THE PLOUGHBOY

Our great debt to Tyndale — Many testimonies —
Modern Romanists and Scripture — New spirit
abroad — Tyndale as translator — His New Testa-
ment reaches England^ 1526 — His scholarship —
The success of his work ..... 41-50

V. A RUSH OF TRANSLATIONS

Coverdatts Bible — Matthew's — Taverner's — The
Great Bible— The Geneva Bible— The Bishops'
Bible — Roman Catholic Bible . . . . 51-59

VI. THE BIBLE IN PRE-REFORMATION
SCOTLAND

Wiclifs Influence in Scotland — Scottish Bishops and
Tyndale 's New Testament— John Knox ; Alesius —
Murdoch Nisbefs Scots version — The first Scottish
edition ........ 61-67

VII. ON THE EVE OF THE NEW VERSION

The five revisions of Tyndale' s work — The three
versions in use — The desire for one national Bible 69-73

CONTENTS ix

CHAP. PAGl

BOOK II
The Coming of the Authorized Version

/. KING JAMES'S SHARE IN THE WORK

The expectations of the Puritans — Hampton Court
Conference — Dr. Reynold?* proposal — King James
and Geneva version — His deep interest in the work
— -James's character — His shortsightedness — The
fulsome Dedication — Sycophancy of the age —
Puritans not responsible for Dedication . . 75-84

II. THE TRANSLATORS

King's letter to Bancroft — Expense of translation —
The six Companies — The qualifications of the Trans-
lators— Their diligence ...... 85-92

///. THEIR INSTRUCTIONS AND HOW THEY
UNDERSTOOD THEM

The fourteen rules — Influence of Rheims and Geneva
versions — Proper names — The archaic element —
Marginal notes disallowed — Marginal references —
Provision for joint action and revision — The
translations which were to be used . . . 93-106

IV. THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

A great historical paper — The inevitable opposition —
Their tribute to Scripture — Ancient versions — The
Romish attitude — Objections dealt with — The Trans-
lators1 purpose and ideal — Marginal notes explained
— Rendering same words in original by different
English words — ' Scrupulosity of Puritans?
' Obscurity of Papists' alike shunned . . 107-121

V. THE GRAND RESULT

Glorious within and without — ' He ' and ' She '
Bibles — Unauthorized revisions — The Crown

CONTENTS

PAGE

monopoly — Patentees in England, Scotland, and
Ireland — Full title of first issue — Marginal notes
and references — Chapter headings and Italics —
Testimonies: Huxley — Ruskin, Carlyle, Alford —
Westcott, Faber — Geddes, Eadie — The purity of
its English — The great day of its appearance —
Wherein defective ..... 123-136

VI. IN WHAT SENSE WAS THE AUTHORIZED
VERSION A UTHORIZED ?

Position of earlier versions — King James 's programme
— Claim of virtual authorization — Only authority its
own intrinsic merits and superiority — The absence
of authorization not regrettable . . . 137-142

VII. THE APOCRYPHA

Little known — Cover dale's attitude — Matthew's atti-
tude, and Genevan — Dislike to its inclusion appears
— Disappearance from Genevan Bible — Bunyarfs
experience — Controversy in Scotland — Value of
Apocrypha — Attitude of Council of Trent — And of
Church of England ..... 143-150

BOOK III

Three Centuries of Service

I. HOW THE NEW VERSION HAD TO WORK
ITS WAY

Made its way slowly for a time — Savoy Conference^
1 66 1 — Bitterness of some opponents — So also in
Jerome's time — Its unrivalled supremacy — Its pro-
gress in Scotland ...... 151-158

CONTENTS xi

CHAP PAGE

II. AT WORK IN THE HOME

Mr. Green's testimony — The Family Bible — ' Cottar's
Saturday Night ' — Its meaning for the young — And
for the sad and dying — Newman's testimony —
Oliver Cromwell's experience . . . 159-166

///. AT WORK IN CONNECTION WITH
THE CHURCH

Bible speaks every language of human heart — Bunyan
and the Bible — 'Bible-moths? 'New Testa-
menters' — Bible and Revivals — Bible Societies 167-174

IV. AT WORK IN THE NATION AND THE
STATE

Only perennial voters' guide — What it did for Puritans
— Oliver Cromwell and the Bible — -James II. and
the Bible — Bible and freedom — Newman on Bible
and character — Bible and philanthropy . . 175-184

V. ITS INFLUENCE ON ENGLISH LITERA-
TURE AND THE ENGLISH LAN-
GUAGE

The Bible is literature at its best — Testimony oj
experts — In Greater Britain — Testimonies : Arnold
— Landor, Swift, Scott — Johnson Froude, Mac-
aulay 185-192

VI. SOME FAMOUS EDITIONS OF THE AU-
THORIZED VERSION

Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638 — Cambridge
Paragraph Bible — Variorum Bible — Bagster's
editions — The Oxford University Press editions —
Bishop Lloyd 's London edition ofiyci — Dr. Paris' s
Cambridge edition of 1762 — Dr. Blayney's Oxford
edition of 1769 193-198

xii CONTENTS

BOOK IV
The Revision of the Authorized Version

CHAP PAGE

I. UNAUTHORIZED REVISIONS

Going on from the very first — Sometimes foolish — Yet
much good work was thus done — Much carelessness
and many blunders — Importance of some of the
changes made ...... 199-205

//. INCEPTION AND PREPARATION OF THE
REVISED VERSION

Growing desire for revision throughout nineteenth cen-
tury— Two Companies of Revisers appointed — Non-
conformists and Scotland represented — American
co-operation — Arguments for revision — Nature of
changes made ...... 207-214

/// ITS RECEPTION AND SUBSEQUENT
CAREER

Great interest in its appearance — Reception very
mixed — Supremacy of Authorized Version not
seriously affected — Expectations not realized — Yet
it has its place and value — Objections of some
scholars 215-221

IV, AMERICA AND THE WORK OF REVISION

Early revision movement — America and Revised Ver-
sion— The American Revised Edition of 1901 223-227

CONCLUSION

An inspiring story — Consecrated scholars and trades-
men— No change has affected the record of the reve-
lation of grace — Bible made to be translated — The
Bible itself must be read — Significance of un-
diminished sale of the Bible — A nation without
the Bible — The Bible responds to every new need
of men ... .... 229-238

INDEX . 239-242

INTRODUCTION

B

The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul :
the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the
simple.

The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart :
the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the
eyes.

The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever :
the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous
altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much
fine gold : sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.

Moreover by them is Thy servant warned: and in
keeping of them there is great reward.

Who can understand his errors P cleanse Thou me
from secret faults.

Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins ;
let them not have dominion over me : then shall I be
upright, and I shall be innocent from the great trans-
gression.

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my
heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my strength,
and my redeemer.

PSALM 19. 7-14.

INTRODUCTION

" I ^HE story of the English Bible has often been
J_ written, and well -written ; with sympathy and in-
sight, that is, as well as with knowledge . In what follows
here it is told from the standpoint of the Tercentenary of
the Authorized Version, which has now pursued its blessed
and fruitful career for three hundred years. What went
before it came, is dealt with only in so far as that is
necessary to trace back to its sources this river of God
which is full of water, and which has been bringing
beauty and fertility wherever it has flowed. What has
happened since it came, is dealt with only in so far
as that is necessary in order to see how much has grown
out of this wonderful version, which is the English Bible
rather than an English version, as it has pursued its
unique course to the glory of God and the good of
men. For its natural strength is not abated ; nor has
its fascination grown less as the years have gone by.
Inviting as the theme is, nothing has been said
regarding the ancient versions and manuscripts which
lie behind our English translation ; and which, in an
altogether adequate manner, fill up the gap between the
Bible as we have it now and the original autographs
which have long since disappeared. There is no trans-
lated classic which has such a wealth of manuscript
authority behind it as the Bible ; and those who speak
as if the existence of various readings, and the like,
left us in any real doubt as to what the message of
Scripture is in any detail, to say nothing of its message
in its outstanding doctrines, must be strangely ignorant
of the facts of the case, or weirdly biassed against

4 INTRODUCTION

the Evangel. Even apart from the manuscripts and
versions which are so abundant and helpful, the early
Christian Fathers made such liberal use of the Scrip-
tures in their writings, that if everything else were lost
which comes to us from other sources, the greater part
of the Bible could be recovered from their works. In
particular, the whole of the New Testament, except a
few verses, is quoted by them in one passage or
another .

The English-speaking peoples everywhere owe so much
to the English Bible — and especially to that version of
it which for well-nigh three centuries was the only version
read — that it would be both unseemly and ungrateful
were no adequate notice taken of the Tercentenary of
its appearance in the land, as a great gift of God to
the nation. All through these three hundred years it
has been spreading light and life and liberty ; and
there must be multitudes who are eager to acknowledge
their vast indebtedness to it. It has comforted the
sorrowing and cheered the downcast. It has guided the
perplexed and strengthened those who were ready to
perish. It has interpreted the deepest emotions of the
believer and increased his gladness. It has led the
sinful and erring back to God. And still there are
inexhaustible depths of comfort and inspiration and
growth, for those who explore the riches of its treasury.

In the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, the river from
the Temple, which grew without tributaries, flowed east-
ward to the Desert and the Dead Sea ; and by the same
law of spiritual gravitation which prevails in the realm
of the consecrated life, this other river of living water
from the throne of God and of the Lamb has always
flowed down to the wilderness, and has enriched the
lives of the needy and poor. Its work, too, has been
to make all the land as if it were beside an Engedi ; to
render the repulsive attractive and the sordid fair ; to
turn the barren places into the garden of the Lord ;
and to make the Dead Sea teem with life, even as the
Great Sea. ' Everything shall live whither the river
' cometh.' «

It is well, therefore, that those whom this river —

THE SOURCES OF THE RIVER 5

long since too deep except for those who can swim —
has so greatly blessed, should walk beside its banks
that they may see how marvellously God has led His
people, and what great things He has done for them.
If our celebration of the Tercentenary is to be worthy
of such an occasion, there must not only be emotion,
but research ; and the fuller the knowledge is of what
God has wrought, the more profound will the gratitude
be. If we are to possess the whole land, and give thanks
with intelligence, it is both natural and obvious that
we should deal, first, with the sources of the river as they
are to be found in previous English versions, whether
partial or complete ; that we should then consider with
greater detail how the river itself arose ; and, finally,
that we should look at it as it has flowed down through
the ages ever since, in splendour and majesty. To that
threefold division there may well be added, as supple-
ment, some reference to the Revised Version of our
own time, which will at least do epoch-making service
in hearty co-operation with the Authorized Version, how-
ever unlikely it seems that it will ever displace it in
popular esteem or popular use.

More than any of our predecessors we can say that
1 others have laboured, and we have entered into their
1 labours ' ; and we shall best show our gratitude to
the Authorized Version, and our loyalty for all it has
achieved, by entering into the whole of the vast inheri-
tance it has brought us . No true friend of the Authorized
Version ever claimed finality for it, any more than finality
can be claimed for the Revised Version, or any other.
That the Authorized Version may continue to be the
English Bible to the end of time, and must always be
an object of wonder and delight, can in no way interfere
with the Christian duty and privilege of welcoming light
whenever it breaks forth, or in whatever way it may
come ; since all light is of God, and belongs to those
who are His heirs. It is the strong and confident who
are truly tolerant and open-eyed, and hospitable to the
ever -deepening revelation.

Many saints of God have contributed to the noble
inheritance in which we now rejoice ; many whose names

6 INTRODUCTION

have perished although their work endures, and the list
is still unfinished. To the roll-call of fame on which
such names appear as those of Caedmon and Bede ;
Alfred and Rolle ; Wiclif and Purvey ; Tyndale and
Coverdale ; Cromwell and Cranmer ; Rogers and Whit-
tingham ; Reynolds and Andrewes ; Saville and Hard-
ing : there fall to be added in our own generation such
names as those of Alford and Westcott ; Hort and
Scrivener ; Davidson and Perowne ; and other scholars
who have had open eyes on all study and research, and
hospitable hearts for all truth, and have kept Biblical
learning in our land abreast of all the discoveries and
progress of modern times. Those who deem it necessary
to depreciate the Authorized Version in the interests
of the Revised are shortsighted and circumscribed ; while
those who think that loyalty to the Authorized Version
demands hostility to the Revised are failing in their
loyalty to Him who is ever causing new light to break
forth for those who have the eyes to see it and the hearts
to appreciate it.

Perhaps the best form which the popular use of either
of the versions can now assume, is that the two should
be used side by side, at least for private study . This can
now be literally done, either with the two in parallel
columns as they can be had in convenient forms,
or in interlinear editions such as are now also in use.
To compare the two versions, to trace the changes which
have been made in the later version, and to under-
stand why they were made, is to know the Scriptures
themselves after a new fashion ; and manifestly the
purpose of every translation is to enable those who read
it to do this, and thus to bring 'them face to face
with the real meaning of what God the Self-revealer
has spoken to men in His Word. This mode of com-
paring Scripture with Scripture often provides the most
helpful of all textual commentaries, and brings the
reader nearest to the truth.

Those alone have the true reverence for Scripture,
or true faith in its message, who seek always and every-
where to hear what God has said, and to be obedient
to the heavenly vision. ' Its seed is in itself,' as the

THE REVELATION OF GOD 7

Word itself has it in another connection ; and those
who really trust in it to do its own Divine, saving,
keeping work, will never yield to that worship of the
external which reaches its climax in those who worship
the letter, and make a fetish of the Book itself, apart
from what it says. Nor will they ever think of it
as if it acted mechanically, as a sort of charm.
Marvellous as its fruits have been, alike in individual
lives and among the nations, it never works by magic,
but always on moral and spiritual lines . ' The Spirit
' breathes upon the Word, and brings the truth to sight.'
Little as God needs our learning, He has even less
need of our ignorance ; and those alone are truly loyal,
either to the old version or the new, who use every,
means in their power to get at the very heart of the
revelation of God in Christ, as it is contained for jus
in His Holy Word.

It is in the Word itself, therefore, and not in any
mistaken views of it, no matter how strenuously these
may be advocated, or how conscientiously they may be
believed, that our trust is to be placed ; and that version
of the Scriptures which most fully sets forth God's actual
manifestation of Himself and His purpose of grace
among men, in terms which the ordinary man can
understand, is the version which will bear most fruit,
and which therefore ought to be most heartily welcomed
and most widely circulated. Whatever is to be the
future relation between the Authorized Version and the
Revised Version, and whether — as seems most probable
— they are to flourish side by side, history has abun-
dantly vindicated the claim of the former to be a true
and adequate representation of the Word of God as
set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa-
ments. It is a representation, indeed, which has far
more of the characteristics of an original work than of
a translation from another language. What has been
claimed with justice for Luther's German Bible may
be equally claimed for the Authorized Version among
ourselves — that it is rather a re -writing than a mere
translation ; a transfusing of the original into a new
language rather than a mere version of the letter ; so

8 INTRODUCTION

deep is the insight, so true the sympathy, so perfect
the command of clear popular language. Its ascen-
dency can only be ascribed to its intrinsic excellence.
It is the English Bible. Its authority arises from its
Divine right to rule ; and to deny this is to be guilty
of lese majeste.

Even those who emphasize most the inadequacy of
the text on which the Authorized Version is based, and
the greatness of the progress in comparative philology
and the study of the original languages which has been
made since the days of King James, hasten to acknow-
ledge, and that in no grudging fashion, that nothing
could have more truly or more impressively set forth
not only the meaning but the spirit of Scripture, than
it did. Nor are those awanting among students and
scholars who go further, and say that such was the
spiritual sympathy of the translators of three centuries
ago, and such their scholarly insight into the fulness
of the Word, that they have wonderfully anticipated
in their renderings the truer text to which they had no
access . ' The Revised New Testament is substantially
' the same as that of Wycliffe and Tyndale, though they
'lacked the MSS. we have to-day,' says one who is
deeply impressed with the superiority of the later text
and of its new rendering. The Revisers themselves
say, and say it with enthusiasm, that the more they
worked with the Authorized Version, the greater did
their admiration of it become . ' iWe have had to study
' this great version carefully and minutely, line by line,'
they say in their Preface ; ' and the longer we have
' been engaged upon it, the more we have learned to
4 admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy

* turns of expression, its general accuracy, and, we must
' not fail to add, the music of its cadences, and the
' felicities of its rhythm.'

A competent scholar and critic has gone even further
than to suggest a happy anticipation of the true text
and the true rendering on the part of the translators in
161 1. He maintains that ' the Greek of the New Testa -
' ment may never be understood as classical Greek is

* understood ' ; and that the Revisers have in reality

UNIVERSALITY OF THE BIBLE 9

distorted passages formerly correctly rendered ' by
' translating in accordance with Attic idiom phrases that
' convey in later Greek a wholly different sense, the
' sense which the earlier translators in happy ignorance
'had recognized that the context demanded.' Be this
as it may, nothing that is said about versions or trans-
lations or texts ought ever to be allowed to make us
feel that we are removed even by one step from the
very mind of God as He has revealed it to us in His
Holy Word.

The Bible not only occupies a unique place in the
literature and life of the human race, and has some
inherent power of its own which no other book has ;
it bears evidence of having been given in order that it
might be rendered into other tongues. It loses less
than any other book by being translated ; and manifold
testimony has been borne to the fact that the Authorized
Version in particular resembles a book in its original
language rather than a translation . ' The tongue of
' the Hebrew, the idioms of Hellenistic Greek, lent them-
' selves with a curious felicity to the purposes of
'translation.' Although it is Oriental in its origin, the
Bible is at home in the West as truly as in the East.
Other sacred books, like trees, have their zones of
vegetation beyond which they cannot grow ; but where -
ever man can live, the Bible can flourish as native to
the soil. And nowhere has this been made more
manifest than during these bygone three centuries in
our own land.

BOOK I

THE ENGLISH BIBLE PRIOR TO THE
AUTHORIZED VERSION

CHAPTER I

TRANSLATIONS OF PSALTER AND OTHER PORTIONS
OF SCRIPTURE

'Apart from their own transcendent beauty and universal truth, the
Psalms have enriched the world by the creation of a literature which,
century after century, has not only commanded the admiration of sceptics,
but elevated the characters of innumerable believers, encouraged their
weariness, consoled their sorrows, lifted their doubts, and guided their
wandering footsteps.'— PROTHERO, The Psalms in Human Life.

BOOK I

THE ENGLISH BIBLE PRIOR TO THE
AUTHORIZED VERSION

CHAPTER I

TRANSLATIONS OF PSALTER AND OTHER
PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE

WITH the exception of the merest anonymous frag-
ments, the appearance of translations into the
vernacular of portions of the Bible is coincident with
the beginnings of English literature. Caedmon ' was the
' first Englishman — it may be the first individual of
1 Gothic race — who exchanged the gorgeous images of
' the old mythology for the chaste beauties of Christian
' poetry.' He was a servant in the monastery at Whitby,
and was an old man who knew nothing of the art of
verse when the gift of song came to him. He ha4
the care of the cattle ; and one evening after he had
gone to the stable, he fell asleep, with his mind full
of the songs he had heard the others sing, and with
his heart sore because he could not sing as they could.
As he slept, One came to him who said : ' Caedmon,
sing me some song.' But he could only reply sadly,
as he had so often done to his fellow -servants, that
he could not sing. The Heavenly Visitor, however,
assured him that he would sing, and told him to sing of
the beginning of created things. Whereupon he began
to recite verses to God's praise ; and when he awoke,
he found that he could not only remember them, but

14 TRANSLATIONS OF SCRIPTURE PORTIONS

could add to their number. More than that ; those in
authority who heard his songs declared that heavenly
grace had been granted to him, a verdict which won
the approval of succeeding ages.

These songs of Caedmon were sung before the year
680, that being the year of his death ; and Bede tells
that he sang the story of Genesis and Exodus and many
other tales in the Sacred Scriptures. He sang, too,
the story of Christ and the Apostles, and about heaven
and hell. ' Others after him tried to make religious
' poems, but none could compare with him ; for he
' learned the art of song not from men, but, Divinely
' aided, received that gift.' His poems are paraphrases
rather than translations ; but as we read his earnest,
passionate words, twice God -given, we cannot but feel
something of the awe which fills the heart as we stand
at the head -waters of some great history -making river.
We can only see him now through the mists of the
ages, a dim figure indeed. But his work abides ; and
who can doubt that as he sang of the Creation and
of Christ, of the joys of heaven and the woes of hell,
to the simple folk of his time, his message was owned
by. Him who gave it, and that many a burden was made
lighter and many a yearning met ; that eyes were filled
with the love light, and weary, aspiring hearts drawn
upwards to God?

Not long after Caedmon's time we find others working
in the field of actual translation. Early in the eighth
century, the Psalter was rendered into Anglo-Saxon by
Ealdhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborne,
who died in the year 709 ; and by Guthlac, a hermit of
Crowland, near Peterborough. Three copies of the
former translation, belonging to the ninth and tenth
centuries, still survive. At Ealdhelm's request, it is said,
Egbert, Bishop of Holy Island, about the same itime
completed a version of the Gospels in Anglo-Saxon.
A copy of this work is still preserved in the British
Museum. The records also make mention of ^Elfric,
Archbishop of Canterbury, of whose translation of the
greater part of the historical books of the Old Testa-
ment two copies, of date about 1000 A.D., are extant.

THE VENERABLE BEDE 15

There were probably others who did work of the same
sort which has not survived, but which all went to make
the grand result grander and richer in the ages to
come. The stream was still very tiny ; but it was of
pure water, and it must have refreshed many a thirsty
soul. It is significant, too, that then, as now, when the
Word was precious to men's souls, they sought to share
their joy and their treasure with others, and to let them
know the good news at first-hand in the records pf
Divine grace.

The great name, however, in these early ages is that
of the Venerable Bede, with whom English prose may
fairly be said to begin. He was a contemporary of the
others who have just been named ; and it shows how
men's minds were being turned towards God, that go
many workers were now busy in the field of transla-
tion. The story of how he finished his translation into
English of the Gospel of St. John has often been told,
and will never be forgotten. When the last day of
his life had come, the dying man called his scholars
to him, that he might dictate more of his translation
to them. ' There is still a chapter wanting,' he was
told, ' and it is hard for thee to question thyself longer.'

' It is easily done,' replied the dying scholar and
saint ; ' take thy pen and write swiftly.'

Throughout the day they wrote, and when evening
fell, ' There is yet another sentence unwritten, dear
' master/ said the scribe.

' Write it quickly,' said the master.

' It is finished now.'

4 Thou sayest true,' was the reply, ' all is finished
4 now.'

He sang glory to God, and passed to be with his
Lord. He was a great scholar, and had brought honour
to the monastery at Jarrow-on-Tyne ; and he lives for
ever in the story of the English Bible. Nor in presence
of his love for the Scripture and his yearning that others
also should know and love it, can it be too strongly
insisted on that a monastery like his had little or nothing
in common with the institutions which overshadowed
the land seven centuries later. At its best the early

16 TRANSLATIONS OF SCRIPTURE PORTIONS

monastery was not a place to which men fled from duty,
but a place to which they turned that they might be
fitted to follow wherever duty led. It was a Mission
Institute, a Training College, a Bible Society, all in
one. It was there that the literary treasures which have
come down to us from these early ages were lovingly
penned, and that the love of letters was kept alive in
times of ignorance and continuous warfare.

King Alfred the Great has also a place in this Anglo-
Saxon legion of honour ; for when the document entitled
' Alfred's Dooms ' was prepared, he put as the first
of the laws of ancient England a translation of the
Ten Commandments in forcible, simple Anglo-Saxon.
He seems also to have set himself to translate the
Psalter, which, with the Gospels, was the favoured
portion of Scripture then as it is now ; but, between
the Danes and other cares of the State, he was never
able to finish that work. An interesting insight into
the spirit of these old Anglo-Saxon translators is afforded
in a homily which has come down to us on ' Reading
' the Scriptures ' ; the work of ^Elfric, himself a trans-
lator. ' Whoever,' he says, ' would be one with God,
' must often pray, and often read the Holy Scriptures.
' For when we pray, we speak to God ; and when we
' read the Bible, God speaks to us. ... The whole
' of the Scriptures are written for our salvation, and
' by them we obtain the knowledge of the truth.' If
such views were at all common, it is no wonder that so
many set themselves to make it possible for others,
who were able to read, to study the Scriptures for
themselves. There is a simple directness about these
words, too, which shows that the Mystery of Iniquity
had not yet attained the predominance.

The work of these Anglo-Saxon translators, and of
others like them who live only in the grand result,
was doubtless meant principally for use in the Church
service, there being no reading public then ; and they
must have cheered and guided many in these early ages.
The light would be all the brighter because the
surrounding darkness was so dense. The Norman Con-
quest, however, wrought a great change. The Saxon

OPPOSITION TO BIBLE KNOWLEDGE 17

manuscripts were despised by the new rulers in Church
and State ; and by-and-by they became unintelligible
to the common people themselves. In little more than
a century after the Invasion, in addition to the Latin
Church hymns the Norman population had a prose
translation of the Psalms in their own Anglo-Norman,
and the French mediaeval literature was rich in transla-
tions of portions of the Bible. But that, of course, meant
nothing for the masses of the English people. Mean-
while, however, the fusion was gradually going on which
led to the supremacy of the English language ; and, in
spite of all that Bible translation has done to guide
and fix the language at every stage in its development,
it is probable that Wiclif's Bible in 1382 appeared
almost as early as any version could which was to be
the Bible of the whole nation, and to retain its place
among the English people.

Another influence was likewise at work which may
also have had something to do with the cessation of
Bible translation among the Anglo-Saxons. In-
creasingly as Romanism developed on the lines which
it still unhappily follows, and sacerdotalism was casting
its baleful shadow all over the land, a knowledge of
the vernacular Scriptures was regarded with suspicion
by the ecclesiastical authorities. As mutterings of dis-
satisfaction, too, began to be heard among the awakening
nations, the influence of the Bible was felt to be hostile
alike to the tyrant and the priest. It cannot be claimed
for the Mediaeval Church that she ever encouraged a
knowledge of the vernacular Scriptures. The utmost
she ever did was to tolerate a knowledge of the Psalter,
of Service Books, and, in the fifteenth century, of the
Plenaria. These were little books with translations of
some paragraphs from the Gospels and Epistles read in
the Church service, accompanied by legends and popular
tales . It is quite beyond dispute that a knowledge of the
Bible in the vernacular, especially by the uneducated, was
almost always regarded as a sign of heretical tendencies.
In the year 1229, a Council at Toulouse had decreed :
' We also forbid the laity to possess any of the books
4 of the Old or New Testaments, except perhaps the

1 8 TRANSLATIONS OF SCRIPTURE PORTIONS

' Psalter, or Breviary for the offices, or the hours of
4 the Blessed Virgin, which some out of devotion wish
4 to have ; but having any of these books translated
' into the vulgar tongue we strictly forbid.'

During the period usually described as that of Old
English, from 1250 to 1350, in spite of all the re-
actionary forces at work, portions of Scripture continued
to be rendered into the vernacular by zealous Christian
men eager that their countrymen should hear the voice
of God for themselves. That it was so often the
Psalter which was thus translated may indicate that this
was deemed the line of least resistance. Towards the
end of the thirteenth century an author, now unknown,
made a translation of the Psalms into verse ; the language
being simple and full of expression. Then, about the
year 1325, two translations of the Psalter into English
prose appeared almost simultaneously. The one was
by William of Shoreham, a country parish priest in
the county of Kent ; the other was the work of Richard
Rolle, known as the hermit of Hampole. The former
wrote the Psalms verse by verse in Latin and English ;
the translation being generally verbal and faithful. The
latter had in the first instance written a commentary on
the Psalms. This led him afterwards to translate and
publish it with an English commentary. In his ' Psalms
in Human Life,' Mr. Prothero says that Rolle 's work on
its spiritual side illustrates one of the movements which
led up to the Reformation.

Somewhat later, too, there was a translator, John of
Trevisa in Cornwall, who so far as the history of
Scripture is concerned is somewhat elusive. He turned
the Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden into English verse
about 1387 ; and in the preface to the Authorized
Version he is mentioned on behalf of the Translators
as one of their forerunners in the good work. ' Much
' about that time, even in our King Richard the Second's
' days, John Trevisa translated them — the Gospels, that
4 is — into English.' The first reference to his work
as Bible translator is by Caxton in 1482 ; but what-
ever he did, it is not certain that any of his work
remains.

TILL THE TIME OF WICLIF 19

When Sir Thomas More asserted that it was not the
case that Wiclif was the first who carried through a
translation of the whole Bible into English for the use
of the laity, he added that he himself had seen beautiful
manuscripts of the English Bible which belonged to a
date long prior to that of Wiclif. This was not only
accepted later by a man so learned as Archbishop
Ussher, but Henry Wharton his editor, in turn credited
John of Trevisa with having been the translator of one
of those pre-Wiclifite manuscripts which they also had
both seen. By -and -by, however, Wharton came to see
that both he and Ussher, as well as More, had been
wrong, and that what they had all seen were nothing
more than copies of Wiclif 's version. There is docu-
mentary proof that at the time of the Reformation there
were several of these Wiclif manuscripts in the hands
of Roman Catholic prelates. Certain it is that neither
Wiclif nor the men of his generation knew anything
about any predecessor in this field. Had there been
earlier versions of the whole Bible in existence, the
wrath of the Reformer's enemies because of what he
did would have been altogether unmeaning.

For the whole period prior to Wiclif, who first
rendered the whole Bible into English and made it the
people's book, the state of the case cannot be better
summarized than has been done by Professor Lechler
of Leipzig, with whose statement this chapter may be
brought to a close. ' The whole result for this period,
' as well of the Anglo-Saxon as of the Norman and Old
' English tongue, stands as follows : —

' .1 . A translation of the entire Bible was never
' during this period accomplished in England, and was
' never even apparently contemplated .

4 2. The Psalter was the only book of Scripture which
' was fully and literally translated into all the three
' languages — Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Old
' English.

4 3. In addition, several books of Scripture, especially
' of the Old Testament, were translated partially or in
' select passages, as by ^Elfric, leaving out of view
' poetical versions, and the translation of the Gospel of

20 TRANSLATIONS OF SCRIPTURE PORTIONS

' John by Bede, which celebrated work has not come
' down to us .

' 4. Last of all — and this fact is of great importance
' — in none of these translations was it designed to make
' the Word of God accessible to the mass of the people,
' and to spread Scriptural knowledge among them. The
' only object which was kept in view was partly to
* furnish aid to the clergy and to render service to the
' educated class.'

CHAPTER II

THE MORNING STAR OF THE ENGLISH
REFORMATION

' Holy Scripture is the faultless, most true, most perfect, and most holy
law of God, which it is the duty of all men to know, to defend, and to
observe, inasmuch as they are bound to serve the Lord in accordance with
it, under the promise of an eternal reward.' — JOHN WICLIF.

CHAPTER II

THE MORNING STAR OF THE ENGLISH
REFORMATION

NO name in all the long history of the English Bible
occupies a more honourable place than that of
John Wiclif. To him belongs the unique honour of
being the first to give the English peoples the whole
Bible in their own tongue. He was a great pioneer of
freedom alike in Church and State. A scholar and a
thinker, he had great influence in all the upheavals of
his time ; but above all else, he was a Christian patriot
who wished all men to hear the Word of God for them-
selves and to be free in Christ. It is hardly possible to
over -rate the significance of his work, at once for the
English people and for the English language. More than
aught else, it kept alive in the hearts of the people
that irrepressible spirit of free inquiry which led to the
Reformation in the sixteenth century. Many are of
opinion that Chaucer's ' parsoun of a toune,' so winsome
and faithful, was no other than Wiclif, whose teaching
the great poet had embraced ; and from many points
of view there are few, if any, English workers and writers
who more deserve the gratitude of the whole nation.

Wiclif was a great scholar and an ardent patriot,
a lover of the Gospel and intensely brave ; but most
of all he was a loyal, growing, Christian man. He was
a true statesman and man of affairs, wise and concilia-
tory in all his ways. But he was altogether unyielding
where principle and truth were involved ; and modern
historical research is showing that his work was vastly
more fruitful than has sometimes been supposed.

24 JOHN W1CLIF

Lollardy never died out, either in England or Scotland ;
and Lollardy was simply the English form of the passive
protest against the Mediaeval Church, which under various
names maintained itself in France, Germany, and
Bohemia, for centuries, in spite of persecution. As late
as 1521, the Bishop of London arrested five hundred
Lollards ; while in 1533, we find Sir Thomas More,
in a letter to Erasmus, describing Tyndale and his
sympathizers as Wiclifites.

Writers like Professor Pollard and Dr. Rashdall go
so far as to say that the English Reformation was
native to the soil, and that it borrowed little or
nothing from Luther. They point out that in many
particulars it followed the lines laid down by Wiclif
long before. When, therefore, it is said that Wiclif
lived before his time, that does not mean that he was
as one born out of due season or that he sowed his seed
in vain ; but only that in his case the interval between
the sowing and the reaping was longer than usual. ' It
' is certain,' says Dr. Rashdall, ' that the Reformation
' had virtually broken out in the secret Bible -readings
' of the Cambridge Reformers before either the trumpet -
'call of Luther or the exigencies of Henry VIII. 's
' personal and political position set men free once more
4 to talk openly against the Pope and the monks, and
' to teach a simpler and more spiritual Gospel than the
' system against which Wycliffe had striven/

Even as regards his version of the Bible, his work
was far more influential than has often been asserted.
Professor Plumptre, writing some fifty years ago, said :
' The work of Wycliffe stands by itself. Whatever power
' it exercised in preparing the way for the Reformation
' of the sixteenth century, it had no perceptible influence
' on later translations.' But Dr. Moulton has since shown
that there is so much in common in language and
expression between Wiclif and Tyndale, that it is prob-
able that the earlier Wiclifite renderings had passed
into general currency and become almost proverbial
phrases . The truth is, as Forshall and Madden, the editors
of The Wycliffite Versions, put it, that in the Reformation
era these versions ' supplied an example and a model

A SCHOLAR AND A STATESMAN 25

' to those excellent men, who in like manner devoted
' themselves at the hazard of their lives to the transla-
4 tion of Scripture, and to its publication among the
'people of the land.' Even yet there are at least one
hundred and fifty manuscripts extant ' containing the
' whole or part of Purvey 's Bible, the majority of which
' were written within the space of forty years from its
' being finished.' And many of these are full of interest
and must have exerted a great influence. If some of
them could tell the story of their wanderings and their
work it would be a fascinating tale. One belonged to
Edward VI. Another was a birthday present to Queen
Elizabeth from her chaplain. Another belonged to
Henry VI. ; and yet another to Richard, Duke of
Gloucester.

The exact date of Wiclif's birth is unknown ; but it
was somewhere about 1324 ; perhaps a few years earlier.
He grew up in his native county of Yorkshire, and studied
at Oxford, where he distinguished himself greatly alike
as a scholar and as an administrator. He took an
active part in guiding Edward III. and the English
people to reject the Papal claim to feudatory tribute ;
and for a time had much influence in public affairs.
He incurred the deep enmity of the Romish hierarchy, but
there were always friends who saved him from the
consequences of its wrath. He advanced step by step
in his opposition to formalism and priestism in religion,
and to the prevalent corruption in morals. He wrote
tracts in English for the common people ; and organized
a band of preachers, called the Poor Priests, who went
through the country preaching his doctrines of grace.
And so he was led on to the great work of translation
which occupied his later years. He had laid it down
as fundamental that God's Word must be taught because
it is the indispensable bread of life, the seed of regenera-
tion and conversion. The next step was to see and
determine that the Bible must be rendered into the
language of the people, so that it might be known every-
where as God's good news of salvation. That was the
next step, the natural and obvious step — when once it had
been taken ; but it had never been taken before, and all

26 JOHN WICLIF

honour to the heroic man who took it, as Wiclif did, in
loyalty to the logic of the soul.

It is probable that parts of Wiclif's Bible were issued
earlier than 1382 ; but that was the year in which the
whole book was finished — two years before his death.
It was translated from the Vulgate, the Latin version
that is, which had been in use since the time of Jerome
in the beginning of the fifth century. The time had
not yet come for a rendering from the original Hebrew
and Greek. Neither of these languages was at that time
taught in the West. Of the actual work of translation,
only the New Testament can be assigned with certainty
to Wiclif himself ; his friend Nicholas of Hereford being
responsible for most of the Old Testament and of the
Apocrypha. What is believed to be the original MS. of his
translation is in the Bodleian Library and breaks off at
Baruch 3. 20; while in a second MS., copied from it,
it is. noted that the translation of Nicholas ended there.
It is generally supposed that Wiclif himself did the
remainder, and that the work of revising the whole, to
which he set himself at once thereafter, occupied the rest
of his lifetime.

This revision, however, was a work of time, especially
the revision of what Nicholas had done, and Wiclif was
not spared to see it completed. The revised Wiclif
Bible, which is the standard, appeared in .1388, four years
after his death. The improvements in it, which were
very real, were essentially the work of one man, the
trusted friend of the Reformer and in later years his
fellow -worker, John Purvey, whose name will never be
forgotten while that of Wiclif survives — which will
surely be as long as the English Bible has its place in
our land. When their translation appeared, it was most
eagerly received and widely read. Although it cost a
sum equal to forty pounds of our money, many copies
of it were soon in circulation. Many, of course, had to
be content with small portions of it ; as, for instance,
those who gave a load of hay for a few chapters of an
epistle. Touching stories are told of how the people
used to gather to hear someone read or even repeat
the Word of God in their own speech ; and it is not

HIS TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 27

possible to estimate how much this first English Bible
must have done to keep the fire burning on the altar
in these dark, and in some respects darkening, ages.
It had been written for the common people, and they
heard it gladly ; and with the spelling modernized it
can still be read with ease. It is said that not many
years ago long passages from it were read aloud in
Yorkshire, when it was found, not only that they were
understood by the hearers but that almost every word
employed is still in use there.

It was, of course, a great drawback that Wiclif's
translation was from the Latin and not from the original
tongues . But nothing else was possible then ; and while
there is much even in his English which is now archaic,
it was the English in which all future English literature
was to be written. Just as Luther's Bible stands at the
head of the New High German, Wiclif's opens the period
of Middle English. Chaucer is usually taken as repre-
sentative of the Middle English literature ; but although
he is the father of English poetry and has some rare
features of superiority, the tendency among philologists
now is to recognize Wiclif's prose as the earliest classic
Middle English. Chaucer and he stand side by side ;
and it has been remarked that Wiclif rises to an un-
common pitch of perspicuity, force, and beauty, in his
Bible translation as compared with his other English
writings. Doubtless the greatness of his theme inspired
and ennobled him all round, just as it was with Tyndale
when, a century and a half later, he took up the same
great work . Of the later translator it has been remarked
that the exquisite grace and melody of the language
of his New Testament has been a matter of surprise
to those who are familiar with his other writings, which
have no qualities that raise them above the ordinary level
of the time. Both men made this their life-work, and
threw themselves into it, body, soul, and spirit ; and the
glory of their work and theme pervaded their whole
being.

The peculiar glory of Wiclif, however, in this work
of translation is not his style or his services to the
English language ; but that for high and holy ends he

28 JOHN WICLIF

set himself to render the whole Bible into the vernacular.
Special portions of it had been already translated for
special purposes ; but he was the first whose whole
being thrilled with the great conception oJ the Bible
for the people, and for the people's use in their own
homes. The special merit of His translation is that at
the time it was ' not only the one translation of the
' whole of the Scriptures into English which had ever
' been made, but actually by a hundred years the first
' translation into a European tongue.' It is absurd either
for Sir Thomas More in his day, or for Father Gasquet
in ours, to deny this. What meaning could there have
been in the attack on Wiclif by his contemporaries, had
he not been a pioneer?

One Kneighton, a chronicler of the time, writing in
all probability before the year 1400, openly laments the
translation of the Bible into English, and ascribes the
guilt categorically to Wiclif. He maintained that Christ
gave His Gospel, not to the Church, but only to the
clergy and doctors of the Church, that they might com-
municate it to the weaker brethren and the laity according
to their need ; and he angrily complains that Wiclif
had made the Scriptures ' common and more open to
' laymen and to women than it was wont to be to clerks
' well -learned and of good understanding, so that the
'pearl of the Gospel is trodden under foot of swine.'

The theory of the Mediaeval Church, that any know-
ledge of the Scriptures which was necessary for the
laity should come to them through the clergy, was all
the more intolerable in that, as corruptions increased, the
clergy did not know the Scriptures themselves so as
to be able to break the bread of life to the hungry
multitudes who looked up to them to be fed ; and so
often looked in vain. There were only too many
ecclesiastics, like the Bishop of Dunkeld, who thanked
God that he knew neither the Old Testament nor the
New. In England in the year 1551, out of 311 clerics
in the diocese of Gloucester, all incumbents of parishes,
who were examined as to their knowledge of the Ten
Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's
Prayer, only 90 passed well or fairly well. No fewer

HIS FOES 29

than 171 of them could not repeat the Commandments,
10 could not repeat the Lord's Prayer, and 9 could
not repeat the Creed. Manifestly such spiritual guides
were not qualified to be the Scriptures for the people,
nor were they entitled to offer their teaching as a
substitute for the written oracles of God, as they
presumed to do.

That Wiclif was the first who ever set himself to
give the whole Bible to the people, or who had in
view the needs of the whole community and not merely
the convenience of the clergy, is borne out both by
friends and foes. In the year 1412, Archbishop Arundel
of Canterbury and his suffragan bishops petitioned the
Pope to pronounce sentence of condemnation on the
heresy of Wiclif and those who adhered to him. In
this document, among other charges brought against
the Reformer, one was that he had contended with all
his power against the faith and doctrine of the Church,
and that in order to make his malice complete he had
devised and carried out the plan of a translation of
the Holy Scriptures into the mother tongue. In the
previous year, too, one of Wiclif's admirers, John Huss,
in a pamphlet against John Stokes, said : ' It is plain
' from his writings that Wycliffe was not a German, but
' an Englishman ; . . . for the English say he trans -
' lated the whole Bible from Latin into English.'

This, then, is the great and assured place which
Wiclif occupies in the annals of the English Bible ;
and even if what he gave the people was only a trans-
lation of a translation, and perpetuated the errors which
had crept into the Vulgate, it was a great gift of God
to his age and his land. In some respects, the measure
of its worth and influence — as it shed light all round
the circle of life, and roused men both to their duties
and their rights — is the greatness of the anger and malice
of his foes. But most of all, the measure of its worth
is the work it did, and which culminated in the sixteenth
century, when the truths for which he had contended
proved victorious in so many lands . Wiclif's Bible began
a new era in England and for many beyond it, in things
political and social as well as in things spiritual and
religious .

CHAPTER III

THE COMING OF THE PRINTING-PRESS AND THE
NEW LEARNING

' If thou art merry, here are airs,
If melancholy, here are prayers ;
If studious, here are those things writ
Which may deserve thy ablest wit ;
If hungry, here is food Divine ;
If thirsty, nectar, heavenly wine.

' Read, then, but first thyself prepare
To read with zeal and mark with care ;
And when thou read'st what here is writ,
Let thy best practice second it ;
So twice each precept read should be,
First in the book and next in thee.'

CHAPTER III

THE COMING OF THE PRINTING-PRESS AND
THE NEW LEARNING

A LTHOUGH only a century elapsed between the
JL\ death of John Wiclif and the birth of William
Tyndale, the next great figure in the history of the
English Bible, these years had witnessed two changes
which were truly revolutionary so far as that history
is concerned. These were the invention of printing
and the revival of Greek learning in Western Europe.
When Wiclif's version was made, it had to be laboriously
copied by hand, just as Jerome's had been, or as the
original manuscripts themselves had been ; but when
Tyndale 's was ready, it was multiplied as if by magic
by the new printing-presses. The change was indeed
so magical that at first some deemed it had a connection
with the black arts ; and the Parliament of Paris, after
its wont, ordered the books which the servants of John
Faust had brought to that city for sale, to be committed
to the flames.

Even shrewd men failed for a time to realize how
much the invention involved, or the full significance of
it in connection with the circulation of the Scriptures.
On one occasion, the Bishop of London, acting through
an ' honest broker,' a merchant named Pakington, bought
up an edition of Tyndale 's New Testament, and then
was amazed to find that the New Testaments continued
to pour into the country as before. When he appealed
to his agent to explain the mystery, he replied : ' It
1 were best for your lordship to buy up the stamps

D 33

34 PRINTING AND THE NEW LEARNING

4 too by which they are impressed.' But that was just
what he could not do. Even Wiclif's manuscripts,
as we have seen, could not be quite extirpated, although
they might go altogether out of sight ; and when it
came to doing battle with the printing-press, obscurantism
at its mightiest and most malignant was destined to
fail. Do what it might with the copies, the ' stamps '
remained, and stamps and copies alike could easily be
multiplied.

No more epoch-making change than this has ever
taken place in the history either of religion or literature ;
and from the first the printing-press was consecrated by
many to the Divine service of multiplying the Word
of God. The first book from Gutenberg's press at Mainz
is believed to have been the Latin Bible known as the
Mazarin, because copies of it were found in the library
of Cardinal Mazarin at Paris. Thus did the new art
dedicate its firstfruits to the service of Heaven. It is
noteworthy, too, that there issued from the earliest
printing-presses in Germany many more books for
family and private devotion, many more Plenaria, and
many more editions of the Bible, than were issued of
the classics. Twenty -two editions of the Psalter, from
which rivulets of blessing had flowed all through the
Middle Ages, appeared in German before 1509; and
twenty -five editions of the Gospels and Epistles, which
were growing in popular esteem, before 1518.

Caxton introduced printing into England in 1474,
and immediately thereafter translations and summaries
of portions of Scripture began to appear from his press.
The first printed book in English in which considerable
passages of Scripture appeared was the ' Golden
' Legend ' ; and it would appear that Caxton deliberately
chose this way of spreading Divine truth as the line
of least resistance, and as less likely to meet with the
opposition of the obscurantists, who liked the printing-
press least when it was printing Bibles. With the
special additions made to it by Caxton, it put the English
reader in possession of the Gospel story and the whole
of the Old Testament narrative. On the other side of
the Atlantic, too, the first printed book was the Psalter,

YEARNING FOR THE TRUTH 35

translated into English verse by two ministers, in a
rude volume of some three hundred pages.

In Wiclif's time it took a copyist ten months to
produce one copy of his Bible ; and when it was ready
it cost a sum equal to forty pounds of our money.
But within four years of the first appearance of the
printed New Testament in English, as many as 1 5,000
copies were issued ; whereas many years ago it was
affirmed that it was in the power of the Oxford Press
to print an entire Bible in one minute, with the result
that Bibles can now be sold at a price which brings them
within the reach of the poorest. At first, of course,
even a printed Bible must have cost far more than
the poor could pay. But they could get a Gospel or
an Epistle or the Psalter ; and there is abundant
evidence that all ranks and classes, all sorts and
conditions of men, were buying and studying the
Scriptures now that they were within their reach.

God never is before His time, nor ever is behind ;
and it is more than wonderful how the printing-press
came to anticipate and satisfy the needs and yearnings
of the awakening nations in their blind strivings after
the truth of God from the midst of superstition and
formalism, as they could not possibly have been met
even a few years before. The Renaissance and the
printing-press, indeed, may form a sort of circle where
it is impossible to say exactly which is parent and
which is child ; and there are many such circles of
grace in the history of the Kingdom of God. Just
as the marvellous expansion of the means of travel
and inter-communication in modern times came when
the Churches were beginning to hear anew the Divine
command to make disciples of all nations, at once
meeting and stimulating their new outgoings ; so the
printing-press came when the new sense of nationality
was moving the peoples of Europe, and they were
emerging from the semi -torpor of the Middle Ages and
crying out, even where they knew not what they craved,
for the Living God. How much the Reformation owed
to the printing-press, and how much the development
of the printing-press owed to the spirit of inquiry,

36 PRINTING AND THE NEW LEARNING

discovery, and reality, which was common to the
Renaissance and the Reformation, to the new humanism
and the new religion, can never be determined. But
no loyal Christian can doubt that God was overruling
everything for the good of men and for His own glory.

This coincidence and interaction of great formative
forces becomes all the more striking when we see them
in the light of the other great change already alluded
to, the revival of the language and learning of the
Greeks in the West ; a change which also was of supreme
importance in the history of the English Bible. The
fall of Constantinople, in 1453, scattered the scholars
who had had their home and their work there, and
sent them westward just three years before the first
printed book appeared in Germany. These fugitives
brought not only Greek, but Greek manuscripts of the
Scriptures with them. As it has been beautifully ex-
pressed, ' Greece rose from the grave with the New
' Testament in her hand ' ; and the Sovereign Ruler
of all guided events so that the new presses were not
employed to perpetuate translations of the old and
vitiated Latin Vulgate text, but to scatter the treasures
of the Scriptures after they had been gathered afresh
from the original sources. So much was this the case,
that for the ordinary Romanist theologian, Greek became
for a time the language of the heretic.

The new spiritual strivings which ushered modern
Europe into being ; the new text of Scripture which
appealed to the wonderful zeal for letters which the
New Learning had evoked ; and the new means for
bringing the world of books, at once the true levellers
and the true dividers, within the reach of all who could
read ; all met in that wondrous sixteenth century which,
as in so much else, was the determining epoch in the
history of the English Bible. It is all very wonderful
and impressive. The supply and demand were strangely
interwoven, and both alike were cause and effect.

One of the firstfruits of the New Learning, and one
of the epoch-making events in the history of the transla-
tion and dissemination of the Bible, was the appearance
of the Greek New Testament under the editorship of

ERASMUS AND TYNDALE 37

the famous Dutch scholar Erasmus, the most outstanding
of the Humanists . That notable work appeared in 1516,
with a dedication to Pope Leo X., who gladly accepted
the compliment, all unaware as yet of how much it was
to do for the consecration of the New Learning, and in
claiming the scholars who studied it for faith and freedom
in Christ. Luther in Germany, Zwingle in Switzerland,
Tyndale in England, and Faber Stapulensis in France,
were but a few of the students and scholars who read
the New Testament in that famous edition ; and what
it did for them was typical of what it was doing among
the scholars of Western Europe. Many who read it in
the interests of culture met their Saviour in its pages.
Some who came to it through curiosity or even to
criticize, remained to pray.

For us, however, its special significance lies in this —
that it was largely through the influence of this work
of Erasmus that the translation made by Tyndale was not
only the first in English to enjoy the benefits of the
printing-press, but was also the first which was trans-
lated from the original tongues. Men were no longer
dependent on the Vulgate, which in many ways was
not very reliable ; and the very appearance of such an
edition of the New Testament from the hands of a
scholar so famous as Erasmus was an incentive to the
work of translation which appealed to many . He himself
had said in noble words, which also inspired others : ' I
' long that the husbandman should sing portions of
' Scripture to himself as he follows the plough ;
' that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his
' shuttle ; that the traveller should beguile with their
4 stories the tedium of the journey.' This appeal and
ideal must have come home with peculiar power to
Tyndale ; for when he was at Oxford, he had belonged
to the company of learned and godly men who had
encouraged Erasmus in his work of preparing a scholarly
and critical text of the New Testament.

It is significant that Tyndale's translation of the New
Testament was ready within nine years of the appear-
ance of the Greek edition of Erasmus, just as it in
turn had appeared only nine years after a great city

38 PRINTING AND THE NEW LEARNING

like Paris had got a Greek printing-press. Events moved
rapidly in these stirring times ; and it is cause for grati-
tude that amid all the stir which was caused by the
Renaissance in the West, so much of the New Learning
was devoted to the study and spread of the oracles of
the Living God. Even before the Greek New Testament
appeared, indeed, as early as 1488, the entire Hebrew
Bible had been printed at Soncino, near Cremona ; there
being only one text of the Old Testament, that in our
Hebrew Bibles. Humanism led some to intellectual
scepticism and moral indifference ; but there were others
whom it impelled to search on until they found a more
vital faith, and were able to replace the religion of
authority with the religion of the Spirit.

In our gratitude for all they achieved in the cause of
the Scriptures, it has to be borne in mind that the
influence of the New Learning was not all for good,
any more than the printing-press was used only for high
and holy ends. Humanism was often purely naturalistic,
and of the earth earthy ; and the printing-press was
often devoted to the service of the world, the devil,
and the flesh. Even the life-work of Erasmus was far
from being ideal. His edition of the New Testament
itself is far from being as perfect as it might have
been or ought to have been, in spite of all its signifi-
cance and the good fruit it bore. He himself admitted
that his version was a ' precipitated one/ and the witness
is true. In order that he might anticipate the ' lingering
' volume ' of the noble Complutensian Edition of Cardinal
Ximenes, which was not published for some time after
it was ready owing to delay in obtaining the papal
sanction, he hurried through his New Testament in six
months ; and according to the late Professor A. B.
Davidson, no mean judge, the evil effects of that hurry
last to this very hour.

From 1516 to 1535, five editions of this Greek Testa-
ment of Erasmus appeared at Basel under his personal
supervision ; but with all their value, they had no great
pretensions to critical accuracy. In 1520 there appeared
the great Complutensian Polyglot, containing not only
the original texts of Scripture, but Greek and Hebrew

A WEALTH OF MATERIAL 39

grammars and a Hebrew vocabulary ; subsequent editions
of the Greek New Testament being founded for the
most part either on Erasmus or the Complutensian, or
on both. Never before had there been such a wealth
of material for rendering the Word of God into the
vernacular tongues ; and so far as the English-speaking
peoples were concerned, the time and the man were both
at hand .

CHAPTER IV
GOD'S WORD FOR THE PLOUGH BOY

' Read God's Word diligently, and with a good heart, and it shall teach
thee all things.'— WILLIAM TYNDALE.

CHAPTER IV
GOD'S WORD FOR THE PLOUGHBOY

T IKE Caedmon and Bede and Wiclif, William Tyndale
J — / occupies a commanding position in the history of
English literature, as well as in the history of the English
Bible. His 'translation of the New Testament, 1525,
4 fixed our standard English once for all, and brought
' it finally into every English home.' He held fast to
pure English, and we owe our current religious vocabulary
to him more than to any other. In his two volumes of
political tracts, ' there are only twelve Teutonic words
' which are now obsolete — a strong proof of the influence
' his translation of the Bible has had in preserving the
' old speech of England.' Three out of four of his
nouns, adverbs, and verbs, are Teutonic. There were
those in his time who declared that the English language
was so rude that the Bible could not be translated into
it ; and his reply was as direct as it was indignant. ' It
' is not so rude as they are false liars . For the Greek
' tongue agreeth more with the English than the Latin ;
' a thousand parts better may it be translated into the
' English than into the Latin.'

In many essentials the Authorized Version, when it
came, was no more than a revision of Tyndale's Bible ;
and if there is to be ' honour to whom honour is due,'
this must never be forgotten in our rejoicings over
all it has achieved. ' It is strange to think,' said Dr.
A. B. Davidson, ' that we are still reading his words.
' Many portions of the New Testament, in spite of all
1 the revisions it has undergone, are almost Tyndale's

43

44 GOD'S WORD FOR THE PLOUGHS OY

1 very words. In some of the shorter books, it has
' been calculated that nine -tenths are his ; while even
' in longer epistles, like the Hebrews, five -sixths remain
' unchanged.' Or as Mr. Froude put it, in a passage
which can hardly become hackneyed however often it
may be quoted : ' The peculiar genius which breathes
' through the English Bible, the mingled tenderness and
' majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the grandeur, unequalled,
' unapproached, in the attempted improvements of modern
' scholars, ... all are here, and bear the impress of the
'mind of one man, and that man William Tyndale.'

' In rendering the sacred text,' said Westcott, 'he re-
' mained throughout faithful to the instincts of a scholar.
' From first to last his style and his interpretations are
' his own, and in the originality of Tyndale is included in
' a large measure the originality of our English version.
' . . . It is of even less moment that by far the greater
' part of his translation remains intact in our present
' Bibles than that his spirit animates the whole. He
' toiled faithfully himself, and where he failed he left
' to those who should come after him the secret of
' success. His influence decided that our Bible should
' be popular and not literary, speaking in a simple dialect,
' and that so by its simplicity it should be endowed with
' permanence.' According to the Revisers, the Authorized
Version ' was the work of many hands and of several
' generations.' But ' the foundation was laid by William
' Tyndale. His translation of the New Testament was
' the true primary version. The versions that followed
' were either substantially reproductions of Tyndale 's in
' its final shape, or revisions of versions that had been
'themselves almost entirely based on it.'

When Tyndale was still a young man, a tutor in a
country house, during a heated discussion with some
of the neighbouring priests one day at his employer's
table, he passionately exclaimed that if God spared his
life, before many years he would cause the boy who
drove the plough to know more of the Scriptures than
the Pope knew. It was a noble ideal which was to be
nobly realized, although he had to spend his life and
at last lay it down in carrying it out. Erasmus, as we

TYNDALES IDEAL 45

have seen, had the same ideal after his own fashion ;
but with Tyndale it was perhaps more definitely evan-
gelical. Wiclif had had it too, and with him also it
was the desire of the man of God to give the Good News
to the weary, perishing multitude which was supreme.
These two great Englishmen both held that the Gospel
had its message for all, and gave themselves up to
the work of bringing it within reach of all in a form
they could use and understand. Nor is any kind of
evangelism more permanently fruitful than that of
bringing men and women into touch with the Saviour
in His own Word.

For centuries Rome had kept the Bible from the
common people. Even where there is no sufficient proof
that this was deliberately done in order that they might
be kept in ignorance of the truth, the fact remains that
that was the result both of what was left undone and
of what was done. In England the ban had been very
definite. The seventh of the Constitutions of Thomas
Arundel ordains ' that no one hereafter translates into
' the English tongue or into any other, on his own
' authority, the text of Holy Scripture, either by way
1 of book, or booklet, or tract.' This was directed
against Wiclif's translation, which had been severely
proscribed ; but it was applied all round.

The popular knowledge of Scripture has so uniformly
proved antagonistic to the doctrines and claims of Rome,
that it is not surprising that she has never favoured
the spread of it ; and it would appear that in proportion
as men drift towards Rome in their sympathies and
aspirations, their love for the free and unfettered
circulation of the Bible diminishes . ' To hear the
' Church was to hear the Bible in its truest and only
' true sense . Was it not an abuse of the Bible to
' send shiploads of copies across the seas to convert
' the nations ? ' is how one of those who in our own
time have come under this tendency, expresses what is
truly a striking and illuminating reversion to type. ' The
' recollection of these events should suffice to prove the
' mistake of supposing that the Sacred Scriptures,
' without note or comment, in the hands of all, are

46 GOD'S WORD FOR THE PLOUGHS OY

1 a sufficient guide to truth ; the Bible thus used is
' not useless only, but dangerous to morality and truth,'
is how another of the same school illustrates the same
attitude . Yet another has it that ' the crucifix should
' be the first book for their . . . English Home
' Missionaries' . . . disciples ; and the Holy Scriptures
' must never be put into the hands of unbelievers.'
When even a tendency to Romanism in the twentieth
century gives rise to such sentiments, there need be
no suggestion that it is ungenerous to hold that
undiluted Romanism in the fifteenth century did not
encourage men to read the Bible for themselves.

The unwillingness of the Mediaeval Church to put
God's Word in the vernacular into the hands of the
people, based as it was on the theory that they ought to
receive the Divine message through the priests, would
have had greater justification of a sort if the priests
themselves had known the Scriptures or loved them in
such a way as to be able to expound them. But the
notorious Bishop of Dunkeld who boasted of his
ignorance of Scripture was probably not singular in
his ignorance ; nor were the priests in the diocese of
Gloucester even in the Reformation era, who did not
know accurately the Creed, or the Commandments,
or the Lord's Prayer, alone in their incapacity. That
such blind leaders of the blind should set themselves
to stand between the people and God's message for
them was indeed intolerable.

It is full of significance that early in the conflict
which ended in the English Reformation a new impor-
tance began to be put on the study of the Scriptures.
Not only was the spirit of inquiry abroad, but the
printing-press was at work to stimulate and satisfy it.
Not a few of those in power in the English Church
shared in the new spirit ; while many who did not
share in it saw that it could not be altogether ignored
or defied. In the first set of Injunctions to the clergy,
issued in 1536, they were enjoined to give themselves
to the study of the Bible ; while in the second set,
issued two years later, they were enjoined to provide
' one whole Bible of the largest volume in English/

THE WITNESS OF THE HOLY GHOST 47

and to put it in the church where the parishioners could
most easily read it. That was the plan adopted by
those who wished to meet the new strivings without any
drastic reform, and above all without any breach with
the See of Rome. Inevitably, however, it only increased
the longings of the earnest and truth-loving for changes
such as Rome at her best could never allow.

All the Reformers believed that in the Scriptures God
spoke to them, as in earlier days He had spoken (to
His prophets and apostles. In describing the authorita-
tive character of Scripture, however, they always insisted
that its recognition was awakened in believers by that
operation which they called ' the witness of the Holy
' Ghost.' Their description of what they meant by the
Holy Scriptures is just another aspect of their doctrine
that all believers have access to the very presence of
God. No wonder, therefore, that a man like Tyndale
should set himself to put even the ploughboy in
possession of God's Word in his mother tongue. That
was the ploughboy's birthright, what he was entitled
to as made at first in the Divine likeness ; and this
was recognized by men of Tyndale 's spirit in other
lands, so that translations into the vernacular began
to appear in Germany, Denmark, Holland, France, Italy,
and Spain, as well as in England. As for those who
were hostile to all this, it could not but be assumed
that they who objected to the ploughboy entering into
his inheritance had never found the Word very vital
or inspiring for themselves, and had never bowed to
its supremacy over all human tradition and everything
else which the ecclesiastics had put in its place.

Scholar as he was, it was Tyndale's ambition to give
his countrymen an English version which would be more
than a translation of a translation, and would render
the sacred Oracles into their tongue direct from the
Hebrew and Greek originals, which were now at length
available for such a purpose. This ambition he was
able happily to realize, and although much of his work
was done while he was a fugitive and concealed in
secret hiding-places, it is of the very highest quality,
as has already been shown from the mouth of many

48 GOD'S WORD FOR THE PLOUGHBOY

witnesses. There was no royal patronage or historic
Jerusalem Chamber, nor any groups of sympathetic and
competent colleagues for him ; yet no other worker
in this field has left his impress on all subsequent work
as he did, and what he did can never become obsolete . In
one sense his work was actually destroyed Of the original
3,000 quarto volumes of his New Testament only one
mutilated fragment remains, and now lies in the British
Museum. Of the first 3,000 octavo copies only two
are now known to exist. Yet his work remains all the
same, and will remain for ever. At the very time when
he was dying for his loyalty to Scripture, in a foreign
land, laying down his life that the ploughboy might
come to his own, a complete edition of his Bible for
which the royal licence was ere long to be obtained
was actually being prepared, and about to be freely
scattered abroad.

All who have ever taken any part in continuing what
he began have been impressed by the splendour of his
inauguration of the work. He did not live to see the
day of victory, but the dawn was at hand when he
passed away. There is no grander figure than that
of William Tyndale in all the English Reformation
story ; and in connection with the Tercentenary of the
Authorized Version no name should be more gratefully
remembered and reverenced than his. Its triumphs are
in reality his. In a very real sense it is no more
than his version revised, as those who have shared in
one revision after another rejoice to proclaim.

After he had begun his great work, Tyndale soon
found that there was no room in England for what
he was doing ; and therefore he crossed to the Continent
and finished his translation of the New Testament at
Hamburg. While it was being printed at Cologne, he
discovered that the authorities were about to seize it ;
and with such sheets as were ready he fled to Worms,
where it was ultimately published in 1525. The new
volume, so fraught with significance, first reached
England in 1526. Every effort was put forth by those
in power to suppress it ; and it had to be smuggled
into the country, where, however, there was no lack of

TYNDALES FIDELITY 49

purchasers. It was read in all sorts of places and under
all kinds of circumstances ; read by merchants, workmen,
and scholars. Copies were bought up by its enemies,
in the hope that the whole impression might be
destroyed ; but the effect of that was that Tyndale was
enabled to print further improved copies, and to
encourage him to go on with the translation of the Old
Testament .

In the year 1530, his New Testament was publicly
burned in St. Paul's Churchyard, after it had been
condemned at a Council summoned by King Henry VIII.
Sir Thomas More, with extreme bitterness, attacked it
as misleading and inaccurate ; not, however, in reality,
because the work had not been well done, but because
to him the rendering of certain words and phrases with
scholarly exactness seemed ' a mischievous perversion
' of those writings intended to advance heretical
' opinions.' Tyndale's fidelity, however, alike to scholar-
ship and truth was not only vindicated at the time by
himself, but has been still more amply vindicated
throughout the ages ; and the survival of the fittest has
ensured the survival of what he did so nobly, so
devotedly, and so prayerfully.

In doing his work he made use of every available
help ; the Vulgate, the new Latin Version of Erasmus, and
Luther's German Bible. But he translated directly from
the text of the Greek Version of Erasmus. As regards
his work in the Old Testament, it has been denied that
he was a Hebrew scholar ; but in his last days we
find him writing from prison pleading to be allowed
to have his Hebrew Bible, grammar, and dictionary,
that he might spend his time in that study. An eminent
German scholar, too, Herman Buschius by name, described
him as ' so skilled in seven languages, Hebrew, Greek,

* Latin, Italian, Spanish, English, French, that which -
' ever he spoke you would suppose it his native

* tongue ' ; and this testimony does not stand alone .

In the year 1534, Tyndale published a revised version
of his New Testament with marginal notes ; and two
later editions are thought to bear traces of further

revision by himself. Before he died, seven editions —
E

So GOHS WORD FOR THE PLOUGHBOY

each representing several thousand copies — had been
issued ; and there were ' pirated ' editions besides .
At least thirty -three editions, practically reprints of his,
are known to have appeared before 1 5 60 . He was
not, however, spared to translate and issue the whole
Bible. The Pentateuch was issued by him in 1530,
and before he died he had got as far as Chronicles with
his work. Two years after his death, there appeared what
was called Matthew's Bible, but which was in reality
Tyndale's. It contained his New Testament revised,
and his translation of the Old Testament so far as he
had carried it. The remainder of the Old Testament
was taken from Coverdale's Bible, which had appeared
shortly before, and was actually the first printed version
of the whole Bible in English. It, however, was not
a translation from the Hebrew and Greek, like Tyndale's ;
but from the Latin and German. In Matthew's Bible
the Apocrypha was taken from a French translation ;
and as that was the Bible which was by and by
sanctioned by the King, it may be described as the
first Authorized Version. That it did not appear under
his name, although so much of it was his work, would
nowise have distressed Tyndale. It was not his own
glory he sought, but the glory of his Saviour and the
well-being of men ; and it was enough for him that
the ploughboy and all others who cared to read it had
now the Word of God in their own tongue and in their
own hands.

CHAPTER V
A RUSH OF TRANSLATIONS

' But whosoever thou be that readest Scripture, let the Hoi • /host be
thy teacher, and let one text expound another unto thei. such

dreams, visions, and dark sentences as be hid from thy un< tanding,
commit them unto God, and make no articles of them ; but 1> .he plain
text be thy guide, and the Spirit of God (which is the author tl of) shall
lead thee in all truth.' — MILES COVERDALE.

CHAPTER V
A RUSH OF TRANSLATIONS

Ih gland in Spenser's days was ' a nest of singing
1 Irds ' ; in the days of Tyndale it was the home of
scholrs who laid their gifts and graces on the altar
for th translation and dissemination of the Holy Scrip-
tures In the years after Tyndale led the way so
splencdly, translations came in like a flood. Almost all
of thai, however, as we have seen, were based on his
work-all of them, indeed, which were of real impor-
tance-and they are often closely connected with each
being for the most part revisions rather than
distint translations.

ie year 1534, Archbishop Cranmer, a true friend
of th Evangel, persuaded Convocation to petition for an
Engbh version of the Bible ; and in the following
year. Thomas Cromwell, likewise a true friend of faith
and *eedom, persuaded Miles Coverdale to undertake the
The outcome was what is usually called Cover -
Bible, and sometimes also the Treacle Bible,
becase of its translation of Jeremiah 8. 22, 'Is there no
' tricie in Gilead?' It was issued on October 4, 1535,
with? dedication to King Henry and Queen Anne, which
was fterwards changed as the royal consorts changed.
Imprtant as it is, however, as the first complete Bible
primd in the English language, it can hardly be
adnited to be in the full line of the true apostolic
succssion . It was not based on a study of the originals,
but n the Vulgate and on Luther's German Bible, three
voluies of which were printed in 1524 and the remain-

53

54 A RUSH OF TRANSLATIONS

ing two in 1532, and which was now pursuing its
triumphant career.

' To help me,' he said, ' herein I have had sundry
' translations not only in Latin, but also of the Dutch
' interpreters, whom because of their singular gifts, and
' special diligence in the Bible, I have been the more
' glad to follow for the most part.' But although a
translation from the Vulgate had been a great achieve-
ment in Wiclif's day, when no better text was available,
it was far otherwise at a time when Tyndale was showing
every scholar the better path. The 1537 edition of
Coverdale's Bible bore the announcement ' set forth with
'the King's most gracious license.' Because of this,
as well as because of its intrinsic worth, it had a large
circulation. Its circulation was also helped by the fact
that it was used at first by the clergy in their obedience
to the injunction to put a copy of the English Bible
in a prominent place in every church.

In the year 1537, there appeared what is known as
Matthew's Bible, which has already been described as
being practically Tyndale 's. Matthew was in reality John
Rogers, who was the first martyr in Queen Mary's reign.
The pseudonym may have been adopted to withdraw
attention from the fact that his Bible was so largely
Tyndale's, his writings having been condemned by the
authorities. Rogers was a friend of Tyndale ; his
literary executor in fact. His Bible may be re-
garded as the first Authorized Version, although later
on in the same year the second edition of Coverdale's
also appeared with the royal licence. It contained
numerous notes and woodcuts, as well as a considerable
amount of matter resembling modern 'Bible Helps.' If
we take Tyndale's version as the standard and starting-
point, as we should, this may be taken as the first
revision of it.

In 1539, there appeared what is known as Taverner's
Bible, the work of Richard Taverner, another scholarly
friend of the truth., Less is known of his version than
of any other in that era of versions ; but it may be
noted that in 1549, an edition of it was published in
five small volumes, for the convenience of those who

THE GREAT BIBLE 55

were unable to purchase an entire Bible at one time.
Like its predecessors, it had notes, which were, however,
less polemical than those in Matthew's Bible, some of
which were vehemently anti -Roman.

In the same year as Taverner's, there appeared what
has ever since been known as the Great Bible, because
of its size, and which may be taken as the second revision
in the Tyndale succession. Its pages are fifteen inches
in length and more than nine in breadth. It is also
known as Cranmer's, because of the preface which he
wrote to the second edition ; as Cromwell's, because he
had most to do with its preparation ; and in the royal
instructions to the translators of the Authorized Version,
as Whitchurch's, from the name of one of the printers.
By a royal proclamation made during one of the high
tides when the study of Scripture was approved by
the authorities, a copy of this Bible was ordered to be
put in every church. In some cases they were chained
to desks ; and a few of these * chained Bibles ' have been
preserved in some old churches. This version was due
to the desire of Cromwell and Cranmer, and their friends,
to have an English Bible which might become national
like Luther's translation into German. It is probable
also, and in no way to be wondered at, that the contro-
versial notes in Matthew's Bible were held to disqualify
it for this great position. Coverdale was again appealed
to for this new service and he was assisted by ' divers
4 excellent learned men,' of whose names, however, there
is no record.

As a matter of fact, the Great Bible is little more than
a revision of Matthew's revision. When it appeared
it had a wonderful reception. Crowds gathered round
the copies in the churches, one reading while the rest
listened or discussed or even wrangled. Bishop Bonner
complained that the Bible had become more attractive
than the Service, and threatened to have it removed.
Before 1541, seven large editions of the Great Bible
were sold in addition to many issues of the earlier ver-
sions, which likewise held on their way ; and although
there was a reaction against the circulation of the Scrip-
tures during the later years of Henry VIII., the short

56 A RUSH OF TRANSLATIONS

reign of his son saw at least thirteen new editions of
the Bible, and thirty -five of the New Testament. The
Great Bible still lives in the Psalms in the Prayer Book,
and in the ' Comfortable Words ' in the Communion
Service of the Church of England.

In the year I 5 60, yet another version appeared which
was destined to play a great part in the stirring times
which were at hand ; and which may be taken as the
third revision of Tyndale's work. This was what is
known as the Geneva Bible, from the city where it was
prepared. It is also known as the Breeches Bible from
its rendering of Genesis 3.7:' And they sewed fig-leaves
'together, and made themselves breeches.' It has
several features which commended it for popular use,
and it became the Bible of the people as no other version
did until the Authorized Version appeared. Not the
least of its attractions were its sturdy, lucid notes ; and
in 1 649 an edition of the Authorized Version was brought
out with these Genevan notes appended. Fuller says
that when they were finally withdrawn, the people com-
plained that ' they could not see into the sense of the
' Scriptures for lack of the spectacles of the Genevan
'annotations.' Indeed, as late as 1810, an edition of
the Authorized Version appeared with ' short notes by
' several learned and pious Reformers,' which were
virtually the old Genevan notes formerly so much prized.

Other attractions of this Geneva version were the
adoption of Roman type instead of the black letter in
which all English Bibles had previously been printed,
and the division of the chapters into verses. The use
of italics was also introduced to indicate those words
not in the original, which had been supplied in the
translation to suit the English idiom. They were, how-
ever, often introduced where they were not required,
since the words supplied were involved in the original
if not actually expressed. The division into verses, so
far as the New Testament was concerned, had been made
by Robert Stephen, the French printer, for his Greek New
Testament of 1551; but with all its convenience, it
sometimes interferes with the sense, and is often very
arbitrary. The division into chapters had appeared as

THE GENEVA BIBLE 57

early as Wiclif's time, and was used by him. Some
ascribe it to Cardinal Hugo, and others to Langton,
Archbishop of Canterbury. It also is sometimes done
without discrimination, especially in the Epistles of St.
Paul.

The Geneva Bible unquestionably stands next to the
Authorized Version alike for its historical importance, and
for its accuracy and scholarship . Among those who shared
in its preparation were William Whittingham, whose New
Testament has a place in the succession, Thomas
Sampson, and Anthony Gilby, along with Cole, Goodman,
Coverdale, and others, who, like Paul in the Roman
prison and Luther in the Wartburg, turned their enforced
leisure to good account. It is unlikely that John Knox
took part in the work, as has sometimes been claimed.
Its version of the Apocrypha, which it is frequently
said to have omitted, was largely influenced by a French
translation due to Beza. In the original edition there
was a good Bible index, a series of maps, and much
other prefatory and helpful matter, along with its admir-
able notes. For sixty years it was the most popular
version in England and Scotland, at least one hundred
and fifty editions of it having been issued ; some say
as many as two hundred. In one year, 1599, no fewer
than ten large editions were printed. It was the only
serious rival the Authorized Version encountered, and was
the favourite version of the Puritans. It is noteworthy
that it left the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews
an open question. The name of Paul is not only omitted,
but it is argued in a prefatory note that ' seeing the
4 Spirit of God is the Author thereof, it diminisheth
' nothing the authority, although we know not with what
'pen He wrote it.'

The fourth and final revision of Tyndale's work, prior
to 1611, was the Bishops' Bible, which appeared in
i 568. It was due to the desire of Parker, the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and others to provide a version which
would rival the Geneva Bible in popular favour, and
be free from the Calvinism which characterized so many
of its pithy notes. ' Its mischievous glosses ' were
thought to be 'undermining the Church of England.'

58 A KUSH OF TRANSLATIONS

The Bishops' Bible was the work of Anglican divines,
mostly bishops as the name indicates ; but it is said
to be ' the most unsatisfactory and useless of the old
'translations.' It was so expensive as to be practically
inaccessible to the people, and it did not commend itself
to scholars. It held its place as long as it did because
it took the place of the Great Bible in the services of
the Church, and was the only version recognized by
Convocation. As early as 1571, Convocation ordered
a folio copy to be placed in the hall or dining-room
of every Bishop, for the use of his servants ; and also
that each church should be supplied with this version.
The Puritans, however, never acknowledged its authority
or made much use of it.

The only other version which falls to be mentioned
is that issued by the Roman Catholics ; and as it, like
Coverdale's, was not derived from the original tongues,
it likewise is not in the apostolic succession but is of
secondary importance, although it played its part in
the final result in 161 1. It was prepared by the scholars
of the English seminary at Douai, who hoped by the
use of appropriate ecclesiastical terms and the addition
of notes on Romish lines to guard readers against error.
The New Testament was issued at Rheims in 1582, and
the Old Testament at Douai in 1609 ; and the work
is spoken of as the Rhemish, or as the Rheims and
Douai version. It professed to be based on a greater
respect for the Septuagint, the Vulgate, and other ancient
translations than previous English versions ; it" being
roundly declared that the Latin version had been made
before the Greek and Hebrew texts had been ' foully
4 corrupted by Jews and heretics.' It was very deficient
in purity of English diction ; but since 1750 it has
been brought nearer the Authorized Version ; and since
then its notes have also been fewer in number. The
late Lord Bute said that it did not commend itself to the
English ear ; but on the other hand it must be acknow-
ledged that many of the felicities of our Authorized
Version are due to it, and that many of its theological
terms, such as propitiation, victim, remission, and impeni-
tent, were adopted by King James's translators.

ALL REVISIONS OF TYNDALES 59

So the good work of revision and translation went
on in a fashion which makes it all the more remarkable
that for nearly two centuries and three-quarters after
1611 no further revision was seriously attempted. The
truth is that, so far as the English of the Authorized
Version is concerned, these frequent revisions had made
it such that no further revision on that score could have
been seriously proposed ; such had been the satisfactory
result of the various revisions of the work done by
Tyndale. Had it not been that valuable manuscripts
and versions unknown or unavailable in the seventeenth
century had come to light and had been so collated
that scholars became increasingly able to arrive at a
text far nearer the original than was possible three
centuries ago, it is more than probable that the Authorized
Version would not only still have been reigning among
the English-speaking peoples, but would have been reign-
ing without a rival. But as the revisers of 1611 them-
selves asked, ' To whom was it ever imputed for a failing
' (by such as were wise) to go over that which he had
' done, and to amend it where he saw cause ? ' Reverence
for God's Word, loyalty to the eternal verities, and patient
pressing on in the fullest light we have to Him who
is the Light, all involve a readiness to revise whenever
the need for revision really comes.

CHAPTER VI
THE BIBLE IN PRE-REFORMATION SCOTLAND

' Happy, and thrice happy, hath our English nation been, since God
hath given learned translators to express in our mother tongue the heavenly
mysteries of His Holy Word, delivered to His Church in the Hebrew and
Greek languages ; who although they have, in some matters of no impor-
tance unto salvation, as men been deceived ; yet have they faithfully
delivered the whole substance of the heavenly doctrine contained in the
Holy Scriptures.'— DR. FULKE.

CHAPTER VI
THE BIBLE IN PRE -REFORMATION SCOTLAND

OURPRISE has been expressed, and naturally so,
O that in Pre -Reformation Scotland no attempt was
ever made to translate the Bible into the Scots dialect,
which even as a literary medium was then different
from English. For not only were religious strivings
as keen in the northern kingdom as in the southern,
and the Reformation more thoroughgoing when it came ;
there was a great demand for English Bibles among
the Scots whenever these were available. It makes the
triumphs of the Bible in Scotland all the more remark-
able, however, that it moved Scotsmen so mightily even
when they read it in a dialect different from their own ;
and nowhere were its triumphs greater or more enduring.
In spite of the constant feuds between Scotland and
England during the Middle Ages, and the equally
constant friendship between Scotland and France, there
was at times a considerable amount of intellectual and
religious intercourse between the neighbour kingdoms.
In the year 1365, for example, when Wiclif's influence
was at its greatest in Oxford, no fewer than eighty -
one students from Scotland were provided with safe-
conducts to enable them to go South to prosecute their
studies at the University there. That meant that at
the very time when Oxford was seething with Lollardy,
Scotland was in closest touch with it ; and that the
teachings of the great thinker and reformer were brought
to the North by those who had both the will and the
power to commend them . For, naturally, it was the young
and eager spirits of the time who came most under
Wiclif's influence. Copies of his translation of the

Scriptures seem also to have reached Scotland ; and

63

64 PRE-REFORMATION SCOTLAND

this leaven never ceased to operate there any more than
in England, although of necessity it wrought for the
most part unseen of men.

One of the outstanding names in Scottish Church
annals is that of Reseby, who came North to spread
the Gospel light ; and in telling of his martyrdom in
1408, the Abbot of Inchcolm laments that the books of
Wiclif were possessed by several Lollards in Scotland,
and kept with ' devilish secrecy.' A fate like that of
Reseby is said to have befallen another Lollard at
Glasgow about 1422 ; in all probability the Scottish
Wiclifite whose letter to his bishop was, not long since,
unearthed in a Hussite manuscript at Vienna.

At the very close of the same century, too, we meet
one Campbell of Cessnock and his noble wife, who
had a priest at home ' who read the New Testament
' to them in their vernacular ' ; and who, when actually at
the stake, were spared, because the King was kindlier
than the ecclesiastics. There are few Scottist writers
of that period who fail to tell also of the Lollards
of Kyle and their interview with King James ; and of
the persistence of their doctrines in that region till the
dawn of the Reformation. That every Master of Arts
in the University of St. Andrews had, by an enactment
dated 1416, to take an oath to defend the Church
against the Lollards ; and that the Scottish Parliament
in 1425 enjoined that every bishop should make inquiry
against heretics and Lollards, shows clearly enough that
the truth was manifesting its influence. Then in
Wolsey's time we find an agent of the Cardinal informing
him that Scottish merchants were sending copies of
Tyndale's New Testament home from the Low
Countries .

It does not appear that the Scottish Parliament as
such ever explicitly prohibited the use of the Scriptures
in the vernacular by the people ; but as soon as the
English New Testament began to appear in Tyndale's
time, the Scottish bishops prohibited its being read,
and did everything in their power to prevent its getting
into the country. The laity were once more assured that
it was their part to hear the law of God and the Gospel

CRIES OF HERESY 65

of Christ from the mouth of the priest, rather than
to read them at home with wicked contention, to the
destruction of themselves and others. Sir David
Lyndsay makes .Flattery say to Verity : —

'Quhat buik is that, harlot, into thy hand?

Out, Walloway ! this is the New Test'ment,
In Englisch toung, and printed in England :
Herisie, herisie ! fire, fire ! incontinent.'

But cries of heresy, like all the other cries of the
obscurantists, were now in vain. The time -spirit and
the printing-press were too mighty for them. Copies
of the Scriptures were smuggled into the country with
every- ship that came to Leith, and were eagerly
purchased and read by those who shared in the new
spirit of inquiry which was abroad, and which in so many
cases grew out of a great heart -longing for forgive-
ness of sins and the favour of God. John Knox tells
that Henry Forrest suffered for having ' ane New Testa -
' ment in Engliss ' ; while one of the charges on which
Cardinal Beaton condemned Sir John Borthwick in 1540
was that he had a New Testament in English in his
possession. Five persons, too, were burned on the
Castle Hill of Edinburgh on March I, 1539, apparently
for no other crime than that they ' did not hesitate
' to study the books both of the Old and New
'Testaments.' All through, however, it is the New
Testament in English and not in Scots of which we
hear from foes and friends alike. It is due to the
memory of Alesius, or Alane — a great Scotsman who
is not nearly so well known as he ought to be — to
mention that he was the first to plead publicly, about
the year 1535, before the authorities of the nation,
for the right of every household and every individual
to have access to the Word of God in the vernacular ;
and therefore ' the man who struck the first note in
' giving a tone to that character ' for which his
country has often been commended as Bible -loving
Scotland.

In his great work on the Reformation, Principal

Lindsay says that ' in 1520, Purvey 's revision of Wiclif's
F

66 PRE-REFORMATION SCOTLAND

* New Testament was rendered into Scots by Murdoch
' Nisbet, and has recently been published by the Scottish
' Text Society ' ; but this seems to have been personal
to Nisbet, and not a national affair. John Nisbet, who
was hanged in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh in 1685,
for his adherence to the Covenant, told how his
ancestor Murdoch Nisbet joined the Lollards before the
year 1500, and had to flee the country in order to
escape persecution. While he was abroad he ' took
' a copy of the New Testament in writ ' ; and returning
afterwards to his native land, constructed a secret vault
under his house, into which he retired to worship God,
and to read his Testament. This copy still exists, and
is the one which has recently been put into print and
published by the Scottish Text Society. Nisbet followed
Purvey's revised version of Wiclif's translation, sub-
stituting Scots words where that was necessary to make
the meaning clear. Only one copy is known to exist,
and probably no other was made ; as Tyndale's printed
edition of the New Testament had by this time come
into circulation, and could be more easily used and
understood, as well much more easily obtained and paid
for. The episode, however, throws light on the great
part which Scripture was playing in the best life and
aspirations of that formative epoch.

On March 19, 1542-1543, proclamation was made
at the Market Cross of Edinburgh that it was now
lawful to all men to read the Bible and Testament
in their own tongue ; and that none preach to the
contrary upon pain of death. Full advantage seems
to have been taken of the permission thus granted.
' There might have been seen,' said Knox, writing twenty -
five years later, ' the Bible lying almost upon every
' gentleman's table. The New Testament was borne
'about in many men's hands.' The Reformer admits
that some profaned the Word, and only made a show
of reverence for it ; but that was inevitable ; and ' the
' knowledge of God wondrously increased, and God gave
' His Holy Spirit to simple men in great abundance.'
And from that time onwards, with occasional ebbs in
the tide, just as in England, due to political and other

THE FIRST SCOTTISH BIBLE 67

intrigues, the Bible was the people's book in a very
wonderful degree.

The Scots Confession of 1560 shows the reverence
felt by the early Reformers for the Word of God, and
their renunciation of any claim to infallibility. ' Pro-
' testand that gif onie man will note in this our confession
' onie artickle repugnand to God's halie word, that it
' would please him of his gentleness and for Christian
' charitie's sake to admonish us of the same in writing,
' and we upon our honours and fidelitie, by God's grace
' do promise unto him satisfaction fra the mouth of God,
' that is fra His halie Scriptures, or else reformation of
' that quilk he sal prove to be amisse.'

A licence to print the Bible in Scotland, the first of
the kind, which was granted on April 14, 1568, to
the King's printer, Robert Leprevik, is still extant ; but
for some reason or another this enterprise was never
carried out. In 1575, however, his successor Thomas
Bassandune, and Alexander Arbuthnot a merchant in
Edinburgh, were authorized to undertake the work, and
each parish was laid under a contribution of £5 to enable
the printers to obtain materials — a copy to be given
when the book was published, as a return, for the parish
church. This Scottish edition was taken from the folio
edition of the Geneva Bible, published in 1562 ; but
owing to difficulties between the partners and with the
workmen, as well as other impediments, the work was
not completed till 1579, although the New Testament
bears the date 1576. By an Act of the Privy Council,
every householder was bound under a penalty of £10
to have a copy with his name on it to prevent fraud ;
and searchers were appointed to see that the matter
was attended to or the fine paid.

It is an additional testimony to the place occupied
by the Geneva Bible, and another indication that it was
the version specially favoured by those with Puritan
tendencies among the Reformers, that it should thus
have been the version chosen for Scotland. Since 1611,
however, there has been no Scots Bible as such, and
nowhere has the Authorized Version, although translated
by aliens and discredited by the auspices under which
it appeared, been more at home or more influential.

CHAPTER VII
ON THE EVE OF THE NEW VERSION

'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth
good tidings, that publisheth peace ; that bringeth good tidings of good,
that publisheth salvation ; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth ! Thy
watchmen shall lift up the voice : with the voice together shall they sing :
for they shall I see eye to eye when the Lord shall bring again Zion.' —
ISAIAH.

CHAPTER VII
ON THE EVE OF THE NEW VERSION

HERE was a lull in the rush of translations when
JL the preparation of the Authorized Version began
to be proposed. There is no evidence that the men
of that generation saw what is so obvious now, after the
event, that the time had come for the advent of a version
which would be in reality what it had been fondly hoped
the Great Bible would be — truly national and accepted
and revered by all. In the true succession of the Scrip-
tures, the Authorized Version may be taken as sixth
in the line ; as the fifth revision, that is, of the work
with which Tyndale had so nobly opened up the way.
The line of the succession is, first, Tyndale, 1525 ;
second, Matthew, 1537 ; third, the Great Bible, 1539 ;
fourth, the Geneva Bible, 1560; fifth, the Bishops' Bible,
1568; and sixth, the Authorized Version, 1 6 1 1 . Impor-
tant as they are in many ways, neither Coverdale's version
nor the Roman Catholic version is in the full line ;
inasmuch as they were not based on a study of the
original tongues, but were merely translations of the
Latin and other versions.

The first five in the line, therefore, appeared in little
more than forty years ; while fully forty years elapsed
between the fifth and the sixth. After that, nearly seven
times forty years were to come and go before the seventh
in the succession was to appear ; that is, if succession
is the right word, where in all probability there will
never be supersession. Revision, where it was felt to
be necessary or possible, was always deemed a duty
by the truth -loving ; after Tyndale had set the standard

71

72 ON THE EVE OF THE NEW VERSION

in that as in other respects. Just as it was with Wiclif,
he had no sooner finished his translation of the New
Testament than he beg'an to revise it, and to make
it more than ever a faithful rendering of the text.
' The history of the English Bible is a history
' of revisions. It has been often gone over ; and pious
' hands have weeded out everything that seemed an error
' at the time.'

In the days of King James, this duty was still recog-
nized by many Christian scholars, even although Tyndale's
renderings had been so often revised that it might seem
as if the last word had been spoken. Perhaps it was
all the more felt, even oppressively felt, that there were
at least three versions still in use — the Great Bible,
the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops' Bible ; the second
and third of these being largely in circulation. The
Great Bible was no longer being printed or circulated,
but copies were still to be found in many of the country
churches. The Bishops' Bible enjoyed, or suffered from,
the support and patronage of the authorities in Church
and State, and had its legal place in the churches.
As for the Geneva Bible, it was the book of the people,
and was very widely used. While a hundred editions
of it appeared, there were only twenty of its official
rival ; and the full significance of these figures only
appears when it is added that, whereas in the one case
only eighteen of the hundred editions were folio, thirteen
were folio out of the twenty in the other case.

The desire to have one national Bible, free from every-
thing that savoured of the sectarian or the partizan,
must have been very widespread among all sections of
the Christian community ; more so, perhaps, than in
the generation immediately succeeding the appearance
of the Authorized Version. Not only were the frequent
differences in renderings in the various Bibles in use
calculated to lead to confusion and distrust, and open
alike to misconstruction and misunderstanding ; there
were the sectional and partizan notes ever at work to
create a situation which in our time would have been
deemed to amount to a scandal. Nor was there any
likelihood of either of the two dominant and rival versions

DESIRE FOR A NATIONAL BIBLE 73

becoming the Bible of the nation, as the Authorized
Version was during so many years, and is still. As
for the Great Bible, it was too cumbersome and was
already antiquated. The Bishops' Bible neither met the
requirements of the people nor commended itself to
scholars. One sharp -tongued but competent critic had
spoken of it as full of ' traps and pitfalls .' The Geneva
Bible, partly because of its notes, had become the Bible
of a party .

So the conviction grew, as was soon to be shown
in the Conference at Hampton Court, that there was
no way out of the difficulty but to seek some new version
which would be acceptable to all, because it was without
partiality or bias ; absolutely independent of party, and
altogether loyal to the text. If only that could be done,
as the result showed it could be done, the gain all
round would be immense. And the day was at hand
which in God's good providence was to witness the
appearance of such a version : of a Bible which was
to be the Bible of the whole nation ; a Bible around
which every section could gather in unity of attach-
ment ; the English Bible, which for these three centuries
bygone has so wonderfully stood all the tests of time.

BOOK II

THE COMING OF THE AUTHORIZED
VERSION

CHAPTER I
KING JAMES'S SHARE IN THE WORK

75

' How fruitful are the seeming barren places of Scripture : bad ploughmen
which make balks of such ground. Wheresoever the surface of God's
Word doth not laugh and sing with corn, there the heart thereof within
is mercy, with mines affording, where not plain matter, hidden mysteries.' —
THOMAS FULLER.

BOOK II

THE COMING OF THE AUTHORIZED
VERSION

CHAPTER I
KING JAMES'S SHARE IN THE WORK

IT was only natural that the English Puritans should
hail the accession of James the Sixth of Scotland to
the English throne with high expectations. He had
repeatedly declared his adherence to the Presbyterianism
with which they had so much in common, and in which
he had been educated. He had publicly avowed his
gratitude that he belonged to the purest Church in
Christendom. He had solemnly promised to maintain
its principles as long as he lived. He had given them
cause to anticipate that his sympathies would be with
them and their contentions in the conflict which was
already dividing the English Church.

Very naturally, therefore, they approached him on his
triumphal progress southwards, with what has been called
the Millenary Petition ; asking for the removal of various
abuses and superstitious elements which according to
them had either crept into the Reformed Church, or
had never been got rid of at the Reformation. There
were, of course, others who did not agree with their
attitude, and many attempts were made, alike in public
and in private, to win the favour of the new King
for other interests than those of Puritanism in the making .
James's reply to these various representations was the
famous Hampton Court Conference, which was held in

77

78 KING JAMES'S SHARE IN THE WORK

January, 1604, and which was ostensibly summoned to
consider the whole ecclesiastical situation, and to discuss
the matters which were in dispute ; to hear and deter-
mine ' things pretended to be amiss in the Church.'

We are concerned with the Conference now, however,
only because of the proposal made at it, somewhat un-
expectedly and even casually it would appear, and which
was ultimately agreed to, that there should be a new
translation of the Bible into English. For the rest, the
Conference was far from being a happy or auspicious
gathering. To begin with, the party with Puritan ten-
dencies, those ' of pious straitened consciences,' as Carlyle
describes them, were put into a small minority ; while
James was true to himself as pedant and petty tyrant,
the ' wisest of fools,' but still a fool. He addressed those
who dared to differ from him as ' dunces fit to be
' whipped ' ; although they were among the most learned
and highly respected men of the time — ' four world-
' famous Doctors, from Oxford and Cambridge ' ; and
generally he was as unlike a just and impartial king
and chairman as it was possible for even him to be.
' I will make them conform,' he said of the remonstrants,
' or I will harry them out of the land.' As against
the four representatives of the objectors — Dr. Reynolds,
Dr. Sparke, Mr. Knewstubbs, and Mr. Chaderton — there
were fourteen representatives from the other side, an
archbishop, eight bishops, and five deans.

The suggestion that there should be a new translation
was made by Dr. Reynolds, the President of Corpus
Christi College, Oxford. He did not make it, however,
on the ground which might have appealed to all parties,
that the need for one uniform version which would be
acceptable to every section of the Church was very urgent
in the interests of religion as well as of peace. Instead
of that, he based it on certain faulty renderings in all
the versions in use, which made them ' corrupt and
1 not answerable to the truth of the original ' ; and
Bishop Bancroft, of London, seems to have expressed
the general feeling of the Conference when he replied
that ' if every man's humour were to be consulted, there
' would be no end of translating.' But for the interven-

DENOUNCES THE GENEVA BIBLE 79

tion of the King, indeed, it is probable that the matter
would have dropped. James, however, was now in his
element, and intervened to some purpose, and declared
that he would see the matter through.

In a speech which is still preserved, he condemned
all the current translations as unsatisfactory ; and with
much parade of his undoubted and unusual learning set
forth how such a work as that proposed ought to be
done. In particular, he denounced the Geneva Bible
as the worst of all the versions in use ; mainly because
of its marginal notes, which he declared were ' very
' partial, untrue, seditious, and savoured too much of
'dangerous and traitorous conceits.' He singled out
two of these notes as specially obnoxious to him : that
on Exodus 1 . 19, where disobedience to kings is said
to be lawful ; and that on 2 Chron . 15. 1 6, where Asa is
condemned for deposing his mother instead of putting
her to death. He professed that he knew of these
notes from a copy of the Geneva Bible which an English
lady had given him ; but, as a matter of fact, he had
used no other version since he was a boy, and had
published disquisitions on part of it. As for the notes,
he had known them also for long ; for they had often
been applied to current politics by the outspoken Scottish
Presbyterians whom he had had to endure, and whom
he was now determined to silence if he could.

It ought to be stated that this account of the proceedings,
which we owe to Dr. Barlow, who was an eye-witness,
differs somewhat from that given in the Translators'
Preface to the Authorized Version. But these accounts
are not really contradictory, and both alike run the be-
ginning of the enterprise back to the complaints of the
Puritans and the decision of the King. It may be
claimed, therefore, for King James that it was due to
him that the good work was begun which resulted in
the appearance of the Authorized Version three centuries
ago . When Convocation met shortly after the Conference
not a word seems to have been said about a new transla-
tion, and the driving -power appears to have come solely
from the King. Bancroft said, later on in that same
year : ' I am persuaded his royal mind rejoiceth more

8o KING JAMESS SHARE IN THE WORK

1 in the good hope which he hath for a happy issue of
4 that work, than of his peace concluded with Spain.'
It may also be claimed for James that all the arrange-
ments for which he was responsible were admirably made .
He was a man of capacity, and had a strong sense of
the responsibilities of his office as well as a readiness
to work hard.

As for the motives which induced him to enter so
heartily on this great undertaking, it is not possible to
speak with certainty. Nor is it necessary to inquire very
closely. Probably his motives were mixed, like those
of other men ; but one thing is certain, that he was
led by no love for the Word of God, nor by any desire
to secure its circulation among his subjects. He was
shrewd enough to see that a new translation under his
learned and royal auspices would add greatly to the
glory of his reign. It is, indeed, the only glorious thing
connected with his shifty and unworthy rule and his
ambiguous career. The very discussion of such a subject
attracted him, too, and to do him justice, his powers
of administration and application were far from incon-
siderable. He was also inordinately fond of displaying
his learning, especially in connection with theology ; and
a project of this sort promised him abundance of scope
in that direction. But he was a thoroughly despicable
man all the same, and in no way entitled to have his
name bound up all through the ages with an enter-
prise so holy. In spite of all the inconsistencies of
which human nature is capable — and he was not wholly
evil any more than others — it is hardly conceivable that
he had any desire to spread Divine truth for its own
sake throughout his dominions. Yet he had been a
translator of the Scriptures himself. In 1634, Charles
the First sanctioned a version of the Psalter to which
his father is said to have contributed thirty psalms ; but
those who sang the metrical psalms obstinately preferred
the Psalter printed in 1564 by the Scottish Reformers
and introduced by Knox.

Dr. Hume Brown, the latest and most judicial of
Scottish historians, says that ' in his dealings alike with
' Highland chiefs and Presbyterian clergy, he so often

SfJt WALTER SCOTT'S POKTXAITUKE 81

4 displayed a petty malice, a malignity, and a deliberate
' cruelty, that we are bound to conclude that these vices
' were of the essence of his nature.' Another Scottish
historian says that ' he was vindictive, accessible to the
' most fulsome flattery, and extremely conceited.' Mr.
Green says that ' his shrewdness and learning only left
' him, in the phrase of Henry the Fourth, the wisest
' fool in Christendom ' ; and that ' the immorality of
' James's Court was hardly more despicable than the
' imbecility of his government.' It would appear that
he actually made money out of the translation, by adding
a Bible monopoly to the others which then flourished,
and which did so much to demoralize and disturb the
trade of the country. Students of heredity who remember
that our Charles the Second and James the Second had
Henry the Fourth of France as their other grandfather,
may well see where their vices came from ; and James's
contribution to the terrible sum -total was as great as
that of Henry, who bought Paris with a Mass, and treated
the Seventh Commandment as if it were a dead letter.
James was essentially a weakling ; his weakness led
him into much double-dealing and gross wickedness ;
and there can be little doubt that, such as it is, Sir
Walter Scott's portraiture of him in The Fortunes of
Nigel is far too favourable.

It is undoubted that he felt the sting of some
of the outspoken notes appended to the Geneva
Bible. They ran counter to his most inveterate con-
victions and prejudices. But what is remarkable is that
a man so shrewd in many ways did not see that the
text of Scripture was far harder on a life like his than
any such notes could be ; and that it spoke with jan
authority to which the notes never aspired. Gibbon
says that when Ulfilas was preparing his version of
Scripture for the Goths ' he prudently suppressed the
' four Books of Kings, as they might tend to irritate
'the fierce spirit of the barbarians.' So our British
Solomon might have had qualms as to what a nation
of Bible -readers would think of his doctrine of the
Divine right of kings, which in practice set the Stewarts
not only above criticism, but above the moral law of

G

82 KING JAMESES SHARE IN THE WORK

God as well as above the law of the land. That he
should patronize a book which told the story of Nathan
and David, of Naboth and Ahab, and much else which
made for liberty, and has made Stewart tyranny long
since impossible in the English-speaking lands, is indeed
passing strange. For the rest, he was more than repaid
for the help he gave and the services he undoubtedly
rendered, by the Dedication which has carried his name
and his fame into many a home where otherwise they
would have been unknown.

As for that Dedication itself and the sentiments
therein set forth, perhaps all that need be said here
is that in our estimate, regard must be had to the practice
of the age in such matters. To us it seems not only
fulsome, but altogether out of place as a preface to the
Word of God ; where no man should be exalted in this
way, even if he had been as good and great as James
was erroneously declared to be. When the Geneva
Bible appeared, the frank and straightforward address
to Queen Elizabeth, which occupied twenty -eight folio
pages, was a very different document from the flattery
addressed to her ignoble successor, as well as from
the earlier dedications which had been addressed to
her father, the quondam Defender of the Faith. As
for the Bishops' Bible, although it was official as the
Authorized Version was never destined to be, it had no
dedicatory address of any kind, apart from Archbishop
Parker's prologue ; which, however, occupied five closely-
printed folio pages by way of applying the words
' search the Scriptures,' and describing what led to the
preparation of the new version. The men of 1611,
however, were not content with that ; but prepared a
document which contains much which in the light of
historical research is now known to be untrue, alike as
regards the public policy and the private character of
the monarch to whom it was addressed. And even if
it be the case that his learning was great and, thanks
to George Buchanan, of a character uncommon in a
king, his immediate predecessors on the English throne
had both been highly accomplished.

Great thinkers and scholars, however, like Erasmus

DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS 83

and Bacon, indulged in grovelling and false dedica-
tions of their works to men equally unworthy. Some-
times they even addressed the powerful and rich, in
what seem to us most abject and degrading terms, in
order to obtain appointments and money gifts. And
the whole atmosphere was laden with sycophancy in
James's time. At the Hampton Court Conference, the
aged Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury though he was,
declared with rapture that King James had undoubtedly
spoken by the special assistance of God's Spirit ; while
Bancroft, who was soon to be Archbishop, fell on his
knees before James, and cried out that there had been
no such king since Christ's time. The temporal lords,
too, applauded His Majesty's speeches as proceeding from
the Spirit of God, and from an understanding heart. Yet
even they must have known, and known it better than
many of the translators, that he was cowardly and
profane, perhaps drunken and worse ; and in no sense
one whom the honourable and pure could applaud either
as man or monarch, although they thus grovelled before
him in the dust. Coke, his attorney -general, once
extolled James as ' Divinely illumined by Almighty God,
' and like an angel of God.' Selden, too, spoke of
the royal interpretation of some parts of the Apocalypse
as ' the clearest seen among the lesser lights, and a
' performance most Divine and kingly.'

Nor should it be forgotjten, if we would rightly
appreciate the atmosphere in which the Dedication to
James was begotten, that there were many then who
really believed in the Divine right of kings to rule,
in the sense in which the Stewarts asserted it. James
himself declared that ' as it is atheism and blasphemy
' to dispute what God can do, so it is presumption and
' a high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king
' can do, or to say that a king cannot do this or
' that .' Not only so ; but Convocation in its Book of
Canons denounced as a fatal error the assertion that
' all civil power, jurisdiction, and authority, were first
' derived from the people and disordered multitude ;
' or either is originally still in them, or else is deduced
' by their consent naturally from them, and is not God's

84 KING JAMES'S SHARE IN THE WORK

1 ordinance originally descending from Him and depend -
' ing upon Him.' It was even asserted in these servile
days that ' the King is above law by his absolute power ' ;
and that ' notwithstanding his oath, he may alter and
' suspend any particular law that seemeth hurtful to the
' public estate.' Passive obedience to the monarch, no
matter who he was, was inculcated as a religious obligation
by many who ought to have known better.

Compared with much of this, the Dedication, such
as it is, seems moderate and careful in tone ; and its
limitations are those of the generation which produced it,
and to which if possible it ought to have been con-
fined. For after every allowance has been made, it
cannot but be felt that, in loyalty to the Book to which
it was attached, the Dedication might well have dis-
appeared ; especially when the Preface, which is so
admirable and valuable, soon ceased to appear in ordinary
editions. Had it been the Preface which was retained
instead, great gain would have resulted ; as the study
of it is little short of a liberal education for those who
undertake it with open eyes and responsive hearts ; and
it is satisfactory that more attention is now being directed
to it.

Then, finally, in this connection it ought to be borne
in mind that the Puritan element in the community,
which had been very inadequately represented among
the translators to begin with, was hardly represented
at all when the Dedication was written. Of their
accredited spokesmen, Reynolds, Lively, and Chaderton,
only the last-named survived till 1611 ; and more than
one reference in the Preface shows that the translators
were anxious to have it understood that they were
altogether free from the new spirit which was beginning
to manifest itself so vigorously, and was soon to lead
to Civil War.

CHAPTER II
THE TRANSLATORS

'I have carefully and regularly read the Holy Scriptures, and I am of
opinion, that this volume, independently of its Divine origin, contains more
true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important
history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected
from all other books, in whatever age or language they may have been
composed.' — SIR WILLIAM JONES.

CHAPTER II
THE TRANSLATORS

ON July 22, 1604, King James announced to Bancroft,
Bishop of London, who then represented the See
of Canterbury, that he had appointed * certain learned
' men, to the number of four -and -fifty, for the transla-
' tion of the Bible.' He also directed him to ' move the
' bishops to inform themselves of all such learned men
' within their several dioceses, as, having especial skill
' in the Hebrew and Greek tongues, have taken pains
' in their private studies of the Scriptures for the
' clearing of any obscurities either in the Hebrew or
' the Greek, or touching any difficulties or mistakings
' in the former English translations, which we have now
' commanded to be thoroughly viewed and amended ;
' and thereupon to earnestly charge them, signifying our
' pleasure therein, that they send such their observations

* to Mr . Lively, our Hebrew reader in Cambridge, or
'to Dr. Harding, our Hebrew reader in Oxford, or to
' Dr. Andrewes, Dean of Westminster, to be imparted
' to the rest of their several companies, that so our
' intended translation may have the help and furtherance

* of all our principal learned men within this our
' kingdom.'

Bancroft was likewise instructed to provide for the
recompense of the translators by means of Church
preferment. Whenever ' a living of twenty pounds '
became vacant, His Majesty was to be informed of the
circumstance, that he might recommend one of the
translators to the patron. The Bishop was further

directed to arrange for the immediate expenses of the

87

88 THE TRANSLATORS

undertaking ; for although His Majesty was very ready
to meet these himself, ' of his most princely disposition,'
' some of my lords, as things now go, had held it
' inconvenient.' The various bishops and chapters were
encouraged to contribute towards the work by the
assurance that His Majesty would be acquainted with
every man's liberality. As a matter of fact, many of
the translators did receive high promotion in the Church ;
while Savile, the only layman amongst them, was made
a knight.

This seems to have been all that James ever did,
so far as the expenses of the work were concerned.
Apart from free entertainment in the colleges, all that
any of the translators themselves appear to have
received was the sum of thirty shillings a week ; which,
according to one account, was paid by the Company
of Stationers to each of the scholars engaged in the
final revision. According to another account, the
expenses were met by Barker, the royal printer and
patentee, who paid the sum of £3,500 for that purpose.
In this, however, as in so much else connected with this
whole undertaking, it is surprising how little definite
information has come down to us. ' Never,' says Dr.
Scrivener, who knows all that is to be known on the
subject, ' was a great enterprise like the production of
' our Authorized Version carried through with less know-
' ledge handed down to posterity of the labourers, their
' method, and order of working.' It is not known
that any of the correspondence connected with the
progress of the work, or any minute of the meetings
held, is still extant. We have no authentic contempo-
rary history of its preparation, nor any manuscript
indubitably containing the translators' words, nor any
copies of the Bible in the transition stage.

It is usually held that it was three years after the
King's letter to Bancroft, following close as it did on
the Hampton Court Conference, before the actual work of
the translators was begun. It is possible, however, that it
was the revision which was begun in 1607 ; and it seems
fairly certain some of the translators were at work as early

THE SIX COMPANIES 89

as the spring of 1605. Of the fifty -four who were nomi-
nated in 1604, only forty -seven are known as sharing
in the work. Mr. Lively, who was reputed ' one of
'the best linguists in the world,' died in 1605 ; while
Dr. Reynolds, who first suggested the enterprise at
Hampton Court, died in 1607 ; and there may have
been other changes. Documentary evidence of other
helpers has also come to light in recent years. Dr.
John Aglionby, Principal of St. Edmund's Hall ; Dr.
Leonard Hutton, Canon of Christ Church ; Arthur Lake,
or Lakes, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells ; John
Harmar ; and Dr. George Ryves, Warden of New
College, all seem to have shared in the great work.

The work was entrusted to six companies, of which
two met at each of the three centres, Westminster,
Oxford, and Cambridge, under the superintendence of
the Dean of Westminster and the two University Hebrew
professors. It was intended that the work of each of
these companies should be gone over by the other five,
but there is nothing to show that this was done ; and
in the absence of this the final revision by a small
committee who met for nine months in London to prepare
the book for the press was not sufficient to prevent
a certain inequality in the execution of the several
portions of the translations. Job and the Psalms, for
example, are not so helpfully rendered as the Pentateuch.
The Epistles are not so well done as the Gospels and
the Acts ; while the Apocrypha is the least successful
part of all. It is ungrateful work, however, to try to
find spots on the sun ; and every page of their work
calls forth the admiration of the reader. Perhaps the
very perfection of their style consists in the fashion
in which they make the reader forget all about style,
and realize that he is hearing the Word of the Lord
Himself.

The first company, which consisted of ten members,
met at Westminster, and was presided over by the Dean,
Dr. Lancelot Andrewes, afterwards Bishop of West-
minster ; of whom it was said that he might have been
' interpreter -general at Babel.' Many considered him
the most learned man in England. This company also

90 THE TRANSLATORS

included Overall, then Dean of St. Paul's, and Adrian de
Savaria, by birth a Fleming and at that time Prebendary
of Westminster ; but best known as the bosom friend and
spiritual counsellor of Richard Hooker. As Scrivener
remarks, this company's share of the work — from Genesis
to Second Kings — may seem an easy one ; but the eminent
success of the whole enterprise is largely due to the simple
dignity of their style, and to the mingled prudence and
boldness wherewith they so blended together the idioms
of two very diverse languages, that the reader is almost
tempted to believe that the genius of his native tongue
must have some subtle affinity with the Hebrew.

The second company, which was composed of eight
members, met at Cambridge, and had from I Chronicles
to Ecclesiastes as their share. They suffered an irre-
parable loss in the death of Edward Lively, who was
to have presided over them, before their work was well
begun. It would appear, too, that his successor as
Regius Professor of Hebrew also died a year later ; and
their translation is usually considered to be less satis-
factory than that of the other Canonical books of the
Old Testament. The third company, seven in number,
met at Oxford, and translated from Isaiah to the end
of the Old Testament . They were presided over by the
University Hebrew professor, and had also amongst them
Dr. Richard Kilbye, Rector of Lincoln College, whose
testimony to the anxious pains with which they did
their work has been preserved by Isaac Walton. In
spite of the difficulty of their task, what they did is
of surpassing merit.

The fourth company, which also consisted of seven
members, met in Cambridge under the presidency of
Dr. Duport, who was four times elected Vice -Chancellor
of his University. The translation of the Apocrypha
was assigned to them, and they were the first to
complete their share of the work, as well as the least
happy in their execution of it. The fifth company, eight
in number, which met at Oxford under the presidency of
Dr. Ravis, Dean of Christchurch and Vice -Chancellor
of the University, had the Gospels, the Acts, and the
Apocalypse as their portion ; while, finally, the Epistles

TIME WELL SPENT 91

were entrusted to the sixth company, which met at West-
minster and was presided over by Dr. Barlow, Dean
of Chester, and chronicler of the Hampton Court Con-
ference. It had seven members.

Others of the translators of whom something is known
were Sir Henry Savile, Warden of Merton, then the
most famous Greek scholar in England, who served on
the second Oxford company ; Mr. Bois, Fellow of St.
John's, who with Savile is said to have represented
scholarship free from any party, whether High Church
or Puritan, and who was transferred to the first Cam-
bridge company after he had finished his work on the
second Cambridge company ; Dr. Chaderton, Master of
Emmanuel, one of the four Puritan leaders at Hampton
Court, and who was ' grave, godly, learned, familiar
' with the Greek and Hebrew tongues, and the numerous
' writings of the Rabbis ' ; Andrew Downs, described
as ' one composed of Greek and industry ' ; Dr. Bedwell,
the greatest Arabic scholar in Europe ; and Dr. Miles
Smith, who is understood to have written the Preface ;
and who, along with Dr. Thomas Bilson, Bishop of Win-
chester, whose name does not appear in any list of
the six companies, made the final revision of the work,
and saw it through the press. No place was found on
any of the companies for Hugh Broughton, the great
Hebraist, who had sketched a plan for a new version ;
but his printed translations of parts of the Old Testa-
ment were not without influence on the translators. It
is supposed that he was excluded partly because of his
violent overbearing temper, and partly because of the
dislike with which both Whitgift and Bancroft regarded
him ; and when the Authorized Version finally appeared,
he attacked it with great ferocity.

The translators were occupied for two years and nine
months on their work, and. never perhaps was time
better spent. They left nothing undone, and spared
themselves no toil in their determination to make their
work as perfect as it could possibly be. They studied
the original Hebrew and Greek. They had all the other
modern translations before them for their guidance . They
went over the commentaries of the great scholars. And

92 THEiJRANSLATORS

then when they had discovered the exact meaning of
each passage, they did everything in their power to
express it in clear, vigorous, idiomatic English. Even
translations which were defective in many respects were
ransacked for illuminating words and expressive phrases,
that nothing might be lost.

Besides all this, they exercised their own independent
judgment all through with singular wisdom and insight.
The pervading spirit in their completed work is un-
doubtedly that of Tyndale, but the final outcome is their
own. They wove their own original renderings so skil-
fully with all that was worthiest and truest in other
versions, and so wonderfully conformed their English
to the sense of the Hebrew and Greek, that the very
idioms of the original enter into the thought and emotion
of the ordinary reader. The dialect of the Authorized
Version is as near men's minds as their own speech.
To all intents and purposes, the result of their con-
secrated labours was a book which has none of the
drawbacks of a translation and all the power of an
original work. As they sent it forth, the Authorized
Version has been a book which has interpreted every
emotion and every experience ; a book for the joyous
and for the sad ; a book for the perplexed and for
those on the primrose pathway ; a book which inspires
to deeds of self-sacrifice and self -surrender, and gives
new strength to the tempted and the tried. It has been
the light and life of countless thousands.

CHAPTER III

THEIR INSTRUCTIONS AND HOW THEY
UNDERSTOOD THEM

'The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the Word of God by their
majesty and purity : by the consent of all the parts and the scope of the
whole, which is to give all glory to God : by their light and power to
convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto
salvation : but the Spirit of God bearing witness by and with the Scriptures
in the heart of man is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the
very Word of God.' — THE LARGER CATECHISM.

CHAPTER III

THEIR INSTRUCTIONS AND HOW THEY
UNDERSTOOD THEM

HE Rules which were drawn up for the guidance
JL of the translators may well be detailed here ; not
only for their own sake, but because of the light which
they throw on the work. It is not known who drew them
up, but probably they passed through several hands, in-
cluding the King's, and they are admirable in almost
every respect.

'Rule I. — The ordinary Bible read in the
' church, commonly called the Bishops' Bible, to
' be followed, and as little altered as the truth of
'the original will permit.'

It may have been inevitable from its official position
that the Bishops' Bible should thus get a place it by
no means deserved, and be put in the forefront as the
basis and starting-point of the translators' work ; but
it was so in form rather than in reality. As a matter
of fact, the Geneva version throughout, and even the
Rheims New Testament, were more used in the final
result than the version thus preferred. Yet this first
instruction was obeyed in the best sense . As few changes
as possible were made on the texts with which Bible -
readers were most familiar, and it is estimated that
not more than four new words in a hundred were intro-
duced into the Authorized Version.

That the Rheims New Testament should have had such

95

96 RULES FOR THE TRANSLATORS

an influence is somewhat surprising ; but the fact remains,
that it has left its mark on every page. In the short
first Epistle of John, for example, the following are
all directly traceable to it : ' Confess our sins,' where
previous versions had ' knowledge ' or ' acknowledge.'
' He is the propitiation/ instead of ' He it is that obtaineth
'grace.' 'The unction,' instead of 'ointment.' 'We
'may have confidence,' instead of 'we may be bold.'
Such Latin words in the Authorized Version have also
come from it as ' hymn ' (Matt. 26. 30) ; ' decease '
(Luke 9. 31 ; 'separated' (Rom. I. i) ; ' impeni-
'tent' (Rom. 2. 5) ; and 'contemptible' (2 Cor. 10. 10).
Other examples of the readiness of the translators to
cull flowers from every garden in their profound loyalty
to truth are John 9. 22 : ' He shall be put out of the
' synagogue,' instead of ' excommunicate.' 2 Cor. 5. 18 :
' Hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation,'
instead of ' the office to preach the atonement.'
Heb. 12. 1 6 : ' Profane person,' instead of ' unclean.'

It is also surprising that the version which has
influenced our present version more than any other is
the Genevan, when it is borne in mind that the work
of translation was undertaken largely because of the
King's antipathy to that version, which he denounced
as the worst of all the translations. The fact, however,
is beyond dispute. Dr. Westcott has shown that of the
variations from the Bishops' Bible in the fifty -third
chapter of Isaiah, ' about seven -eighths are due to the
' Genevan version, either alone or in agreement with
4 one of the Latin versions.' He adds that although this
is an extreme instance, ' it only represents on an ex-
4 aggerated scale the general relation in which the
' Authorized Version stands to the Genevan and Bishops'
' Bible in the Prophetical Books.' The influence of the
Geneva version was not so marked in the Historical
Books of the Old Testament ; but in the New Testa-
ment it provided the translators with many memorable
phrases. It gave us, ' it is good for us to be here,'
instead of ' it is good being here for us ' ; ' men of
4 like passions with you,' instead of ' mortal men like
' unto you ' ; 'we see through a glass darkly,' instead

PROPER NAMES 97

of ' we see in a glass even in a dark speaking ' ; ' ambas-
' sadors for Christ,' instead of ' messengers in the
' room of Christ.'

'Rule II. — The names of the prophets and the
' holy writers, with the other names of the text, to
' be retained, as nigh as may be, according as
' they were vulgarly used.'

In this respect the example of the Geneva version
was not followed, which was well. Perhaps, indeed,
it was the Genevan mode of spelling proper names
which led to this rule being laid down. For instead
of adhering to the usual English forms, that version
sought to copy the original as closely as possible.
Hence Rahel for Rachel ; Heuah for Eve ; and such
strange names as laakob, Izhhak, and the like. It would
have been well, however, had our translators made the
names uniform in the Old Testament and the New. There
seems to be no good reason why Elisha should reappear
in the New Testament as Eliseus, Noah as Noe, or
Korah as Core. In their preface to the Revised Version
of the New Testament, the Revisers say that they
deemed it best to follow this rule as laid down for
their predecessors as far as they could ; but that while
their general practice had been to follow the Greek
form of names, in the case of those mentioned in the
Old Testament, they followed the Hebrew. In any case
they have secured uniformity between the Two Testa-
ments, which was no more than seemly.

'Rule III. — The old ecclesiastical words to be
4 kept, viz., the word church not to be translated
' congregation, &c.'

Some think that this rule was laid down for the sake
of this special application. It is possible that it had
its origin in a desire that the translators should see
things from the High Church viewpoint ; but it was
sensibly interpreted and applied. As it worked out,
it proved to be in reality a prohibition of any attempt

H

98 RULES FOR THE TRANSLATORS

to manipulate the text in a sectarian or partisan interest
or spirit ; and whatever secured that was best.

' Rule IV. — When a word hath divers significa-
' tions, that to be kept which hath been most
' commonly used by the most of the ancient fathers,
' being agreeable to the propriety of the place and
4 the analogy of the faith.'

Along with this may be taken Rule XV., which was
probably added afterwards as a kind of by-law when the
practical difficulty of the fourth rule began to be felt :

' Beside the said directors before mentioned,
' three or four of the most ancient and grave
' divines in either of our Universities, not em-
' ployed in translation, to be assigned by the
' Vice -Chancellor upon conference with the rest of

* the Heads to be overseers of the translation, as
' well Hebrew as Greek, for the better observance

* of the fourth rule above specified.'

This rule and by-law were evidently in the interests
of the English of the new version. Scholars were to
ascertain the exact meaning of the text, but after that
the question remained as to how this meaning could be
most suitably conveyed to the English reader ; and with
the result before us, we cannot but respect the means
which were taken to secure it. It is to its twofold excel-
lence as setting forth the true meaning of the original
in the best English that the Authorized Version owes
its well -deserved popularity. In reality, the rule was
just what common -sense enjoined ; but the outcome of
it in practice seems to have been that the archaic element
in the Authorized Version, which was the basis of one
of the pleas for the Revision in our time, was to some
extent archaic even in 1611.

Hallam, the great critic, who like a ' hanging judge '
so often wears the black cap, says : ' It may, in the
' eyes of many, be a better English ; but it is not
' the English of Daniel, or Raleigh, or Bacon, as any
' one may easily perceive. It abounds, in fact, especi-
' ally in the Old Testament, with obsolete phraseology,

DIVISIONS OF THE CHAPTERS 99

' and with single words long since abandoned, or retained
4 only in provincial use.' This was due probably in
part to the influence of Tyndale, himself influenced in
turn, more than he knew, by Wiclif — many of whose
phrases had become proverbial — and his revisers ; and
in part to the determination of the translators to intro-
duce as few novelties as possible. And it has been well
asked : ' If it had been the English of the men of letters
' of James's reign, would it have retained as it has done,
' for two centuries and a half, its hold on the mind, the
' memory, the affections of the English people ? ' Besides,
as Professor Davidson put it, in a plea for delicate
handling of this archaic element in the Authorized Version
on the part of the Revisers, of whom he was one of the
most distinguished, ' It is a certain advantage for Scrip -
' ture to have an archaic cast about it ; it makes it
' venerable, and it seems to speak to us a language above
'that devoted to common things.' Neither this zeal of
the translators for the purest English, nor their desire to
be loyal to all that was best in the past of the national
language and literature, was surprising in the England
of 1 6 1 1 ; for it was the England of Shakespeare and
Spenser, of Hooker and Bacon, as well as of the con-
tending Puritans and High Churchmen — and as yet there
was no divorce between culture and passionate devotion
to the truth of God.

' Rule V. — The divisions of the chapters to be
' altered either not at all, or as little as may be,
' if necessity so require.'

This deals with what was but a detail, although an
important one ; and it would have been well if advantage
had been taken of such an excellent opportunity to get
rid of divisions which are frequently arbitrary and mis-
leading, as is manifest to every careful reader. An
examination of the breaks between the fifty -second and
fifty -third chapters of Isaiah, or the ninth and tenth
chapters of Matthew — to mention two out of many — will
show how faulty the division is which still prevails.
English Churchmen have pointed out how ludicrous the

ioo RULES FOR THE TRANSLATORS

effect sometimes is in reading the lesson which ends
with Acts 2 1 . 40, where the reader can hardly help
making it finish, ' " He spake unto them in the Hebrew
"tongue, saying," here endeth the second lesson.'

' Rule VI . — No marginal notes at all to be affixed,
' but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or
' Greek words which cannot, without some circum-
' locution, so briefly and fitly be expressed in the
'text.'

Historically viewed, this was perhaps the most impor-
tant of all these instructions, and the furthest -reaching in
its effects. It probably did more than anything else,
on the negative side, to make the Authorized Version
the Bible of all classes in the community. The absence
of sectarian and controversial notes, such as were common
in other versions, lifted the book above the strife of
parties and gathered the whole nation round it in
allegiance to the evangelic faith. It is true that many
of the notes in the former versions had been of great
service, especially when the study of the Scriptures in the
vernacular was a new thing, when evangelical preaching
was far from common, and useful commentaries were
unknown. Yet if similar notes had been bound up with
the Authorized Version, there would probably have been
an unhallowed rivalry to-day in the place where every
warring voice should be hushed. Even if they had not
gone so far as to impose on the Church ' the Calvinism of
' the Synod of Dort, the absolutism of James, the high-
' flying prelacy of Bancroft,' we would probably have
had sectarian and denominational Bibles, as we have
sectarian and denominational hymn-books and magazines.
Men might still have been saying, * I am of Tyndale,
' I am of Geneva, or I am of King James.'

Sometimes when we are oppressed, in our own time,
by the rivalries which obscure the Gospel message, and
create an atmosphere of unbelief, in which even the
Omnipotent and All -Gracious Saviour can ' do no mighty
' works ' amongst us, we reflect, ' What a blessing it is
* that we have only one Bible ' ; and many a cogent

MARGINAL REFERENCES 101

argument for unity has been based on the fact that
all the churches and most of the sects accept
the authority of the one Book. But suppose that
even that had been otherwise ; and we owe it to the
absence of theological and controversial notes that it
is not otherwise. The Authorized Version could never
have won the supremacy to which it so soon attained
if it had had notes as former versions had ; nor could
it have brought the English-speaking peoples face to
face with the undiluted Word ' without note or com-
' ment,' as it has done, but for the operation of this
happy rule.

The non -controversial notes which were appended were
of much value, even if they did not always shed as
much light on the text as they were intended to do.
They explain Hebrew words retained in the text ; add
explanations as to money, measures, and weights ; and
give literal translations where the original has been
altered to suit English idioms. These last are still
of great importance, and in the Revised Version not a
few of them were transferred from the margin to the
text. It was asserted, indeed, in 1659, by Dr. Cell, in
an ' Essay towards the Amendment of the last English
' Translation,' ' that the translators have placed some
' different significations in the margin, but those most-
' what the better, because where truth is tried by most
' voices it is commonly outvoted.' How far this was
true it is not possible to say now, but it is not very
credible ; and present-day scholarship would not support
the burden of the charge on its merits.

'Rule VII. — Such quotations of places to be
' marginally set down, as shall serve for a fit
' reference of one Scripture to another.'

This was the recognition of the principle that
Scripture is its own best interpreter ; and everyone
who makes use of the marginal references in our Bible
knows how helpful they are. In the original issues
of the Authorized Version these marginal references
numbered somewhere about nine thousand ; but in some

102 RULES FOR THE TRANSLATORS

modern editions as many as sixty thousand may be
found. They are meant to exhibit the mind of the
Spirit more clearly, and by comparison to bring out
more fully the meaning of individual passages ; and
while occasionally the reference when it is consulted
does not seem very obvious, they usually serve their
purpose in a helpful fashion.

'Rule VIII. — Every particular man of each
' company to take the same chapter or chapters ;
4 and having translated or amended them severally
' by himself, where he thinketh good, all to meet
' together, confer what they have done, and agree
' for their parts what shall stand.'

This is one of the precautions which were taken to
secure that along with the advantages of individual action
and initiative there would also be the advantages of
co-operation and common supervision. Some of the
earlier versions had borne too many traces of the
idiosyncrasies of the individual workers. It had been
so, for example, with Wiclif's Bible ; and part of the
value of Purvey's revision consisted in the way in which
the work done by Nicholas of Hereford was brought
into harmony with what Wiclif himself had done. It
had been so also with the Bishops' Bible. The initials
of some of the translators of that version even appear
at the end of their several ' parcels.' Archbishop Parker
thought that to do so would ' make them more diligent
'and answerable for their doings.' But however diligent
it may have made them, their gifts and opportunities
were not the same, any more than their standard of
excellence, and their joint work bore traces of all this.

' Rule IX. — As any one company hath dispatched
' any one book in this manner, they shall send it
' to the rest, to be considered by them seriously
' and judiciously ; for His Majesty is very careful
' on this point.'

REVIEWING THE REVISIONS 103

This was merely an extension of the principle under-
lying the preceding rule ; for companies might have
idiosyncrasies as well as individual workmen. Why the
King was specially concerned about this is not very
obvious ; but in so far as his urgency helped to secure
the uniformity which resulted, we have cause to be
grateful to him for it. Strangely enough, however, in
spite of this mention of the royal anxiety, this is the
one instruction which does not seem to have been con-
sistently obeyed ; probably owing to the exigencies of
time. At any rate, there is no evidence that what is
here enjoined was thoroughly done. All the same,
whether it is due to the spirit of this instruction or
to the manner in which its companion-instruction was
carried out, there is a marvellous unity of impression
all the way through from Genesis to Revelation.
Although nearly fifty men were at work in producing
this Book, it cannot be said that any of them have left
the marks of their tools on what they did. It is indeed
one Book, and not many.

' Rule X. — If any company, upon the review of
4 the book so sent, doubt or differ upon any place,
4 to send them word thereof, note the place, and
' withal send the reasons ; to which if they consent
4 not, the difference to be compounded at a general
' meeting, which is to be of the chief persons of
4 each company at the end of the work.'

' Rule XI . — When any place of special obscurity
4 is doubted of, letters to be directed by authority,
4 to send to any learned man in the land for his
4 judgement of such a place.'

These rules serve further to indicate how carefully
this work was planned and how well it was done. They
may also inspire reflections as to how different all this
was from the circumstances in which Tyndale as well
as some of his noble followers had had to do their work.
They also serve to account for the large measure of
perfection which was undoubtedly attained in 1 6 1 1 . The
Authorized Version won on its merits ; and these were

104 RULES FOR THE TRANSLATORS

due above all else to the tact and care, the diligence
and faithfulness, and the consecrated scholarship of the
translators. Nothing was overlooked that would make
for accuracy, in their discovery of the meaning of their
text and in their expression of that meaning. Those
who drew up their instructions magnified the office of
the translators ; and they in turn rose to the height
of their lofty calling.

' Rule XII. — Letters to be sent from every bishop
' to the rest of his clergy, admonishing them of
' this translation in hand, and to move and charge
* as many as, being skilful in tongues, and having
' taken pains in that kind, to send his particular
' observations to the company, either at Westminster,
' Cambridge, or Oxford, according as it was directed
'before in the King's letter to the Archbishop.'

'Rule XIII. — The directors in each company to
' be the deans of Westminster and Chester for that
' place, and the King's professors in Hebrew and
' Greek in either University.'

England had many learned men in King James's time,
and their learning had turned largely to theology and
kindred studies. 'Theology rules there/ said Grotius
regarding England, ten years after Queen Elizabeth's
death ; and when Casaubon, the last of the great
scholars of the sixteenth century, was invited to England
by King James, he found both King and people
indifferent to letters in the ordinary sense. ' There is
' a great abundance of theologians in England,' he said
to a friend ; ' all point their studies in that direction.'
And this learning was fully taken advantage of for the
great national enterprise of securing for the people a
national Bible such as had never been secured before.

' Rule XIV. — These translations to be used, when
' they agree better with the text than the Bishops'
'Bible; viz., Tyndale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's,
' Whitchurch's, Geneva.'

NICKNAMES OF EARLY VERSIONS 105

By Whitchurch's was meant the Great Bible, that book
with so many names, of which he was one of the printers .
In this connection it may be remarked how curious it
is that so many nicknames were given to these early
versions and editions. Already we have come across
the * Treacle Bible ' and the ' Breeches Bible ' as used
respectively to describe Coverdale's version and the
Genevan. There was also an edition of the latter called
the ' Whig Bible,' from a printer's blunder which made
Matt. 5. 9 read : ' Blessed are the place makers.' There
is also the ' Vinegar Bible,' from a misprint in the
heading of the Parable of the Vineyard, in Luke 20.,
which appeared as the Parable of the Vinegar ; and
many others with equally whimsical designations. There
is even the ' Wicked Bible ' ; that name having been
given to an edition of the Authorized Version in 1631,
in which the Seventh Commandment appeared with the
' not ' left out ; a blunder which led to a fine of £300
being inflicted on the King's printer by Archbishop
Laud.

It was only what was due to his memory and work
that Tyndale's name was put in the forefront in this
instruction ; and it should never be forgotten in this
connection that with the exception of Coverdale's, which
was hardly in the direct line, the various Bibles here
set forth as guides were for the most part no more
than Tyndale's in various stages of revision. His
translation is the real foundation of our English Bible ;
and with regard to Coverdale, it ought always to be
borne in mind that if his version is not in the direct
line, he himself is. Even apart from the Bible which
bears his name, he had a large share in the preparation
of the Great Bible ; and probably a small share in the
preparation of its rival, the Geneva version. ' No little
' of that indefinable quality,' says Dr. Eadie, ' that gives
' popular charm to our English Bible, and has endeared
' it to so many generations, is owing to Coverdale.'
4 Tyndale gave us the first great outline distinctly and
4 wonderfully etched, but Coverdale added those minuter
4 touches which soften and harmonize it.' The man to
whom we thus owe so much has been described as an

io6 RULES FOR THE TRANSLATORS

honest and well-meaning, but a very ordinary plodding
sort of man, like whom there can be found ten thousand
any day in London, with no remarkable ability for either
good or evil. But, as Dr. Eadie remarks, ' whatever
' his ability, Coverdale did his own work, when none
' of the " ten thousand " thought of attempting it ; and
' though his talent was certainly not transcendent, it
' qualified him to be the first to give a whole Bible
' to the English people, and to edit the Great Bible,
' which for so many years occupied a high place.'

No mention is made in this instruction of the Roman
Catholic versions ; but that was probably because the
Douai Old Testament had not appeared when the work
of the translators began. As it only appeared in 1609,
it cannot have played any important part in the transla-
tion ; but, as has already been shown, it was quite
different with the Rheims New Testament. In their
determination to make their work as perfect as they
could, the translators took advantage of help from every
available source .

CHAPTER IV
THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

107

' Wonderfully is the Bible adapted to all the varying circumstances and
necessities of the believer's life. There is a fulness in it which meets every
want, and yet can never be exhausted ; an interest ever fresh, ever new.
We can never outgrow its help, or reach a stage of spiritual advancement
when it can no longer lead us. It ever goes before, drawing out and
educating every spiritual perception, satisfying every spiritual need, and
yet ever giving us a sense of infinite fulness.' — DR. HUGH MACMILLAN.

CHAPTER IV
THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

IT is very unfortunate that the Preface to the Authorized
Version — in which the translators justify the demand
for a new version, show why this should shake no man's
faith, give an account of previous translations, and
indicate the chief principles and considerations which
guided them in their work — should be as little known
as the Dedication to King James is well known. For
the Preface is incomparably the more important docu-
ment of the two. There is much in its wise and weighty
words which would be of interest at any time, but which
is of special interest at this Tercentenary time ; and
which also gathers much of the history of the transla-
tion around it. It is to be regretted that its great
length prevents its reproduction here — it extends to well-
nigh twelve thousand words — for it is a great historical
document, a far-reaching State Paper with which every
student of Scripture should be familiar.

The preparation of it is usually attributed to Dr.
Miles Smith, who became Bishop of Gloucester.
Probably, however, he had the assistance of others in
drawing up a statement of such importance. Certainly
others would take part • in its revisal . As it is too
long to be quoted in extenso, a summary must suffice,
with sufficient quotation to present the argument of the
translators and their line of thought in their own words.

In the first three paragraphs they show how inevitable
it was that such an undertaking as theirs should be met
with criticism, and even with bitter opposition. It had
always been so, in ancient Israel, in the Empire of

Rome, in Jerome's time, and in their own day, and would

109

no THE TRANSLATORS PREFACE

continue to be so till the end of time. ' Zeal to promote
' the common good, whether it be by devising any thing
' ourselves, or revising that which hath been laboured
' by others, deserveth certainly much respect and esteem,
' but yet findeth but cold entertainment in the world.
' It is welcomed with suspicion instead of love, and
' with emulation instead of thanks : and if there be
' any hole left for cavil to enter (and cavil, if it do
' not find an hole, will make one), it is sure to be
' misconstrued, and in danger to be condemned. This
' will easily be granted by as many as know story, or
' have any experience .... So hard a thing it is to
' please all, even when we please God best, and do
' seek to approve ourselves to every one's conscience.'

As a matter of fact, the opposition, real although
it was, was not nearly so inveterate or prolonged as
they seem to have anticipated ; and their triumph was
wonderfully complete when it came. What they had
to face was nothing to what Jerome had experienced ;
and it is hardly possible to reason from the opposition
which was shown to the Authorized Version when it
first appeared to the ' passive resistance ' which has been
shown to the Revised Version ; an attitude which seems
to have become chronic if not actually permanent. In
spite of fierce conflicts in Church and State, and all
the horrors and preoccupations of Civil War, it may
be in part because of these, the new translation
made its way with unwonted rapidity ; scattering the
clouds of prejudice and hatred until ere long it was
the Bible of the English nation and of all the English-
speaking peoples in the homelands and beyond the seas,
as no other had ever been before, and as no other
seems likely to be again.

The translators themselves give King James much of
the credit due for carrying the great enterprise through
to a triumphant issue. ' He that meddleth with men's
' religion in any part meddleth with their custom, nay,
' with their freehold ; and though they find no content
* in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to
' hear of altering . Notwithstanding, his royal heart was
' not daunted or discouraged for this or that colour,

THE KING'S FAVOUR in

4 but stood resolute, as a statue immoveable, and an
' anvil not easy to be beaten into plates, as one saith ;
4 he knew Who had chosen him to be a soldier, or
4 rather a captain ; and being assured that the course
' which he intended made much for the glory of, and
4 the building up of His Church, he would not suffer
4 it to be broken off for whatsoever speeches or practices.'

Even if this is here stated in somewhat grandiloquent
language it is essentially the truth. But for James,
whatever his motives were, it seems fairly certain that
nothing would have been done ; or that at best there
would have been some sectional revision which would
have simply added another rival to those already in
the field. There was no widespread enthusiasm for a
new version ; and evidently from the tone of this
exordium of the Preface the hostility to it was both
keen and persistent. Some have given Dr. Reynolds
credit for adroitness in taking advantage of the preju-
dices and weaknesses of the King to attain his end ;
but there is no good ground for such a suggestion.
So far as the record goes there was nothing adroit in
the way in which he presented his case at Hampton
Court. It was not of any man's adroitness, nor even
of the King's prejudices, but of God that this great
weapon for the advancement of His kingdom was
forged as it was. He was overruling the strifes and
weaknesses of men for His own glory and for the good
of those who were out of the way.

In the fourth paragraph an earnest and finely -expressed
tribute is paid to the unapproachable excellence of the
Scriptures. ' It is not only an armour, but also a whole
4 armoury of weapons, both offensive and defensive ;
4 whereby we may save ourselves, and put the enemy
1 to flight . It is not a herb, but a tree, or rather a
4 whole paradise of trees of life, which bring forth fruit
4 every month, and the fruit thereof is for meat, and
4 the leaves for medicine . It is not a pot of Manna,
' or a cruse of oil, which were for memory only, or
4 for a meal's meat or two ; but, as it were, a shower
4 of heavenly bread sufficient for a whole host, be it
4 never so great, and, as it were, a whole cellar full

ii2 THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

1 of oil vessels ; whereby all our necessities may be
' provided for, and our debts discharged. In a word,
'it is a panary of wholesome food against fenowed
' traditions ; a physician's shop (as St. Basil calls it)
' of preservatives against poisoned heresies ; a pandect
' of profitable laws against rebellious spirits ; a treasury
' of most costly jewels against beggarly rudiments ;
' finally, a fountain of most pure water springing up
' unto everlasting life . And what matter ? the original
' thereof being from heaven, not from earth ; the author
' being God, not man ; the inditer, the Holy Spirit, not
' the wit of the Apostles or Prophets ; the penmen,
' such as were sanctified from the womb, and endued
' with a principal portion of God's Spirit ; the matter,
' verity, piety, purity, uprightness ; the form, God's word,
' God's testimony, God's oracles, the word of truth, the
' word of salvation, &c. ; the effects, light of under-
' standing, stableness of persuasion, repentance from dead
' works, newness of life, holiness, peace, joy in the Holy
' Ghost ; lastly, the end and reward of the study thereof,
' fellowship with the saints, participation of the heavenly
' nature, fruition of an inheritance immortal, undefiled,
' and that never shall fade away. Happy is the man
' that delighteth in the Scripture, and thrice happy that
4 meditateth in it day and night.'

The translators were great scholars, for the most part ;
and some of them were also keen ecclesiastics ; but
first of all they were devout Christian men who had
tasted and seen for themselves that God is good. That
was their inspiration in their determination to give the
people their best, and God's Spirit was their guide
throughout. Naturally, therefore, they proceeded in the
next place to show that in proportion as men recognized
this incomparable value of Scripture, they must also
recognize the necessity for rendering it into the
vernacular tongues. Those who oppose such transla-
tion on any plea whatsoever are open to the suggestion
that the Bible has never been all to them that it can
be to those who wait on God. Those who value the
light will agree with the translators that the window
should be thrown wide open that the light may stream

TRANSLATION DESCRIBED 113

in. Those who have drunk of the living water them-
selves will feel the force of the translators' plea for
a bucket being put beside the well that others may draw
too. Each nation may think every other language
barbarous but its own ; but however barbarous any
tongue may be, it is through it alone that those who
speak it can hear the Oracles of God with understand-
ing hearts . ' Translation it is that openeth the window,
1 to let in the light ; that breaketh the shell, that we
4 may eat the kernel ; that putteth aside the curtain,
' that we may look into the most holy place ; that
' removeth the cover of the well, that we may come
4 by the water ; even as Jacob rolled away the stone
4 from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks
4 of Laban were watered. Indeed, without translation
4 into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like
4 children at Jacob's well (which was deep) without a
4 bucket or something to draw with ; or as that person
4 mentioned by Esay, to whom when a sealed book was
4 delivered with this motion, Read this, / pray thee,
4 he was fain to make this answer, / cannot, for it is
4 sealed.'

In the three paragraphs which follow this plea there
is an interesting account of the Septuagint and other
Greek versions, of the Vulgate and other Latin versions,
and of the various translations into the languages of the
Dalmatians, Syrians, Egyptians, Persians, and other
peoples, including the Saxons. Beda, as they tell us,
is reported by Cistertiensis to have turned a great part
of the Scriptures into Saxon ; and on the same authority,
King Alured is said to have turned the Psalter into
Saxon . There are other two noteworthy references in
this section. ' Much about that time, even in our King
4 Richard the Second's time, John Trevisa translated them
4 into English, and many English Bibles in written hand
4 are yet to be seen that divers translated, as it is very
4 probable, in that age.'

As already indicated, this statement rests on a very
slender foundation as regards John of Trevisa ; and on
no foundation at all otherwise. The era of literary
criticism had not yet come, and statements such as

I

ii4 THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

this were handed down without any adequate sifting
or verification. The manuscript Bibles which were to
be seen then are still to be seen, just as they were
seen by Sir Thomas More in his day, and are nothing
more than copies of the Purvey revision of Wiclif's
translation, and executed in that generation. The other
reference is to ' the Lord Cromwell ' as a friend of
translation work ; and it does no more than justice to one
to whom that sacred cause owed much in the dark days
when it had no royal patron, and had to be done in
secret and at a great cost.

The ninth paragraph deals briefly with the attitude
of the Church of Rome to this work of rendering the
Scriptures into the vernacular ; and although the con-
flict was very fierce in these days, and involved the
very existence of the nation as great and free, this
controversial matter is dealt with temperately and without
bitterness. The position is stated, however, with perfect
candour and with considerable pungency. ' So much
1 are they afraid of the light of the Scripture (lucifugae
1 Scripturarum, as Tertullian speaketh) that they will
' not trust the people with it, no, not as it is set forth
' by their own sworn men, no, not with the licence of
' their own Bishops and Inquisitors. Yea, so unwilling
' are they to communicate the Scriptures to the people's
' understanding in any sort, that they are not ashamed
' to confess, that we forced them to translate it into
4 English against their wills . This seemeth to argue
' a bad cause, or a bad conscience, or both.'

The translators deal next with the various specific
objections which had been taken to their work, and
these seem to have been very varied as well as numerous.
There were those who held that there was no need for
a new English version, and who suggested that any
such translation would cast a slight on the earlier English
Bibles to which they owed so much. These were
answered first in the words of Jerome, who had gone
through the same kind of controversy : ' Do we con-
' demn the ancient ? In no case ; but after the
' endeavours of them that were before us, we take the
' best pains we can in the house of God.' The translators

FORMER TRANSLATIONS 115

also offered an answer in their own words : ' And to
' the same effect say we, that we are so far from con-
' demning any of their labours that travelled before us
' in this kind, either in this land, or beyond sea, either
' in King Henery's time, or King Edward's (if there were
' any translation, or correction of a translation, in his
' time), or Queen Elizabeth's of ever renowned memory,
' that we acknowledge them to have been raised up of
' God for the building and furnishing of His Church,
' and that they deserve to be had of us and of posterity
' in everlasting remembrance .... Therefore, blessed
' be they, and most honoured be their name, that break
' the ice, and give the onzet upon that which helpeth
'forward to the saving of souls.'

But there were other adversaries who made play of
the admission that former versions were useless or worse,
and discredited the position of those who demanded
the Scriptures in the vernacular. To all such we reply,
says the Preface, * that we do not deny, nay, we affirm
' and avow, that the very meanest translation of the
' Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession
' (for we have seen none of their's of the whole Bible
' as yet), containeth the word of God, nay, is the word
' of God. ... A man may be counted a virtuous man,
' though he have made many slips in his life, also a
' comely man and lovely, although he have some warts
' upon his hand. . . . No cause therefore why the word
' translated should be denied to be the word, or for-
' bidden to be current, notwithstanding that some
' imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the
'setting forth of it.' God's Word is still God's Word,
no matter what may be the language in which it appears ;
and as for perfection, what was very perfect under the
sun, apart from the work of those who, like the
Apostles, were endued with the privilege of infallibility ?
The Septuagint itself was far from being perfect, yet
the Apostles used it. They were ready to avail them-
selves of the best they had, and to hear the truth from
any and every source.

The Preface then deals very effectively with a third
objection which was being taken to their enterprise,

n6 THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

based on the number of revisions which had already
been made. ' For to whom was it ever imputed for
' a fault (by such as were wise)/ it asks, ' to go over
4 that which he had done and to amend it where he
' saw cause ? ' They also show that Councils and Popes
had approved of the principle of revision again and
again. The wise man never makes a fetish of a wooden
or cast-iron consistency which would prevent him from
being wiser to-day than he was yesterday, or rob him
of any hope of being wiser to-morrow than he is to-
day. He is always ready to revise what he has done,
and improve it if he can. That was a working prin-
ciple with all the reformers and translators in the various
lands, when the new light was breaking out in every
direction.

Having thus cleared the ground, the Preface proceeds
to describe what was the purpose of the translators
throughout, and this is done in a very modest and effec-
tive fashion. Their orders had been to alter as little
as they could consistently with loyalty to the original, and
they had given heed to this. It should never be over-
looked that the Authorized Version was a revision rather
than a new translation. Indeed, one of the objections
urged against it when it appeared was that it was too
little of a new version. It was ' newly translated out
4 of the original tongues ' ; but this statement on the
title-page must be qualified by what follows : ' With
4 the former translations diligently compared and revised.'
4 Truly, good Christian Reader, we never thought from
4 the beginning that we should need to make a new
4 translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one ;
4 (for then the imputation of Sixtus had been true in
4 some sort, that our people had been fed with gall of
4 dragons instead of wine, with wheal instead of milk ;)
4 but to make a good one better, or out of many good
4 ones one principal good one, not justly to be excepted
4 against ; that hath been our endeavour, that our mark.'
Yet it was a genuine translation, verified at every step
by reference to the sources. 4 If you ask what they
4 had before them ; truly it was the Hebrew text of
' the Old Testament, the Greek of the New. These are

' the two golden pipes, or rather conduits, wherethrough
' the olive branches empty themselves into the gold.'

They tell, too, of the kind of men who were set to
do this work ; men who sought the truth rather than
their own praise ; and of how thoroughly the work was
done. They did not huddle it through in seventy -two
days, but spent twice seven times seventy -two.

' Neither did we think much to consult the translators
' or commentators, Chaldee, Hebrew, Syrian, Greek, or
' Latin ; no, nor the Spanish, French, Italian, or Dutch ;
' neither did we disdain to revise that which we had
' done, and to bring back to the anvil that which we
' had hammered ; but having and using as great helps
' as were needful, and fearing no reproach for slowness,
' nor coveting praise for expedition we have at length,
' through the good hand of the Lord upon us, brought
' the work to that pass that you see.' Nothing that
was really essential could escape a company so con-
stituted and so minded, and as the years have shown and
everybody testifies, their work was nobly done. Many
more exact renderings were introduced, and many graphic
expressions which have become household words . Taken
collectively, the points of agreement with the earlier
versions are more noticeable than the points of diver-
gence. They welcomed happy renderings from every
quarter until their work became a sort of mosaic of the
best results of all the previous versions ; and the cir-
cumstances in which their work was done enabled the
translators to look round in quietness and see everything
that had been already achieved as none of their prede-
cessors could. And yet with all their borrowing there
is a general smoothness and consistency which prevent
their work from being thought of as a sort of patch-
work. It is a growth rather than a manufactured article,
and few marks of the tools or traces of the hammer are
to be seen. In the best sense, it is both a revision and
a translation.

Thereafter they proceed to explain and vindicate their
action in including among their marginal notes those
which dealt with alternative renderings and various read-
ings. They remark that in matters which concern salva-

n8 THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

tion the Scripture is plain, and they were not among
those who tremble for the ark. They saw distinct
advantages in letting the truth be known.

' Therefore, as St . Augustine saith, that variety of
' translations is profitable for the finding out of the
' sense of the Scriptures ; so diversity of signification
' and sense in the margin, where the text is not so
' clear, must needs do good ; yea, is necessary, as we
' are persuaded . We know that Sixtus Quintus expressly
' forbiddeth that any variety of readings of their vulgar
4 edition shall be put in the margin ; (which though
' it be not altogether the same thing to that we have
' in hand, yet it looketh that way ;) but we think he
' hath not all of his own side his favourers for this
4 conceit . They that are wise had rather have their
1 judgments at liberty in differences of readings, than
'to be captivated to one, when it may be the other.'

The translators then proceed to deal with the vexed
question of whether a word in the original should always
be rendered by the same word in the English ; and state
their position with unbated breath, and in a fashion
which deserves to be pondered before their practice is
roundly condemned, as it has so often been.

' Another thing we think good to admonish thee of,
' gentle Reader, that we have not tied ourselves to an
' .uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words,
' as some peradventure would wish that we had done,
' because they observe, that some learned men somewhere
' have been as exact as they could that way . Truly,
' that we might not vary from the sense of that which
' we had translated before, if the word signified the same
' thing in both places, (for there be some words that
' be not of the same sense everywhere,) we were especially
' careful, and made a conscience according to our duty.
' But that we should express the same notion in the
' same particular word ; as for example, if we translate
' the Hebrew or Greek word once by purpose, never to
' call it intent; if one where journeying, never travelling;
' if one where think, never suppose ; if one where pain,
' never ache ; if one where joy, never gladness, &c .,
* thus to mince the matter, we thought to savour more

VARIETY OF RENDERINGS 119

' of curiosity than wisdom, and that rather it would breed
' scorn in the atheist, than bring profit to the godly
' reader. For is the kingdom of God become words or
' syllables ? Why should we be in bondage to them,
4 if we may be free ? use one precisely, when we may
' use another no less fit as commodiously ? '

This has been held by many to be the outstanding
defect of the Authorized Version, and the Revised
Version at once joins issue here. Yet there are two
sides even to this question, and it might have been well
had the Revisers given heed to the weighty words
addressed to them by Dr. A. B. Davidson, himself a
member of the Old Testament company, and a con-
summate student and scholar. He pointed out that the
practice of the Authorized Version ' has greatly con-
' tributed to make the English Bible what it is, and
4 to give it much of the hold on men's imaginations
' which it has. Its pathos and music and charming
' variety are largely due to this ; its beauty, in a word,
' is greatly owing to it. And religion very willingly
4 allies itself with what is beautiful and uses it for its
' own furtherance. And any change here will, without
1 doubt, be a loss to religion. And how great a loss
4 it will also be to the cause of literature, and the interests
4 of the English tongue 1 The English Bible has been
4 to us what the Q'oran has been to the dweller in
' the desert, the source both of our intellectual and
' religious life, and the instrument for expressing our
' highest thought.' After pointing out that he thought
the men of 1 6 1 1 had carried their introduction of variety
too far, as when they give four renderings — count,
account, reckon, and impute — for a Greek word, which
if not technical is used in a special sense, Dr. Davidson
adds : ' There is certainly now rising, and indeed run-
' ning very strongly, a current of opposition to this
' method of rendering — a current, I fear, which will be
4 found to work as much havoc as the opposite one.
4 The maxim of this new method is to render the same
4 Greek or Hebrew word always by the same English
' one. Under this new principle, all variety will disap-
4 pear.' He then refers to ' the well-known fact that

izo THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE

* the genius of one language differs from that of another ;
' that sameness and exactness characterize the Greek,
1 variety and looseness the English ; that the Hebrew
' language is poor in its vocabulary, while the English
' is copious ; that even where a word corresponds in
' general to another, the addition of an epithet may
' destroy the correspondence, and render the use of
' another term necessary ; that not only meaning, but
' rhythm, flow, and sound make up language.'

The translators further tell that in regard to the old
ecclesiastical words they had shunned the ' scrupulosity
' of the Puritans ' and the ' obscurity of the Papists,'
and kept the important fact before them that the Scrip-
tures should speak so as to be understood by plain
and unlearned folk, the wayfaring man or the man in
the street.

' Lastly, we have on the one side avoided the scrupu-
' losity of the Puritanes, who leave the old Ecclesiastical
' words, and betake them to other, as when they put
' washing for baptism, and congregation instead of
' Church : as also on the other side we have shunned
' the obscurity of the Papists, in their azymes, tunike,
' rational, holocausts, prepuce, pasche, and a number of
' such like, whereof their late translation is full, and that
' of purpose to darken the sense, that since they must
' needs translate the Bible, yet by the language thereof
' it may be kept from being understood. But we desire
' that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the
' language of Canaan, that it may be understood even
' of the very vulgar.'

But while the middle course may usually be the safest
and is often the best, it can hardly be adopted as a wise
working principle in connection with translation or etymo-
logy. If ' washing ' means ' washing,' there does not
seem to be any good reason for rendering it as ' baptism,'
especially in a version which so manifestly seeks to
trust the people ; and it is not easy to see why, if a word
means ' congregation,' and not ' church,' it should not
be so rendered . But their instructions on this point were
very definite, and probably they worked out for peace
in the end and did no great harm.

A DIVINE INHERITANCE 121

Then, finally, the Preface deals with the grand result
of their work, that great inheritance which they did so
much to hand on even to our day, enriched as it had never
been before. It is a Divine inheritance, for it was
God who opened up the fountains of living waters ;
but it is also an inheritance from men, for many others
have laboured in this holy cause. ' Ye are brought
' unto fountains of living water which ye digged not ;
' do not cast earth into them, with the Philistines, neither
' prefer broken pits before them, with the wicked Jews .
4 Others have laboured, and you may enter into their
' labours. O receive not so great things in vain : O
' despise not so great salvation.' The great desire of
these men of God to whom we owe so much was that the
Scriptures should be loved and read, and the appeal
with which they closed their message to their own
generation is still resounding down through the ages :
the prayer of all who wish well to our land must be that
it will be heard anew in these days, when their great
service to humanity and the cause of God is being freshly
brought before the English-speaking peoples in many
lands.

' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the
1 living God ; but a blessed thing it is, and will bring
' us to everlasting blessedness in the end, when God
' speaketh unto us, to hearken ; when He setteth His
' Word before us, to read it ; when He stretcheth out
' His hand and calleth, to answer, Here am I, here we
' are to do Thy will, O God. The Lord work a care and
' conscience in us to know Him and serve Him, that
' we may be acknowledged of Him at the appearing of
1 our Lord JESUS CHRIST, to Whom with the Holy
' Ghost be all praise and thanksgiving. Amen.'

CHAPTER V
THE GRAND RESULT

123

' There is gold in the rocks which fringe the Pass of the Splugen, gold
even in the stones which mend the roads, but there is too little of it to
be worth extracting. Not so the Scriptures : they are much fine gold ;
their very dust is precious.' — C. H. SPURGEON.

CHAPTER V
THE GRAND RESULT

E£E the Daughter of the King, the consecrated
work of the translators was clothed in raiment of
needlework and in cloth of wrought gold, and was like-
wise all glorious within. Turning first to the more
external and technical aspects of it, it would seem that
two distinct editions of the new version were issued
in 1 6 1 1 so much alike that many pages of the one
might be exchanged for pages of the other, and yet
obviously set up and printed independently of each other.
Some of the experts call the one the first edition and some
the other ; and it is so difficult to tell which was abso-
lutely first, that they might both be called first editions.
They have been somewhat whimsically named the ' He
' and She Bibles,' from the fact that while in Ruth 3.15
the one has ' He went into the city,' the other has
1 She went into the city.' Even a cursory examina-
tion of copies of the two editions shows that 'they differ
in hundreds of minute particulars, and that each has
errors of its own. Many of these have been corrected
on their own authority by printers and editors since,
who often in turn introduced new errors of their own.
For it must be borne in mind throughout that the
Authorized Version as we have it now differs in many
details from the editions of 1 6 1 1 .

Nor can it be said that all the corrections or errors
which have been introduced by these unauthorized
revisers, usually without remark, have been in connec-
tion with trivial matters of punctuation and the like.
One of the first editions actually read, ' Then cometh
4 Judas,' for 'Then cometh Jesus,' in Matt. 26. 36.

125

126 THE GRAND RESULT

The errors, indeed, sometimes completely changed the
meaning of the passages involved ; as where the word
' not ' was added in Leviticus 17. 14, and omitted in
Ezekiel 24. 8. In addition to the ' He and She Bibles,'
another edition was also issued in 1611, and some
authorities prefer to put it that there were practically
three first editions . Each of these has 1 6 1 1 on the New
Testament title-page, and they are all fine, handsome
volumes in bold black letter. Other editions followed
each other in rapid succession, very rapid indeed when
the limited extent of the reading public as it was then
is borne in mind. There were other folio editions in
1613, 1616, 1617, 1629, 1634, 1638, 1640, and 1642.
The first octavo and quarto editions were published in
1612, and others followed in 1613, 1619, 1631, and
1633. Since then there has been a constant stream of
editions of all sorts, and the flow is greater now than
ever before.

The copyright of the Authorized Version is vested
in the Crown, by whom the right of printing is granted
by charter or licence. The original grants, how-
ever, contained no injunction as to correctness, and
have provided no penalties for inaccuracy. The system,
indeed, for long seems to have led to careless-
ness and gross inaccuracies ; and nothing is more
remarkable than the extraordinary blunders which often
disfigured the pages of many of the earlier editions, and
were often persisted in in one reprint after another.
One edition is said to have contained two thousand errors,
and another six thousand. ' Corruption ' appeared for
' conception ' ; ' condemnation ' for ' redemption ' ;
' flesh ' for ' fish ' ; ' wilderness ' for ' mules ' ; ' wake '
for ' walk ' ; ' delighted ' for ' defiled ' ; ' continue ' for
' confirm ' ; and so on. Whole clauses were sometimes
omitted, while negatives were wrongfully put in and
left out.

Lord Mansfield is reported in Blackstone's Commen-
taries to have declared that ' the English translation
' the King bought ; therefore it has been concluded to
4 be his property . His whole right rests on the founda-
' tion of property in the copy, by the common law.'

BIBLE PRINTING 127

If this be the law, it was a famous bargain which James
made for the Crown ; for so far as is known he never
expended a farthing on the production of the Authorized
Version. It is true that Robert Barker had a salary
as royal printer, but that had no special reference to the
printing of the Bible. Not only so, but a patent was
granted to John Speed, in the eighth year of King James,
by which he was entitled to bind up his genealogical
charts, accompanied with a Map of Canaan and its Index,
without any option of the purchaser, in all Bibles. This
privilege was to hold good ' only for the term of ten
' years next ensuing,' at an additional charge of not
more than two shillings for the large folio size. In
the first folio edition in Roman letter, that of 1616,
this inset extended to thirty -four pages.

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge enjoy the
right to print Bibles, under charters dating back to the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As distinct from
these charters, which are perpetual, the last patent^ or
licence, for England, was granted by George IV.
to Andrew Strachan, George Eyre, and Andrew Spottis-
woode, for a term of thirty years. This expired on
January 21, 1860, and was then renewed during pleasure,
Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode being thus the King's
printers so far as the publication of the Authorized
Version is concerned. In Scotland the last patent expired
in 1839, and was not renewed. Since then there has
been a Bible Board, with authority to grant licences
to those who desire to print editions of the Bible. The
Lord Advocate for the time being is chairman of this
Board, and printers must enter into a bond for £500,
and submit their sheets for approval before they can
be issued. When the monopoly was abolished in Scot-
land, the price of Bibles fell about one half, and there
was a large increase in the circulation. In Ireland there
is still a patentee, but Trinity College, Dublin, has also
a concurrent right.

Where the text of Scripture is accompanied by a
bona fide commentary, there is free trade in Bible print-
ing. At one time, Bibles were regularly smuggled into
England from Scotland, and petitions regarding this

128 THE GRAND RESULT

invasion of their rights from the monopolists to the
Privy Council are still extant. In the case of the
Revised Version, the right of publication belongs ex-
clusively to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.
The fact that no Bibles could be printed in Scotland
until seventy years ago, except by the King's patentee,
and that there was thus only one privileged press in
that country, whereas there were three in England, acted
very injuriously. Importation was forbidden, and the
Bibles which were printed were full of errors, often of
a most ridiculous kind. Both paper and printing were
sometimes so bad that the books were nearly illegible.
As recently as 1824, an interdict was obtained by the
holders of the patent — fortunately the last to hold it—
from the Court of Session, prohibiting any copies of
the Scriptures printed in England from being imported
into Scotland. This decision was affirmed by the House
of Lords on appeal in 1829 ; with the result that the
British and Foreign Bible Society, which could send
Bibles to the ends of the earth, dared not send them to
Scotland, even to its own auxiliary Societies.

The full title of the book which was to do such a
work in the coming ages and to attain such a place
in history was ' THE HOLY BIBLE, conteyning the Old
' Testament and the New : Newly Translated out of the
' Originall Tongues : and with the former Translations
' diligently compared and reuised, by his Maiesties
' speciall Commandement . Appointed to be read in
' Churches. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker,
' Printer to the Kings most Excellent Maiestie. Anno
' Dom. 1611.' In some copies these words appear in
a very handsome copper -plate engraving, representing
Moses on one side and Aaron on the other ; the four
Evangelists at the corners ; and the Sacred Name above.
In other copies the same words are printed within a
woodcut which had frequently appeared in copies of
the Geneva Bible. After the title-page came the Dedica-
tion and Preface . Then there was a Kalendar ; Almanack
for xxxix years, &c. ; Table of Proper Lessons, &c. ;
and the names and order of all the books. In many
copies John Speed's inset was also to be found.

MARGINAL NOTES 129

Among other matters of interest in connection with
the first issues of the Authorized Version are the marginal
notes, the references, the chapter -headings, and the use
of italics. Although everything controversial had been
disallowed, the marginal notes were both numerous and
important. Excluding the Apocrypha, there were over
seven thousand such notes appended by the translators ;
and it would have been well had those which have
since been added without any authority, amounting to
368 in number according to Dr. Scrivener, been
distinguished from the others by being put into
brackets. Some editions of the Authorized Version have
been issued in our time with the notes printed separately
at the foot of the page, a measure which prevents them
from being overlooked amid the references with which
they are usually mixed up.

These marginal notes of the translators fall into four
classes. First of all there are those which deal with
different readings in the manuscripts, where these were
deemed worthy of mention. Then there are those which
give literal translations where the English idiom seemed
to necessitate some deviation from the text. Fully two-
thirds of the notes are of this sort, giving more
literal meanings of the Hebrew or Chaldaic in the Old
Testament and of the Greek in the New. As has already
been noticed, the value of many of these notes is borne
out by the fact that not a few of them were transferred
from the margin to the text when the Revisers came
to deal with them. The third class of notes deals with
the explanation of Hebrew words which were retained
in the text, such as ' Mammon ' and ' Hallelujah.' The
fourth class consists of notes with useful information
regarding distances, weights, and measures.

More than half of the marginal references in the
Authorized Version, as it left the hands of the trans-
lators, were taken from manuscript and printed copies
of the Vulgate, and thus represent the fruit of the
researches of mediaeval scholars. As we have seen,
they did not amount to more than nine thousand in
number, and did much to elucidate the text and guide

readers into the meaning of what they read. In later
K

i3o THE GRAND RESULT

editions this number has often been enormously
increased, sometimes seven -fold ; but the value of the
references thus added was not always in proportion to
their bulk. The chapter -headings, like the column -
headings, were meant to give a summary of each chapter,
and usually they do so. Sometimes, however, they go
further ; as in the Song of Solomon, where they become
a sort of commentary, and explain the book as an
allegory of Christ and the Church. Jews have remarked,
too, that in the chapter -headings of the Old Testament,
when the prophets speak of sin, they are always made
to speak of the sins of the Jews ; but when they speak
of glory and holiness, it is the glory and holiness of
the Church. There had been similar headings in the
Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops' Bible ;
but the translators of the Authorized Version introduced
an entirely new set. For the heading to Jeremiah 10. in
the Bishops' Bible, ' of evil Curates,' we now have, for
example, ' He lamented the 'spoil of the tabernacle by
' foolish pastors ' ; while the column -heading at
Mark 6., in the Geneva version ' Inconvenience of
' dancing,' now appears as ' John the Baptist beheaded.'
With only twelve exceptions the headings introduced
in 1 6 1 1 have kept 'their place in most of the Bibles
still in use. The only notable change among the twelve
is that connected with the I49th Psalm. Here the
original heading was, ' That power which He hath given
' to the Church to rule the consciences of men ' ; where
the last six words have been struck but. In some editions
these headings are omitted altogether.

In its employment of italics to indicate words not
directly represented in the original, the Authorized
Version followed the example of previous versions, and
in particular that of the Geneva version. Some heartily
approve of the practice as making it clear throughout
that the book is a translation. Others urge that they
are often used without either necessity or warrant, as
the words supplied are in reality implied in the text.
In the Beatitudes, for example, there is no reason what-
ever for putting the word ' are ' in italics throughout,
since the verb is implied in the Greek idiom although

HUXLEY'S TESTIMONY 131

it is not actually expressed in the Greek text. There is
even the danger in modern times that the italics may
be taken by some readers to indicate the need for greater
emphasis, and, on the whole, their disappearance would
be no great loss. As a matter of fact, the practice of
the translators was by no means uniform, and their
work in this respect is not so careful as in some other
respects. There are, indeed, indications of haste ; and
that there was some hurry in the end seems to be borne
out further by the fact that there are no paragraph
marks after the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles .

Turning now from the outer and external aspects of
the grand result to the inner, we find that the outcome
of the labours of the translators was a volume which
ever since it first appeared has gone forth conquering
and to conquer, and which under God and through the
testimony of His Holy Spirit, has been not merely the
source of Britain's greatness, but a source of blessing
and consolation, of inspiration and revival. It has been
a well of water for the thirsty ; a river of life which
has turned many a wilderness into a fruitful field ; a
key which has unlocked many a dungeon door and set
the captives of ignorance and error, of superstition and
sin, free for ever. It has opened blind eyes, and brought
out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sat
in darkness out of the prison-house. The testimonies
which have been borne to its. merits and the work it
has done come from every quarter, and it is but right
that, at this time of Tercentenary celebration, some of
the more notable of these should be brought together.

The late Professor Huxley, agnostic though he was,
speaking of our English Bible as a schoolbook, said :
' Consider the great historical fact that for three
' centuries this book has been woven into the life of
' that which is best and noblest in English history ;
' that it has become the national epic of Britain, and
4 is as familiar to noble and simple, from John O'Groat's
4 to Land's End, as Dante and Tasso once were to the
4 Italians : that it is written in the noblest and purest
4 English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere

I32 THE GRAND RESULT

1 literary form : and, finally, that it forbids the veriest
' hind who never left his village to be ignorant of the
' existence of other countries and other civilizations, and
' of a great past stretching back to the furthest limits
4 of the oldest nations in the world. By the study of
4 what other book could children be so much humanized
' and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical
4 procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary
4 space in the interval between two eternities ; and earns
4 the blessings or the curses of all time, according to its
4 efforts to do good and hate evil, even as they also
' are earning their payment for their work ? '

John Ruskin, in his Prceterita, says : ' My mother
' forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters
' of the Bible by heart ; . . . and to that discipline—
4 patient, accurate, and resolute — I owe, not only
' a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally
4 serviceable, but much of my general power of taking
' pains, and the best part of my taste in Literature.'
4 I have just opened my oldest (in use) Bible. . . . My
' mother's list of chapters, with which, thus learned,
' she established my soul in life, has just fallen out of
'it. . . . And truly . . . this maternal installation of
' my mind in that property of chapters, I count, very
4 confidently, the most precious, and on the whole the
' one essential part of all my education.'

Thomas Carlyle's testimony is also memorable :
' In the poorest cottage are books — is one Book,
4 wherein for several thousands of years the spirit of
* man has found light and nourishment, and an inter -
' preting response to whatever is Deepest in him ;
4 wherein still to this day, for the eye that will look
' well, the Mystery of Existence reflects itself, if not
' resolved, yet revealed, and prophetically emblemed ;
4 if not to the satisfying of the outward sense, yet to
4 the opening of the inward sense, which is the far,
4 grander result.'

The late Dean Alford, so 'distinguished as a Bible
student, said : ' We in this land possess a version of
4 Holy Scripture which may challenge comparison for
4 faithfulness, for simplicity, and for majesty with any

DEAN ALFORUS COMMENDATION 133

4 that the world has ever seen .... 'And when we
' intensify all these claims to our affection by the fact
' that it has been for centuries, and is now, the vehicle
' to this great English race of all that is pure, and
' holy, and lovely, and of good report . . . the first
4 lesson of infancy, the guide of mature life, the com-
' forter of sickness and death", ... we can hardly be
' surprised that many and some of the best among us
' refuse to see its faults, and are unable to cont'em-
4 plate with any content the prospect of their being
1 corrected.'

' Our version,' said Bishop Westcott, another great
Christian scholar, who could speak with authority, ' is
4 the work of a Church and not of a man . Or rather,
'it is a growth and not a work . Countless external
' influences, independent of the actual translators, con-
' tributed to mould it ; and when it was fashioned,
' the Christian instinct of the nation, touched, as we
' believe, by the Spirit of God, decided on its authority.'

Nor must the touching tribute of Faber, who had
exchanged its beauties for the crudities of the "Romish
version, be left out, often as it has been quoted before.
' Who wfll say,' he asked, ' that the uncommon beauty
' and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not
' one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country ?
4 It lives on the ear like a music that can never be
' forgotten ; like the sound of church bells, which the
'convert scarcely knows how he can forgo. Its felici-
4 ties seem often to be almost things rather than words .
' It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of the
' national seriousness . Nay, it is worshipped with a
4 positive idolatry, in extenuation of whose fanaticism
1 its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the scholar.
4 The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent
4 traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses .
4 It is the representative of a man's best moments ; all
' that there has been about him of soft, and gentle,
' and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for
4 ever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing,
4 which doubt never dimmed and controversy never
' soiled ; and in the length of the land there is not a

134 THE GRAND RESULT

' Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him
' whose spiritual biography is hot in his Saxon Bible.'

With this may be conjoined the testimony of a Roman"
Catholic scholar, Geddes, in his Prospectus for a new
Translation. Speaking of the Authorized Version, he
says : ' In point of perspicacity and noble simplicity,
' propriety of idiom, and purity ,of style, no English
' version has as yet surpassed it.'

' The Authorized Version,' said Dr. Eadie, himself
one of the Revisers, ' has in it the traces of its origin,
' and its genealogy may be reckoned . For while it
' has the fulness of the Bishops' Bible without its frequent
' literalisms or its repeated supplements, it has the
' graceful vigour of the Genevan, the quiet grandeur
' of the Great Bible, the clearness of Tyndale, the
' harmonies of Coverdale, and the stately theological
' vocabulary of the Rheims . It has thus a complex
' unity in its structure ... all the earlier versions
' ranging over eighty years having bequeathed to it con-
' tributions the individuality of which has not been in
' all cases toned down.'

Truly it is a grand result, the fruit of many labours
and much devotion and consecrated learning, the harvest
of prayerful sowing amid persecution and hardship and
toil, and of readiness to reap wisely and lovingly from
every field. Its language is thoroughly English ; and
yet it is separated by its archaic form from the colloquial
English of every day on the one hand, and from the
literary English of most other books on the other. It
has become the language of religion ; a book for the
people, and not for an inner circle of experts ; for
ordinary men and women, and not for scholars and
theologians alone. Of pure English words there are
97 per cent, in the Authorized Version, as against 92
per cent, in The Cry of the Children; 89 per cent,
in In Memoriam; 88 per cent, in Chaucer's Pro-
logue; 86 per cent, in The Faerie Queen; 85 per
cent, in Shakespeare, and 81 per cent, in Paradise
Lost. Nor is its archaic language that of Eliza-
bethan or Jacobean times, as has been said.
Its genealogy is to be traced up in the direct line

A GREAT DAY FOR ENGLAND 135

through every stage of translation and revision to the
Latin Vulgate ; and the common English ancestor of
every such revision is the Wiclif Bible of the fourteenth
century.

As Dr. Moulton has shown, the earlier Wiclif render-
ings passed into general currency and became almost
proverbial phrases. Hence it is also that while an
examination of the two versions shows at once a very
considerable identity of language and expression between
Tyndale and Purvey's Wiclif, Tyndale could neverthe-
less say, ' that he had no man to counterfeit, neither
' was holpen with English of any that had interpreted
' the same or such like things in the Scripture before-
' hand.' In many cases the Vulgate supplies the con-
necting link ; and gradually the English vocabulary in
which the Authorized Version is written grew up to
be used in that version in such a fashion that nothing
better for the purpose can ever be hoped for. The
translators kept sufficiently aloof from the peculiarities
of their age for their work to live on untouched by
changing literary fashions, and to sustain a long protest
against ephemeral crudities.

It was a great day for England and the cause of
Christ and freedom in every land when at length the
Authorized Version appeared ; and although no one could
possibly have any conception of the career which lay
before it, there was some sense of the momentousness
of the event. ' And now after long expectation and
' great desire,' said Fuller, ' came forth the new
4 translation of the Bible (most beautifully printed), by
4 a select and competent number of divines appointed
' for that purpose ; . . . who, neither coveting praise
' for expedition nor fearing reproach for slackness, . . .
' had expended almost three years in the work. . . .
4 So that their industry, skilfulness, piety, and discretion,
4 have therein bound the Church unto them in a debt
4 of special remembrance and thankfulness . These, with
4 Jacob, 44 rolled away the stone from the mouth of the
44 well " of life ; so that even Rachels, weak women,
1 may freely come, both to drink themselves, and water
4 the flocks of their families at the same.'

136 THE GRAND RESULT

No one, of course, has ever imagined that even this
great masterpiece of translation is without fault. It
was only the work of men, although it dealt with the
work of God ; and all we can claim for them is that
they did their best. They had to work with defective
texts ; they lived in the seventeenth century and not
in the twentieth ; and they had to do their work in
the ,pre -critical era, and not in an era in which criticism
has been so much overdone. Exception has been taken
by scholars to the Authorized Version rendering of the
Greek and Hebrew tenses . It is declared that ' it
' has preserved no pervading distinction between the
' Aorist and the Perfect in Greek ; and its renderings
' of the Hebrew Imperfect are full of blunders.' The
failure of the translators to bring out the full force
of the Aorist, as referring to a definite occurrence in
the past, sometimes tends to obscure the teaching of
Scripture and to foster erroneous views of its meaning.
It may be, however, that our use of the English tenses
has changed considerably since 1611. Then as regards
the use of the Article, on which so much often depends,
the translators do not appear to have acted on any
fixed principle as to when to express it and when ;to
leave it out. Professor Davidson, sympathetic critic as
he was, goes so far as to say that they were manifestly
ignorant of its force. These, however, are but the spots
on the sun ; and we should never cease to give thanks
for all the wonders of the grand result, and for all
it has achieved and is still achieving, in the service of
God and man.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHAT SENSE WAS THE AUTHORIZED VERSION
AUTHORIZED ?

137

'Of all books in the world, the Bible is one which will not yield up
its riches and its sweetness except to the diligent and faithful and earnest
student. All great works demand long and patient and persevering study.
The lesser mind cannot expect to grasp at once the purpose of the greater.
Sir J. Reynolds tells us of the profound disappointment with which he
first beheld Raphael's great picture of the Transfiguration at the Vatican.
It was only as he came again and again, only as he lingered over it and
dwelt upon it till the picture took possession of him, that he at last perceived
its grandeur and its harmony.' — PEROWNE.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHAT SENSE WAS THE AUTHORIZED
VERSION AUTHORIZED?

MATTHEW'S Bible of 1537 was licensed by the
King, and the Great Bible was specially sanctioned
by proclamation. The Bishops' Bible was duly approved
by Convocation ; and, as the legal successor of the
Great Bible, inherited its royal authority. The version
of 1611, however, although it was begun and carried
through with the hearty benediction of King James,
seems never to have obtained any other authorization
than that of public appreciation ; that of the favour of
scholars and people alike. The King's connection with
the inauguration of the movement in 1604 ; the Dedica-
tion which it has always borne on the forefront ; the
statement on the title-page that it is appointed to be
read in churches ; even the fact that it could be printed
only by permission of the Crown — all helped to confirm
the belief of many that in some literal and distinctive
fashion it was made the Authorized Version. But diffi-
cult as it is to prove a negative, and we know singularly
little about various important aspects of this translation,
it is practically certain that no such authorization was
ever given.

The plan sketched by the King at first was that the
new version should be undertaken by the ' best learned
' in both Universities ; after them to be reviewed by
' the bishops and the chief learned of the Church ; from
' them to be presented to the Privy Council ; and lastly

' to be ratified by his royal authority ; and so this whole

139

i4o IN WHAT SENSE WAS IT AUTHORIZED >?

' Church to be bound unto it and none other.' But,
as Bishop Westcott has epigrammatically put it, ' no
' evidence has yet been produced to show that the version
' was ever publicly sanctioned by Convocation, or by
' Parliament, or by the Privy Council, or by the King.'
Dr. Eadie, however, argues that ' the new edition had
' virtual authority by the order of succession, by the
' law of entail and lineage ; for it was made as a
' national book, by royal order, on purpose to displace
' the Bishops' Bible, and it had succeeded the Great
' Bible which had been formally authorized by the
' Crown.'

Mr. Dore, in his 'Old Bibles, argues in the same way ;
that 'the Bible of 1611, being a revision of the 1602
' edition of Parker's Bible, may justly be deemed to
' possess all the rights and privileges belonging to the
'version of which it was a revision.' But while no
one disputes the .contention that the new edition had
' virtual authority,' and might be looked on as inheriting
the rights and privileges of its nominal predecessor,
the fact remains that it made its way and attained
its supremacy without public sanction or authorization
of any kind, so far as the records go. Its actual authority
has not been derived from any ecclesiastical or legisla-
tive action, but is due to its intrinsic merits ; and in
all the circumstances it is well that it should have been
so . The only authorization of which there is any record,
or which has ever been required, has been that which
is the highest and best of all — the Divine right to rule,
which can never be permanently called in question ;
speaking with authority, and not as the scribes ; the
survival of the fittest ; the acknowledgment on all hands
of its manifest superiority. Securus judicat orbis
terrarum . ' The Christian instinct of the nation, touched,
' as we believe, by the Spirit of God, decided on its
' authority.'

The words ' appointed to be read in churches,' which
appear on the title-pages of all modern editions, are
not always found in the earlier issues, especially in
the smaller editions not intended for use in church.
They are not even found in the title-page of the New

c APPOINTED TO BE READ* 141

Testament of the ' He ' edition of 1611, which most ex-
perts consider to have been the first issue of all. They
probably refer to the lessons to be read in churches,
and in the preliminary pages there is a table showing
first ' how the Psalter is appointed to be read/ and then
' the order how the rest of Scripture is appointed to
'be read.' To provide for the proper selection of the
lessons a Kalendar was given in all the early folio
editions. As for the suggestion that these words of
themselves bear, that the use .of the new version was
enjoined by royal authority as soon as it appeared, it
must be remembered that, as a matter of fact, it was
not so used even in the churches where men were most
amenable to the royal authority for a considerable time
after its publication. A prelate as loyal as Bishop
Andrewes preached before the King from texts taken
from the Bishops' Bible, as late as ten years after the
publication of the Authorized Version. Altogether apart
from the reluctance of many to discard the older versions
all at once, the Bishops' Bible continued to be used in
public worship in many of the churches as long as the
old copies lasted. Nor can anything be deduced from
the fact of a royal monopoly in the printing of the new
version. The claim of the Crown to regulate the publica-
tion of the Authorized Version need not involve any
claim to property rights therein, Lord Mansfield apart ;
but only that care ought to be taken that none but
competent hands should deal with a volume on the purity
of which so much depends.

That the only authority of the Authorized Version was
thus that of its own intrinsic merits and its superiority
over its rivals, and was not due to Court influence,
royal preference, or ecclesiastical decree, ought to be
a matter for heartiest satisfaction. It was well that
the Scriptures in their new garb should stand on their
merits, and that when God was speaking in fresh tones
to the people, no alien voice should be heard. Its
triumph might neither have been so rapid nor so com-
plete had there been any attempt to force it on the
nation by some royal or ecclesiastical decree. And
especially in the years which succeeded its first appear-

i42 IN WHAT SENSE WAS IT AUTHORIZED?

ance ; years when the weakness of James, the folly of
his son Charles, and the tyrannies and immoralities of
his grandsons Charles and James, were desolating the
land and outraging the Church ; it was well that the
authority of the English Bible should in no way depend
on the influence of a justly discredited Court, or on a
royal power which many of the best in the land had
deliberately disowned ; or be associated with a Crown to
which no one could look up with respect.

In their Preface the translators refer with disapproba-
tion to those who spoke as if the recognition and en-
dowment of the Church in the days of Constantine had
been a dubious blessing ; but not a few would agree
rather with those to whom they refer as saying, with
reference to the patronage of worldly and ambitious men,
' now is poison poured down into the Church.' So soon
as the sunshine of unwonted public favour fell on the
long despised followers of Christ, many began to crowd
into their ranks who were converted by Imperial Edict
and not by the power of Divine truth, and neither the
Church nor the Bible requires more than a fair field
and no favour. That was what the Authorized Version
received, and nothing more, and its victory was complete.

CHAPTER VII
THE APOCRYPHA

Our learned Selden, before he died, sent for the Most Reverend Arch-
bishop Ussher and the Rev. Dr. Langbaine, and discoursed to them to
this purpose : that he had surveyed most part of the learning that was
among the sons of men ; that he had his study full of books and papers
of most subjects in the world : yet at that time he could not recollect any
passage out of infinite books and manuscripts he was master of, wherein
he could rest his soul, save out of the Holy Scriptures.' — LORD BERKELEY.

CHAPTER VII
THE APOCRYPHA

TO many readers of the English Bible the Apocrypha
is almost as little known as the Koran, and their
surprise is "great when they come across the unfamiliar
books bound up with the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments. Yet in 1604 a company was appointed to
translate these books, and in 1 6 1 1 they were issued
along with the other books, very much as a matter of
course. Not that the translators of the Authorized
Version thought of the Apocrypha as having the same
authority or as being of the same value as the other
books. At least from the days of Jerome it had been
recognized that it stood on a very different level from
these other books ; and especially among those with the
tendencies which were to harden into the Puritan con-
victions of the next generation, the feeling was rapidly
gaining ground that they ought not to appear in the
same volume as the canonical books of the Old and New
Testaments .

Tyndale had translated some parts of the Apocryphal
books for Church Lessons, but Coverdale's version of
these books was the first printed in English, and he not
only separated them from the rest of the books, but wrote
an interesting preface to them. ' These books and
' treatises, which among the fathers of old are not
' reckoned to be of like authority with the other books
4 of the Bible, neither are they found in the Canon of
'the Hebrews.' 'These books are not judged among
' the doctors to be of like reputation with the other
' Scripture.' ' And the chief cause thereof is this ; there

L 145

146 THE APOCRYPHA

' be many places in them, tKat seem to be repugnant
' unto the open and manifest truth in the other books of
' the Bible . Nevertheless, I have not gathered them
' together to the intent that I would have them despised,
' or little set by, or that I should think them false,
' for I am not able to prove it.*

The only change made in the Geneva Bible, which is
often said not to contain the Apocrypha, is that the
Prayer of Manasses is put after Second Chronicles. In
Matthew's Bible, the Apocrypha appeared with something
of the nature of a protest . The third book of Maccabees
first appeared as a portion of the English Bible in
Taverner's version of 1549. In the year 1615, proof
of the growing dislike for the Apocrypha is afforded
in Archbishop Abbot's action in forbidding its being
left out of the sacred volume, on pain of a year's im-
prisonment. Yet in 1629, an edition of the Authorized
Version actually appeared without the Apocrypha, the
letters APO still remaining below the tail -piece at the
end of Malachi. And this seems to have been but a
beginning, for we find Selden entering his protest : ' The
' Apocrypha is bound with the Bible of all churches
' that have been hitherto . Why should we leave it
' out ? '

In the year 1643, the Westminster Assembly of
Divines excluded the Apocrypha, equally with tradition,
by their declaration in the Shorter Catechism that ' The
' Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the
' Old and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us
' how we may glorify and enjoy Him.' In that same
year, too, the learned Dr. Lightfoot, preaching before
the House of Commons in St. Margaret's, Westminster,
spoke of the ' wretched Apocrypha ' as ' a patchery of
' human inventions ' which divorced the end of the law
' from the beginning of the Gospel.' In the last folio
edition of the Geneva Bible, which was issued in the
following year, 1644, the place usually assigned to the
Apocrypha was occupied by an address from the Synod
of Dort, ordering it to be omitted, and speaking of it
in far less respectful terms than Coverdale had used. In
the first Bible, which was issued from the Oxford Press

BIBLES CONTAINING IT 147

in the year .1675, the Apocryphal books were printed
in smaller type than the others.

John Bunyan has recorded how profoundly he iwas
comforted by the verse, ' Look at the generations of
' old, and see : did ever any trust in the Lord, and was
' confounded? ' (Ecclesiasticus 10. 2), and how he was at
first a little damped to find that it only occurred in an
uncanonical book, but that he was comforted by regarding
it as an epitome of many Scriptural promises, so that
'the word doth still oft-times shine before my face.'
Eighty -five years ago, too, all Scotland was convulsed
over the question whether the British and Foreign Bible
Society was warranted in publishing Bibles containing
the Apocrypha, in order to obtain an entrance for the
Word of God into communities where it was most desir-
able to carry it, but where it would be vain to attempt
to introduce it unless the Apocrypha were included.
These were the Greek Church ; the Roman Catholic Com-
munities, where the Apocrypha was revered and had the
sanction of the Council of Trent ; the Lutheran Com-
munities, where the decree of Trent was not allowed, but
where the book was valued and allowed a certain degree
of inspiration and authority ; and certain Reformed
Churches on the Continent, where it was regarded, as it
is in the Church of England, as useful for edification.
The controversy waxed very fierce, and the end of it was
that since that time the British and Foreign Bible Society
has issued no copies of the Bible containing the
Apocryphal books. Indeed, with rare exceptions there
have been no ordinary editions of the Bible issued any-
where since that period in which the Apocrypha is
included ; a fact which goes far to explain its neglect
and the ignorance which prevails regarding it.

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in
advertising their list of Bibles and calling attention to
the fact that they all contain the Apocrypha, say that
' it is not generally known that the only Bible which
' has legal and official warrant, besides ecclesiastical
' warrant, contains the Apocrypha .' They quote the
Archbishop of Canterbury as saying that he has no
hesitation in declaring that it is desirable that systematic

i48 THE APOCRYPHA

effort should be made to extend the knowledge of the
people generally about the Apocrypha, and to encour-
age its more careful study ; and the late Archbishop
of York as declaring that there is no doubt that for
various causes the Apocrypha does not hold the place
to which it is entitled in Biblical Literature, and that
the attention of Christians generally should be turned
towards these singularly interesting and often very beauti-
ful books. As has just been shown, there is no Bible
now on sale, whether with the Apocrypha or without,
which has any legal warrant ; but the question of the
place and value of the Apocrypha is of great interest
in connection with the history of the Bible, while its
historical importance can hardly be exaggerated.

The Apocrypha comes to us, said Professor A. B.
Davidson, ' as the only utterances out of that dark night
' which came down upon the Jewish Church, when it
' slept for four hundred years, and awoke and arose,
4 and found itself Christian. Even the dreams of such
' a time, the troubled meanings of such a weary trance,
' we may turn aside to look upon with a fearful interest.'
These long years were a period of preparation for the
coming Christ, a time of deep inward development, and
therefore it is that in spite of its many inconsistencies
and even absurdities, the Apocrypha helps in some
measure to fill up this interval between the Old Testa-
ment and the New. ' The rise of the several ecclesias-
' tical parties there are seen in our Lord's time straight
' for the mastery ; the phenomena of Essenism, Phari-
' seeism, and Sadduceeism ; the growing importance of
'- the high -priestly office in a worldly sense ; the develop-
' ment of the doctrine of angels and of a future life —
* these and other spiritual forces that are seen at work
' in the days of Christ and the Apostles can be studied
' in the Apocrypha by the student of the Gospels as
' nowhere else.'

The very difference between the canonical and non-
canonical books alike in tone and substance gives the
latter a new significance and value, and nowhere does
the simplicity or authority of Scripture shine out more
grandly than in contrast to the artificiality even of the

UNCANONICAL WRITINGS 149

best of the Apocryphal writings. The chasm which
separates the two is very deep. In every respect, moral,
doctrinal, and literary, the Apocryphal books are on a
lower level than those of the Old and New Testaments.
4 The harp of Judah has ceased to vibrate in them, and
' the humblest Psalm of David is worth all such poetry

* as they contain . The voice of prophecy has entirely

* ceased to be heard in them, and its cessation is accepted
1 with all the resignation of conscious inferiority. Above
' all, the Divine Messianic hope, which lay at the heart
' of all that was noblest and most inspiring in Jewish
' religion, has either evaporated altogether or has lost
' its priceless personal element in exchange for a vague
4 national aspiration.'

It is hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that any treat-
ment of these books which seemed to suggest that they
were on an equality with Scripture was increasingly
resented as the Bible itself became better known in
letter and spirit, and that the movement for their exclu-
sion from the sacred volume should have begun as soon as
the Authorized Version began to do its illuminating work .
Such a movement was all the more inevitable because
of the extreme and fatal position which was finally taken
up by the Church of Rome at the Council of Trent. The
Jews had never admitted these books into the Hebrew
Canon, and although they were usually appended to the
ancient Greek and Latin versions, the practice of the
early Church seems to have been to call them ecclesias-
tical but not canonical, a distinction which was meant to
make a considerable difference. Jerome expressly dis-
tinguished between the canonical writings with authority
and the non -canonical writings, which he held ought
not to be used to ' establish any doctrine ' although they
were useful for private perusal, and ' for example of
' life and instruction of manners.1 Wiclif, in his day,
took up very much the same position, and described
them as ' without authority of belief,' a position which
became very much that of the Reformers in the six-
teenth century. But the Council of Trent anathematized
all who do not receive ' these entire books with all their
4 parts as sacred and canonical.'

150 THE APOCRYPHA

After the Reformation, the Church of England adopted
Jerome's view, and the sixth Article reads that '-the
' Church doth read [these books ] for example of life
' and instruction of manners, but yet doth not apply
'them to establish any doctrine.' Luther's position was
that while these Apocryphal books are not to be held
to be equal to the Sacred Scriptures, they are neverthe-
less useful and good to read. Among the earlier Puritans
a milder as well as a more severe view was taken of
these books . The - argument ' prefixed to them in the
Geneva Bible may be taken to represent the more favour-
able attitude, while the Westminster Divines may be
taken as representing the less favourable, when they
hold that they are not to be otherwise approved or
made use of than other human writings. It is an
interesting fact that the text which Queen Victoria put
on Prince Albert's memorial at Balmoral was taken from
one of the Apocryphal books : ' He being made perfect
' in a short time fulfilled a long time ; for his soul
' pleased the Lord : therefore hasted He to take him
' away from among the wicked ! '

The name ' Apocrypha ' means hidden or concealed,
and corresponds to the Hebrew phrases ' hidden books '
and ' books of outsiders/ and in addition to the
Apocrypha of the Old Testament, to which the name
is specifically applied, there are also a number of writings
which similarly profess to supplement the New Testament .
These are sometimes called the New Testament
Apocrypha, and include gospels, acts, apocalypses, and
epistles. These, however, have always been excluded
from the Canon, although they are of historical signifi-
cance and interest ; and in no way do they possess the
importance which undoubtedly attaches to the Old
Testament Apocrypha.

BOOK III

THREE CENTURIES OF SERVICE

CHAPTER I

HOW THE NEW VERSION HAD TO WORK ITS

WAY

1 It is a book full of light and wisdom, will make you wise to eternal
life, and furnish you with directions and principles to guide and order
your life safely and prudently. There is no book like the Bible for excellent
learning, wisdom, and use.' — SIR MATTHEW HALE.

BOOK III

THREE CENTURIES OF SERVICE

CHAPTER I

HOW THE NEW VERSION HAD TO WORK
ITS WAY

TEN years after the appearance of the new
translation, which was destined to attain such
a supremacy, Bishop Andrewes, himself one of the fore-
most of the translators, was, as we have seen, still to be
found taking his texts from the Bishops' Bible, even when
preaching before the King. In the community generally
it was quite a quarter of a century before the Autho-
rized Version vindicated its superiority to the Geneva
version. Even after that version ceased to be printed
in England, 150,000 copies were brought in from
Holland ; and as late as 1649, as was already noted,
an edition of the Authorized Version appeared with the
Geneva notes. The Pocket -Bible, too, with which
Cromwell's soldiers were provided, consisted of appro-
priate Scriptural quotations which were taken from the
Geneva Bible.

That version is also quoted, although rarely, in the
work of the Westminster Assembly, which met during
the years from 1643 to 1648. What is even more
noteworthy, in the Translators' Preface to their own
work, Scripture quotations, which are rather loosely
made, are sometimes very near the Geneva version,
while the Bishops' Bible is never used. That their own

version would have been used, even if it were not yet

153

154 THE NEW VERSION WORKING ITS WAY

in print, might have been taken for granted : yet we
find, for example, in i Kings 12. 4, ' Make the grievous
' servitude of thy father, and his sore yoke, lighter ' ;
and in I Cor. 14. 11 : ' Except I know the power of
' the voice, I shall be to him that speaketh a barbarian,
'and he that speaketh shall be a barbarian to me.'

The printing of the Bishops' Bible had been stopped
as soon as the new version was definitely undertaken ;
but even in the Church of England it was not till after
the Savoy Conference in 1661, that it was finally and
officially arranged that the Gospels and Epistles should
be read in the Church Services from the Authorized
Version. In 1662, the Book of Common Prayer appeared
in its present form ; and while the Psalter of the Great
Bible was left undisturbed, the Gospels and Epistles, and
all the longer portions of Scripture were uniformly taken
from the Authorized Version. In this case the rival
was not the Geneva version ; but it is rather surprising
that, in the argument for the change then made, the
comparison was made with the Great Bible, and not
with the Bishops'. Some go so far as to hold that
this decision in ;i66i, means that for half a century
all who received orders in the Church of England had
been assenting to an earlier version than that which
bore on its forefront that it was ' appointed to be read
' in churches,' and had been prepared by His Majesty's
special command.

The ordinary operation of the laws of the human
mind naturally prevented men from hurriedly abandon-
ing versions through which God had spoken to their
souls, and from which new light was still breaking for
them. It was so also in Germany ; although there,
too, as among ourselves, one version was ultimately to
reign supreme. For dogmatic and other reasons, former
versions, dear to many a heart, lingered on for a time
on both sides of the North Sea ; and in England it
would by no means be in favour of the popular accep-
tance of the Authorized Version that the Puritans, who
were rapidly becoming more militant, as well as more
numerous, were gratuitously referred to in a somewhat
scornful manner, both in the Preface and the Dedica-

CRITICISM AND OPPOSITION 155

tion. There was also a widespread conviction that
Bancroft, who seems to have been of an autocratic
temper, had used his influence and authority to colour
the translation in an anti -Puritan direction, wherever
that could be done. It was currently reported that
he had altered it in fourteen places, that it might
' speak prelatical language.'

The translators themselves were prepared for opposi-
tion to their version ; but it is probable that they were
not prepared for such criticism as that of Hugh
Broughton, the greatest Hebraist of the day, and a keen
supporter of the demand for a new translation. In a
letter which helps to explain why he was not asked
to take part in the work, he wrote to the King that
he would rather be torn in pieces by wild horses than
impose such a translation on poor churches ; and
declared that in fifteen verses in the third chapter of
Luke, the translators had a score of idle words to
account for in the Day of Judgement. He was specially
indignant at Bancroft, and predicted that by-and-by,
James, looking down from Abraham's bosom, would
behold the Archbishop in the place of woe I In the
year 1659, too, Dr. Cell, who had been Archbishop
Abbot's chaplain, published an attack in which he not
merely objected to trivial matters, such as the inversion
of the order of words, and the undue use of supple-
mental terms ; but accused the translators of moulding
the translation to suit their own opinions, while they
put the truer renderings in the margin. Romish writers
also attacked the Authorized Version for alleged ' corrup-
' tions,' which are now to be found embodied in their
own version. Richard Baxter refers indignantly to the
' sectmasters who fiercely cried down the present transla-
' tion of the Scriptures.'

The translators were accused of defective scholar-
ship, of making needless changes, and even of false
doctrine. Some said they had gone too far, others that
they had not gone far enough. There were even
demands for another translation which would supersede
their work ; and when preaching before the House of
Commons, in 1645, Dr. John Lightfoot urged Parlia-

156 THE NEW VERSION WORKING ITS WAY

ment ' to think of a review and survey of the translation
' of the Bible,' and pleaded for ' an exact, vigorous, and
' lively translation.' The Long Parliament actually made
an order a few years later that a Bill should be brought
in providing for a new translation. But though a
Committee was appointed and held frequent meetings,
nothing came of the proposal ; and ere long every
desire for a change had died away. When the leading
scholars of the time were consulted, they pronounced
the version of 1611 the 'best of any in the world,'
and so the matter ended. In Scotland, also, as early
as 1655, a proposal had been made for a better trans-
lation, by John Row, a scholarly member of a family
of note and learning ; and with the same result.

It had not been otherwise when Jerome's Vulgate
appeared, although his version was destined to be
declared by the Council of Trent altogether correct,
above criticism, and incapable of improvement. It also
was called revolutionary and heretical, an impious alter-
ing of the inspired Word, and subversive of faith in
Holy Scripture. But Jerome insisted that no amount of
sentiment could be a plea for a faulty Bible, and that
the most venerable translation must give way if found
to differ from the original text. And by -and -by men
so completely forgot that this once reprobated version
was only a translation, that when in 1522 it appeared
between the Hebrew and Greek parallel columns of the
Complutensian Polyglot, they compared its position, half
humorously and half in earnest, to that of our Lord
between the two thieves on the Cross. And so it was
also with the English Version of 1611, although on
more rational lines. It won its way steadily, and its
victory when won was complete.

For more than two centuries its sway was unques-
tioned in the affection of the English-speaking peoples,
and it won on its merits. It had meant something, no
doubt, that the King and bishops and great scholars
had contributed to its production ; and it meant much
that, unlike the Revised Version in our time, it had not
to face one dominant version, but found a variety of
versions competing for the popular favour. But it meant

THE PEOPLES BOOK 157

most of all for it that at last it was possible for the whole
nation to gather round one Book. The people soon
saw how pre-eminently the Authorized Version was fitted
to be their book ; while scholars on their part soon
saw that it was the best translation which had as yet
appeared. It found its way and claimed its place
wherever the English language was spoken ; and when
men like the Pilgrim Fathers went out to claim new
territories for Christ and freedom, they carried it with
them to be their rallying centre and standard, alike in
Church and State ; in their religion and in their speech.
In Scotland it became the people's book in the very
fullest sense, and nowhere did it lay its impress more
thoroughly on the national life and thought. There
had been no indigenous Scottish version ; but in 1579
an edition of the Geneva Bible had been printed in
Edinburgh, and arrangements made for its circulation
among the people, and for its use in the churches. In
1636, however, it was enacted in the ' Canons and
4 Constitutions Ecclesiastical ' that ' a Bible of the
' largest volume ' should be provided for every parish
and ' that the Bible should be the translation of King
' James.' That translation came among Scotsmen under un-
favourable auspices alike as English, and as having been
promoted by a King who had drifted far from the dearest
aspirations of the land of his birth. It came with
nothing whatever to recommend it, and found another
version in possession ; yet by its own merits it won
an unrivalled sway, and triumphed over prejudice and
animosity.

In the Directory for Public Worship, ratified by the
General Assembly in 1645, a^ *hat was enacted was
that ' all the canonical Books of the Old and New
' Testaments shall be publicly read in the vulgar tongue
4 out of the best allowed translation ' ; but although
the Geneva version lingered, and was even used occa-
sionally for quotations in the Acts of the General
Assembly, the Authorized Version soon reigned with an
unquestioned mastery. Professor Milligan, indeed, notes
that in a certain Fifeshire parish a Geneva Bible was
still in use towards the end of the eighteenth century ;

158 THE NEW VERSION WORKING ITS WAY

but such an exception only serves to illustrate the com-
pleteness of the disappearance of the former version,
which had meant so much and done so much for multi-
tudes in earlier days. It is difficult to realize now,
that those who were responsible for the Authorized
Version were once popularly believed to have allowed
ecclesiastical and doctrinal bias to vitiate some of their
renderings ; but that it was so shows how truly it had
not only to work its way, but in some respects even
to fight its way. It has become such an integral part
of the national life and thought, that it is difficult even
to imagine a time when it was not at work in the
midst ; but it was once only a version, and not the
Bible of the English-speaking peoples.

CHAPTER II
AT WORK IN THE HOME

159

'We search the world, and truth we cull,
The good, the pure, the beautiful,
From graven rock and written scroll,
And all old flower-fields of the soul :
And, weary seekers of the best,
We come back, laden from our quest,
To find that all the sages said
Was in the Book our mothers read.'

CHAPTER II
AT WORK IN THE HOME

A LMOST everything in Church and State depends
/~V on the home ; and these three centuries of service
have seen great changes in the homes of our land, and
have brought new tenderness and beauty into them . The
greatest of all these changes are due to the English
Bible, which has not only enthroned the father as priest
in the home, but has made the Fatherhood of God in
Christ the type of what an earthly father- should be.
The same revelation which ennobled the Puritan husband
and father, ennobled his wife and children ; for were
not they Divinely born, free, rational, and immortal souls
like himself, around each of whom the conflict of the
ages between purity and evil had to be waged, and in
whom all heaven was eagerly concerned ?

The way in which John Bunyan, for example, speaks
of his family is altogether different from that in which
even good men spoke a century before. The atmo-
sphere was changed ; and, as Mr. Green has shown
in his history, it was the widespread use of the Bible
which created the new atmosphere, and sent new moral
and spiritual impulses all through the nation. ' The
' larger geniality of the age that had passed away shrank
' into an intense tenderness within the narrower circle
'of the home. "He was as kind a father," says Mrs.
1 Hutchison of her husband, one of the regicides, " as dear
1 " a brother, as good a master, as faithful a friend, as the
' " world had." Those who would rob us of the Bible
would rob us of all that is best in our homes and of all
that a pure home -life involves. ' Where are your wife,

M ««»

i62 AT WORK IN THE HOME

1 and family ? ' was the significant inquiry addressed once
and again to Bunyan's Pilgrim by the way ; and the
Second Part of the Pilgrim's Progress is the author's
acknowledgment that the question was a fair one. ' A
' solitary being is either an animal or a god/ said
Aristotle ; but a solitary Christian is a contradiction
in terms, especially if God has set him in a home with
wife and family.

The conception of the Family Bible is a very beautiful
and sacred one ; and even if the huge tomes which
were once the fashion, and served as muniment chambers
in pre -registration days, are not so common as they
were, it is a splendid thing when the family has its
centre and inspiration in the Word of God manifestly
exalted in the midst. Those who have once read it
can never forget the picture which Robert Burns has
drawn of a family gathering round the Bible, in his
' Cottar's Saturday Night.' To look at the father as
he ' wales a portion wi' judicious care,' and to hear
them sing their evening psalm, and think of what such
exercises imply, is to see how abundantly warranted
was the patriotic outburst that ' from scenes like these
' old Scotia's grandeur springs ; that makes her loved
' at home, revered abroad.' The home -life which gathers
round the Bible and the family altar is sacred in every
way ; and the nation is sane and strong, free and
prosperous, in proportion to the Bible -loving homes
within her borders. The cry ' for altar and hearth '
has its fullness of meaning only for those who have
Christian homes.

The Bible in the home means much for the young
who grow up therein. It is not precept that counts
so much as example ; and however far any may wander
even from such a home, they can never doubt that
religion can be real or that God has spoken to men.
in words they can hear and understand. It is from
such homes that the Bible goes out to serve in other
homes and other lands ; in the sailor's box, the servant -
girl's trunk, the emigrant's baggage. It cheers the
mother's heart to know that, although her son is far
away, he nevertheless draws near to God in His Word ;

THE DIVINE PITY 163

and that space vanishes as the sundered ones meet
around the throne. And who can tell how many have
been kept from evil, amid new surroundings and strange
temptations, by the habit of daily reading some portion
of God's Word? It is told of a mother of a family,
whose husband was an unbeliever, who jested at
religion even before his children, that she nevertheless
succeeded in bringing them all up in the fear of the
Lord. When she was asked how she had managed this,
she said : ' Because to the authority of a father I did
' not oppose the authority of a mother, but that of
4 God. From their earliest years my children have
' always seen the Bible on my table . This holy Book
' has constituted the whole of their religious instruc-
1 tion. I was silent, that I might allow it to speak.
1 Did they propose a question ; did they commit any
' fault ; did they perform any good action — I opened
' the Bible, and the Bible answered, reproved, or
' encouraged them. The constant reading of the
' Scriptures has alone wrought the prodigy which
1 surprises you.'

The Bible in the home also means much for the
sorrowing and dying. ' There is no book/ said Selden,
' upon which we can rest in a dying moment but the
'Bible.' Nothing but the Divine pity can suffice for
the infinite pathos of human life, or for the tear and
wear of the ordinary daily toil ; and what words are
so tender for the bereaved and disappointed, the stricken
and broken-hearted, as those which God has addressed
to men in His Holy Word ? ' He heareth the cry of
' the afflicted.' He hearkens to the voice of our
weeping, and is the helper of the fatherless. He it is
who gives songs in the night. ' The Lord is my
' shepherd ; I shall not want. Yea, though I walk
' through the valley of the shadow of death, I will
' fear no evil ; for Thou art with me ; Thy rod and
'Thy staff they comfort me.' 'He setteth the solitary
1 in families, and healeth the broken in heart.' ' In Him
'the fatherless findeth mercy.' 'Weeping may endure
' for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' ' The
' redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with

164 AT WORK IN THE HOME

' singing unto Zion ; and everlasting joy shall be upon
' their head ; they shall obtain gladness and joy ; and
4 sorrow and mourning shall flee away.' 4 Come unto
4 Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
4 will give you rest.' 4 I go to prepare a place for
4 you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I
4 will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that
4 where I am there ye may be also. I will not leave
4 you comfortless : I will come to you. Because I live,
4 ye shall live also.' 4 Thanks be to God, which giveth
4 us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.' ' And
4 there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying,
4 neither shall there be any more pain : for the former
4 things are passed away.'

Cardinal Newman says : ' What Scripture specially
4 illustrates, from its first page to its last, is God's
4 providence ; and that is nearly the only doctrine held
4 with a real assent by the mass of Englishmen. Hence
4 the Bible is so great a solace and refuge to those in
4 trouble . I repeat, I am not speaking of particular
4 schools and parties in England, whether of the High
4 Church or the Low ; but of the mass of piously -
4 minded and well -living people in all parts of the com-
4 munity.' The English Bible, that is to say, has made
God and His government real for those who come under
its power. They know Him there as gracious and not
as blind fate ; as making His strength perfect in
their weakness, and upholding them in their con-
flict and sorrow. Mr. Barrie tells that a short
time before his mother died, his father put her Testa-
ment into her hand, and it fell open at the fourteenth
chapter of St. John. She had been a great sufferer,
and she knew where to seek for comfort and strength.

Other Bibles may open at the twenty -third Psalm,
and others at the third chapter of St. John. There
may be sufferers, too, who make discoveries of their
own in the Word far from the beaten track, and
meet God out on the bare uplands where no other
draws near to hear His voice. God's Word has depths
in it which are only for the sorrowing and the dying.
A great critic once said of a great singer that if her

CROMWELL'S DEATHBED 165

heart were broken, she would be the finest singer in
Europe. There are tones in the life as well as tones
in the voice which sunshine alone can never bring.
There are heights and depths in Scripture which can
only be discovered by those who draw near by the way
of anguish and pain. In the time of trouble God hides
His tried ones in His pavilion, and they see new wonders
in His Word, which is His Tent of Meeting for those
whose lives are shadowed and who have been driven
but into the wilderness of sorrow and loss. There are
riches in the Bible which are never discovered or
understood except by the lonely and the anguish -
enlightened.

When Oliver Cromwell was dying, he asked that
Philippians 4. 11-13 should be read to him. 'Not
' that I speak in respect of want : for I have
' learned ... to be content. I know both how
' to be abased, and I know how to abound . . .
' and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ
' which strengtheneth me.' And then he repeated the
words of the passage to himself. When the Apostle
spoke of his contentment and submission to the will
of God in all conditions, he said : ' It's true, Paul,
* you have learned this, and attained to this measure
' of grace ; but what shall I do ? Ah, poor creature,
'it is a hard lesson for me to take out ! I find it
' so.' But when he came to the words which followed,
faith began to work, and his heart found comfort and
support, and he said : ' He that was Paul's Christ is
' my Christ too ' ; and so he drew water out of the
wells of salvation. And such an experience is just that
of unrecorded multitudes, writ large, in which God's
Word restores the faith of the stricken, cheers the
downcast and chases despair away ; revives courage
and binds up the wounds of the struggling and driven.

Nor is the blessed influence of the Bible in the home
confined to any particular age, or to those in special
need. It is for the ordinary as well as for the excep-
tional, and there should be nothing hid from its gracious
power. Very specially is it for those who are bearing
the burden and heat of the day ; for the unromantic

166 AT WORK IN THE HOME

years of middle life ; for all who journey on the beaten
track of the commonplace, neither rising with more than
eagle's flight into the unseen, nor running in the way,
but walking steadily on, and doing their day's work
in courage and faith. Many are the springs which well
up for such travellers by the dusty wayside ; new wells
opened and old wells reopened ; and it is certain that
our homes will be pure and noble, holy and inspiring,
just as the Bible is honoured in them and its precepts
obeyed ; and its quickening and comfort are enjoyed
from day to day. There is no more tender or sacred
word in our language than ' home.' Our hearts grow
soft as we think of ' Home, Sweet Home,' and we pity
the nations which have only one word for ' house ' and
'home.' But let it be clearly understood that it is to
the three centuries of service during which the Autho-
rized Version has held on its way in power and grace
that we owe the strength and beauty of our home -life
at its best.

CHAPTER III
AT WORK IN CONNECTION WITH THE CHURCH

167

' Most wondrous Book ! bright candle of the Lord !
Star of eternity ! The only star
By which the bark of man can navigate
The sea of life, and gain the coast of bliss
Securely ; only star, which rose on time,
And, on its dark and troubled billows, still
As generation, drifting slowly by,
Succeeded generation, threw a ray
Of heaven's own light, and, to the hills of God—
The everlasting hills— pointed the sinner's eye.'

POLLOK.

CHAPTER III
AT WORK IN CONNECTION WITH THE CHURCH

JUST because of what the English Bible has been
doing in the home throughout these three centuries
of service, its influence has spread far beyond the
limits of the Christian home to the social and public life
of the nation ; to win men and women and little children
for Christ, to set the solitary in families, and to create
new homes to be centres of light and leading in turn.
The philosopher Plato thought of the home as such an
anti -social citadel of selfishness that he proposed to
abolish the family ; but it is through the family and
the home that the Bible blesses mankind most. The
Church began in a family and a home, and it is still
made up of Christian homes.

We find that during these bygone centuries the Bible
has ever been busy in the great work of bringing in
the Kingdom of God, and inciting and satisfying the
searcher for truth. Like its Divine Author, it knows
our frame and remembers that we are dust. It speaks
every language of the human heart and every dialect
of every tongue. The spirit of the sacred writers lives
on in the English translation ; and although the Bible
originated in the East, it has found a welcome and
a home in the West, as if it were native to the soil.
It begins by letting the needy see their need, and it
ends by satisfying every true yearning in such a way
as to lead on through a Divine discontent to fullness
of fellowship with God. In proportion as the Bible
is honoured does the stream of blessing flow. St. Paul

was led to the deliberate conviction that God's Word

169

i;o THE WORD AND THE CHURCH

could work even through those who were moved to
proclaim it by an evil spirit of envy and strife. He
believed that if only the Divine truth gets an entrance
into the mind and heart, it will do its own blessed work,
although the channel through which the stream has
flowed is neither perfect nor pure. The truth is great,
and will prevail even although it is presented in a poor
and unworthy fashion. ' The words that I speak unto
'you, they are spirit and they are life.' The Bible
carries its own warrant with it, and its own Divine
power. The laws of the universe are on its side, for
this is God's universe ; and ours is a redeemed world,
even if it be a fallen world. Men have come under
the illumining and converting power of the Bible who
began to study it in order to attack and confute it.
Those who circulate the Bible may do so with absolute
confidence in the inherent power of the Divine message,
not only to lay men's needs bare, but to satisfy the
longings it has aroused for God and His eternal life.

One of the outstanding facts of human life is that
man was made for God, and that there are depths in
his being which none but Christ can satisfy. The idols
which exist everywhere in the dark heathen lands show
how deep is this natural yearning of the heart of man
for God. Man is a religious being ; and when he is
ignorant of the true God, he will build an altar to
the unknown. Into the midst of all this yearning and
all this darkness, the Bible came as a river of life.
There had been tiny springs elsewhere which sent forth
their streams, for God has never left Himself without
a witness ; but this is the river of God in all its majesty
and fullness, and nowhere has it flowed more wonder-
fully into the lives of men than through our own
Authorized Version.

Nothing has supreme authority for the seeking soul but
this Word of God. It is significant that when such a
spiritual genius as Bunyan first introduces us to his
Pilgrim he has already the Bible in his hand. Bunyan
himself was never out of the Book ; and he had no
faith in any pilgrimage which was not Bible -inspired,
and which did not make much of the Bible as the Book

THE BIBLE AND REVIVAL 171

of God. Much of the charm and much of the spiritual
power of the Pilgrim's Progress itself are due to
the extent to which it is saturated with Bible truth.
And Bunyan's testimony and experience have been true
of seeking souls all the ages through.

In the time of the Methodist awakening, when in
some respects the Gospel was first preached to the poor
in England, one of the sobriquets of the Society which
Wesley formed in Oxford was ' The Bible -moths,' a
name which speaks for itself. The new place given to
the Bible was at once the cause of the Revival and
its result. In the dreary ages of Socinianism and
worldliness, the Bible had fallen into neglect. Hannah
More tells that in all the parish of Cheddar she only
found one Bible, and that it was used to prop up /a
flower -pot. The first indication that the tide was turning
was to be found in the new prominence assigned to the
Word — some of the most important editions of the
Authorized Version appeared then ; and in the new
willingness to hear what God was saying to perishing
mankind. In earlier times, too, in Scotland, when the
light of the Reformation was breaking, one of the nick-
names of those who sought to be obedient to the truth
which God was revealing was ' New Testamenters,'
another name which speaks for itself. Like Him who
gave it and of whom it tells, the Bible gives rest to
the weary and satisfies the longing soul. It can speak
to the waifs and strays, to the flotsam and jetsam, to
those who are all battered and torn among the wreckage,
and call them to newness of life. And while every
legitimate help to understand it better should be
welcomed, since it works through the understanding and
never by magic, any helps which come between the
soul and Scripture itself are no better than hindrances
in disguise.

It is but a step from thinking of the Bible as
satisfying the needs of the seeker for truth, even as
it reveals to him what his real needs are, to thinking
of it in connection with the work of revival. How
far it is the ideal to think of revivals from any other
viewpoint than that it is God's will that they should

172 THE WORD AND THE CHURCH

be continuous, cannot be discussed here. But that the
Church owes much to times of blessing and quickening
is beyond question ; just as it is also beyond question
that there is nothing we need more in these days than
a revival which will sweep all over the land and make
religion real for rich and poor, for young and old alike.
It may be that in God's mercy this will come through
the revived attention which this Tercentenary should
cause to be given to the Scriptures, and every celebra-
tion ought to have this end in view. Revival can only
come through the simplicities of the faith being set
forth anew, as they are therein declared ; and through
the faithfulness of believers to the high things of which
the Bible alone tells in their fullness.

It is through the Bible alone that the Divine message
can reach all sorts and conditions of men in such a
way as to result in widespread quickening and uplift.
Its lucid simplicity appeals to the men of culture and
intellect, and yet speaks to the untutored in their own
speech. It comes to men in the cities and to men on
the moorlands alike ; and however much the dialects of
the English dales may differ from those of the
Scottish glens or the Welsh valleys, as they all differ
among themselves, all alike can hear God speaking to
them in their own tongue in the English Bible, and all
alike have rejoiced in its message of salvation. There
can be no other starting-point for the revival for which
so many are longing and praying and even looking, the
revival which will chase all indifference away and touch
the entire community, but the Word of God, which liveth
and abideth for ever. When Mr. Moody was in Scot-
land, he testified that his intercourse with inquirers was
more satisfactory and fruitful there than in any other
land in this respect, that there was almost always some
acquaintance with Scripture to which he could helpfully
appeal .

It is from the Bible as Divine that the abiding
inspiration has come, which has sent out the most
successful missionaries and evangelists to gather in the
lost ; and no evangelical agency can expect to prosper
unless it keeps the Bible in the very forefront. Every

POWER IN THE BOOK 173

revival movement which has ever blessed our land has
gathered round the Book ; and the work which makes
strong and enduring Christian men and women, and
lifts them above the fascination of every heresy, is that
which goes down into the depths where in Scripture
itself the eternal springs are for ever rising. Just in
proportion as any work of ingathering exalts the Bible,
and is permeated by it alike in letter and spirit, does it
pursue healthy and fruitful lines and advance to full
fruition. One who shared in the great revival of 1859,
and who has not long since gone home, has told how
it all gathered round the Bible ; and that, unlike some
other such movements before and since, it was in no
way associated with any man or organization. He was
a University student at the time ; and when he came
home from college one April, he found that for months
there had been a Gospel meeting every night in the
kitchen of his father's farm. But there had been little or
no regular preaching ; at any rate, those who came had
not gathered to hear anyone in particular preach. They
had just been gathering round the Word and waiting
on God therein in prayer, and the results were
momentous, wonderful, and enduring. In Scotland and
Ireland, at least, there has been nothing as widespread
or abiding since ; and it may be that similar results,
or even greater results — for the Word of God is not
bound — would be once more enjoyed were there more
faith in the inherent power of the Divine Word itself,
and less dependence on machinery of man's devising.

Sometimes it has even been found helpful to keep
the actual Book visibly in evidence. One who was used
long ago among the Arabs has told that he kept the
open Bible ever in his hand as he spoke. ' He felt
' that his power was in the Book ' ; and so conscious
was he of this, that he kept it literally in sight
wherever he went ; not as a charm, but as the visible
token that all his trust was in God, and that the work
which endures must be wholly of Him and His Word.
And whether we think of the great revival of heart
religion which we call the Reformation ; or of the
Puritan Revival which kept the fire burning on the altar

174 THE WORD AND THE CHURCH

in our land when the Counter -Reformation was doing
deadly work everywhere else ; or of the Methodist
Revival either in its earlier phases when so many were
won for Christ ; or in its later phases when the
Primitives came to be such a blessing to the villages
of England — we always find that the good work gathered
round the Bible, and especially round the English Bible.
It is through its pages that both preparation and
call have come to those whom God has used most, alike
in the homelands and in the regions beyond. Not other-
wise can there be an adequate sense of human need,
or of the fullness of the Divine preparation for it. Not
otherwise can men see the corroding, corrupting power
of sin in the light of the Cross. Not otherwise can those
who discover something of the immensity of their debt
to Christ on the Cross come under the dominion of
His constraining love. Not otherwise is that compas-
sion for souls, that yearning pity for the weary and
heavy laden, begotten which makes men and women
Christlike in their endeavours to spread the blessing
and share the light.

All this was made manifest, also, in the Evangelical
Revival, with its Bible Societies organized for work both
at home and abroad, as well as in similar movements
since. God's Word has been the hammer which has
broken the idols in pieces ; the light which has shown
men the way in which they ought to walk ; the stream at
which the thirsty have quenched their thirst and the
hand which has lifted up the fallen, bound up the broken
in heart, and guided the faltering. The Evangelists
have spoken as touchingly in English in our own time as
they did in Greek in the far past ; and although their
message never works by magic, but always along moral
and spiritual lines, it does work as if it were a holy
charm. God's Spirit works through the Book which
He Himself inspired, and which He has so marvellously
preserved that it might be rendered into many tongues.

CHAPTER IV
AT WORK IN THE NATION AND THE STATE

' Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress
in ever greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as
much as it desires — beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity,
as it shines forth in the Gospels, it cannot go.' — GOETHE.

CHAPTER IV
AT WORK IN THE NATION AND THE STATE

DURING these three centuries of service the
Authorized Version has done a great work, not
only in the home and the Church, but also in the wider
sphere of the national life. It has played a great part
in the development of the nation on broad, generous
lines ; and has had far more to do with the prosperity
of Great Britain and her offshoots, as compared with
the Latin races, than any racial difference. It has
not only made Britons free, it has made them fit
to be free, which is vastly more difficult and more
important. These three centuries have seen far-reach-
ing changes ; one king beheaded, another driven
into exile, and power passing from monarch and
oligarchy to the sovereign people. Men see now
that the State is not the evil world in another guise,
something to be ignored if not resisted by Christians
in their efforts to bring in the Kingdom of God. They
recognize now that it is an ordinance of God ; that
the ideal is a holy nation, a kingdom of saints, and
it is the fuller knowledge of the Scriptures which has
brought about this change, as well as the new outlook
and new endeavour after public righteousness to which it
has led.

' We must educate our masters,' said a statesman
when our working-men first received the franchise ; and
the only enduring or worthy education in self-govern-
ment, and the government of the nation, the only guide
for voters which is never out of date, is to be found
in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The

N 177

178 IN THE NATION AND THE STATE

Bible everywhere honours patriotism, and puts the love
of the fatherland next to the love of God and the love
of the home. Bible Christians always seek to make
the nation a nation of saints, fearing God and having
no other fear. There is no real toleration among the
indifferent. The Agnostic can be, and has been, a
persecutor. It is only those who have entered into
their birthright as free, who have the Bible respect for
the rights of all men as made for God, and as incapable
of doing their true work or finding their rightful place
except in His service.

From the very first the spread of the Authorized
Version made for progress and freedom. It was the
study of the English Bible which in a single generation
raised so many in the seventeenth century from the
puerilities, superstitions, and prejudices of the Middle
Ages, and made them strong, far-seeing men ; and tender,
heroic women. It raised the nation at one bound to
the foremost place among the nations of Europe, and
more than aught else has kept it there ever since. The
only enduring national prosperity is that which is based
oh loyalty and obedience to the Word of God. Piety
which is nourished on manuals of devotion and the lives
of the saints is of the hothouse order. It is those alone
who are nourished on the Bible who can stand the
storm and flourish in the open air. It is they who
become explorers and reformers, colonists and pioneers
of Empire and the truth.

It may be true that the Puritans, for whom the Bible
did so much, sometimes made a questionable use of
it. They did not always study it historically, as when
they applied Old Testament teaching about exterminating
the Canaanites and Amalekites to their own times, and
overlooked the later revelation of the New Testament.
Nor did they always study it with a due sense of pro-
portion, as when they found more in it about predestina-
tion and God's wrath than about infinite love and the
free offer of the great salvation. Some of them were
arbitrary, too, in their treatment of the letter of
Scripture, and in their mystical use of its prophecies
and types. But they never made top much of it ; and

THE PURITANS i?$

the more they made of it, the more it made of them.
They and their kindred in other lands saved the sacred
cause of civil and religious freedom in the dark days
of reaction in the Church and of absolutism in the State.
They took their Bibles with them to the market-place and
to the workshop, and bought and sold with its words on
their lips and in their hearts. It was their guide in
every part of their life ; and when duty called them to take
up arms, they charged the enemy with the sword of
the Lord and of Gideon in their hands, and singing
David's psalms. It made men like Faithful and Great-
heart and Gaius ; and women like Mercy and Christiana.
' In the poetry of Milton, in the mental history of Bunyan,'
says Prothero, ' the power of the Psalms is strongly
' marked. Their influence is still more clearly seen in
' the career of Oliver Cromwell, the foremost figure in
' the stirring times of the Puritan revolution, the strongest
' type of the stern religion which raised him to the
' summit of fame and fortune. The spirit that he read
' into the Psalms governed his actions at each supreme
' crisis of his stormy life ; the last striking stages in
' his career are marked by quotations from the Psalms ;
' in his private letters, his public despatches, his
' addresses to Parliament, the imagery, metaphors, and
' language of the Psalms drop from his lips, or his
' pen, as if by constant meditation he had made their
' phraseology a part of his very life .'

Through Civil War and revolution, through far-
reaching reform and peaceful expansion, through agony
and toil, through reaction and temporary defeat, there
has arisen an Empire on which the sun never sets, as
well as the great Republic of the West, out of what was
once a kingdom of very limited resources. And in all
that is best in this development, and in the changes
which the years have wrought, the Bible has played
its part, and has been the true strength and inspiration
of an Imperial people, seeking to work out its destiny
in freedom and faith. This is freely admitted by the
ordinary historian, as well as by those who write in
praise of the Word. In 1611 one of the most out-
standing features of the political situation was the power,

i8o IN THE NATION AND THE STATE

and, even more, the prestige of Spain. King James
could never get away from his instinctive reverence for
it ; although, as events were to show, it was far from
being as great as it was supposed to be, or had once
been. Once and again he exposed himself to needless
humiliation, and risked the indignation and anger of
his own people in his desire to secure a Spanish alliance
for his son ; like some poor relation determined to
win the recognition of a relative of overwhelming influ-
ence and wealth. Even Oliver Cromwell, with all his
wondrous insight, could never free himself from the feel-
ing that Spain was still the foe to be mainly feared. But
to-day the position is wholly changed. Spain has been
stripped of her colonial wealth. Treasure galleons no
longer seek her harbours laden with the riches of the
New World. There is now none so poor to do her
reverence. To compare her in any respect with Britain
only serves to accentuate the fact that the one is as
poor and weak as the other is rich and powerful. And
more than anything else, it is her English Bible, and
what grows out of it, that has made Britain prosperous
and great and free ; just as the want of such a national
treasure has not only led to Spain losing her liberties
and her political power, but has robbed her in connec-
tion with literature and art as well . For want of the
Bible she has been left in superstition and degradation,
the prey of unscrupulous ecclesiastics, incapable states-
men, and unbelieving agitators.

Lord Macaulay tells in his history how James the
Second at his coronation ordered Sancroft, the Arch-
bishop, to abridge the ritual. The reason publicly
assigned for this was that the day was too short for
all that was to be done ; but the real reason was that
the King wished to remove certain things which were
highly offensive to him as a zealous Romanist. In
particular, says the historian, the ceremony of present-
ing the sovereign with a richly -bound copy of the
English Bible, and of exhorting him to prize above
all earthly treasure a volume which he had been taught
to regard as adulterated with false doctrines, was
omitted. That was most significant of much that was

THE BIBLE BANISHED 181

impending, both as regards the conflict for freedom
and as regards the ultimate fate of the King himself.
Such schemes as those of that priest-ridden yet im-
moral monarch perish when the English Bible gets its
due place, like some foul fungus which cannot abide
the light. The teaching of history clearly is that it was
more than a mere coincidence that this King who set
the Bible aside was himself set aside. He would fain
have banished it from the realm, and he himself was
driven out ; while there lay before it in the days to
come a career of usefulness and influence such as can
never have entered then into the imagination either of
its friends or its foes.

So long as the Bible was honoured and prized in the
land, whether under Cromwell or William, not only were
the rights of man respected at home, but the nation
was respected abroad. But under Charles the Second,
when the Bible was flouted and despised, not only did
persecution and tyranny abound in the homelands, but
for the first and last time in our history foreign guns
were heard in the Thames, and the voluptuous monarch
was the pensioner of France. As for his royal brother,
who attempted to banish the Bible which owed its
translation to his grandfather, there was nothing but
ever -deepening degradation, until at last he was driven
for ever from the throne of his fathers. Oliver
Cromwell's was the Bible -born Imperialism which,
according to Macaulay, ' arrested the sails of the Libyan
'pirates and the persecuting fires of Rome.' He
dictated terms to Louis the Fourteenth, the Duke of
Tuscany, and the tyrants of Tunis and Algiers. He
lowered the proud flag of Spain before which so many
had cowered so long. It was his ambition to make
the name of England as great as that of Rome had been
in her palmiest days, and as much honoured ; and men
never knew how truly he had done this, nor what was
the source of his inspiration, until he was gone. ' Then,'
said Pepys, ' it is strange how everybody do nowadays
1 reflect upon Oliver, and commend him, what brave
' things he did and made all the neighbours fear him,
' while here a prince, come in with all the love and

182 IN THE NATION AND THE STATE

' prayers and good liking of his people, hath lost it
' so soon, that it is a miracle what way a man could
'devise to lose so much in so little time.'

It was no Jingoism or mere earth -hunger that made
Cromwell great. It was the true Imperialism born of
the study of his Bible, and the determination to uphold
the glory of the flag by making it the synonym for
righteousness, the messenger of help for God's oppressed
ones all over the earth. His was never the mailed fist
of the bully, but the long arm of the champion of
liberty, toleration, and truth. And whatever else the
spread of the British Empire may have meant ; in so
far as it has set the slave free and brought liberty
to the captive, as it has so often done, and in so far
as it has brought the peace of God to those who were
for ever embroiled in petty wars, and that also it has
often done ; it has been inspired by the English Bible
as it has influenced countless homes all over the land,
and filled many hearts with its passion for justice and
its own hatred of oppression. More than that, the most
outstanding of our great Pro -Consuls, of those who have
helped to build up an imperial power which, with all its
failings, is the greatest engine of progress the world
has ever known, have been men who were not ashamed
to acknowledge that the Bible was their daily guide,
and that they owed to it all they had and all they were.
If from the Empire's roll-call of its explorers and
pioneers, its statesmen and leaders, the names of those
who were Bible -students were removed, the list left would
be a very attenuated and impoverished one. If the
Bible itself were removed from the national record, there
would be little left which would be worth recording.

It is character that tells alike in Empire -building and
trade expansion ; and nothing has made for high
character and the saving sense of fair -play among our
pioneers of Empire and trade like the influence, direct
and indirect, of the Bible among the people. It is part
of the national mind, and the anchor of the national
seriousness. Its stories and teachings, its whole atmo-
sphere and spirit, have been the subsoil in which the
plant of honour has taken deepest root, and out of

BIBLE RELIGION 183

which it grows in its purest and most enduring forms.
It affects even those who themselves are not readers
of the Bible ; and does more even than the Navy to
make the Empire secure and strong. It is to the sense
of honour, and the Bible -begotten sense of justice and
fair-play, that the British Raj in India and elsewhere
owes its continuance, that the word ' character ' has been
naturalized in Japan, and that there are lands where
the oath by the ' Anglesa parole,' the word of an
Englishman, is the most convincing of all. The Bible
has done more than aught else ; more than the flag,
more than our trade, more than the Pax Britannica,
more than the colonizing instincts of the Anglo-Saxon
race, more than the Navy League, more than the British
gift of governing subject races wisely and well, to bind
the scattered branches of the English-speaking peoples
into one great homogeneous community which stands
for justice and freedom, for progress and peace.

One who was a man of keen insight and a subtle
observer, although he drifted out of the way himself,
the late Cardinal Newman, had a vivid perception of
this character -building influence of the Authorized
Version ; and his testimony is all the more valuable
that in later years he was so largely an outsider.
' Bible religion,' he said, ' is both the recognized title
' and the best description of English religion. It con-
4 sists, not in rites and creeds, but mainly in having
' the Bible read in Church, in the family, and in private .
' Now I am far indeed from undervaluing that mere
' knowledge of Scripture which is imparted to the
' population thus promiscuously. At least in England,
' it has to a certain point made up for great and grievous
' losses in its Christianity. The reiteration again and
1 again, in fixed course in the public service, of the
' words of inspired teachers under both Covenants, and
' that in grave, majestic English, has in matter of fact
' been to our people a vast benefit. It has attuned
' their minds to religious thoughts ; it has given them
' a high moral standard ; it has served them in
lj associating religion with compositions which, even
1 humanly considered, are among the most sublime and

184 IN THE NATION AND THE STATE

* beautiful ever written ; especially, it has impressed upon
' them a series of Divine providences in behalf of man
' from his creation to his end, and, above all, the words,
' deeds, and sacred sufferings of Him in whom all the
' providences of God centre.'

How far the English Bible has inspired those who
have done most for the nation, by doing battle with
slavery and corruption, ignorance and disease, with the
opium trade, and the traffic in strong drink among the
native races, can be seen by a reference to the work
of noble Christian patriots like Wilberforce and Granville
Sharp, Robert Raikes, John Howard, and Elizabeth Fry.
God's Word illumined them and many others like them
since, and guided them into large and gracious con-
ceptions and deeds. It let them see that patriotism
does not consist in waving the flag, and still less in
flouting other flags. It consists in keeping the escutcheon
of the nation clean ; in delivering the land from the
foul blots of cruelty, drunkenness, and lust, oppression,
injustice, and hunger ; in bringing the legislation and
administration of the Empire into harmony with the
mind of God ; in giving every citizen cause to love the
fatherland, so that the cry ' For altar and hearth ' will
be a mockery for none ; and for all that, nothing has
been so fruitful as the circulation and spread of the
Bible, and just in proportion as it dominates and
sanctifies the life and thought of our time will the nation
be truly prosperous and great and free. It is not too
much to say that a nation of those who study and love
the Scriptures need fear no foe, so wise and far-seeing,
so strong and clean, will it make them ; and so truly
will it bring them into line with the eternal laws of
righteousness which rule the universe. The patriotism
which the Bible inspires is sane and healthy and
enduring ; and just because it is Divinely guided, it
respects the rights of others, even as it knows how to
defend its own.

CHAPTER V

ITS INFLUENCE ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
AND ENGLISH LITERATURE

185

' The Scripture affords us a Divine pastoral in the Song of Solomon,
consisting of two persons and a double chorus, as Origen rightly judges ;
and the Apocalypse of St. John is a majestic image of a high and stately
tragedy, shutting and intermingling her solemn scenes and acts with a
seven-fold chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies.' — JOHN MILTON.

CHAPTER V

ITS INFLUENCE ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
AND ENGLISH LITERATURE

NEXT to the wonderful work which our English Bible
has done in the home, in the Church, and in the
nation, nothing is more remarkable than the way in
which it has guided our English speech and inspired
our English literature. There are few facts connected
with literature regarding which there is more general
agreement than that the Authorized Version is a master-
piece of English, and that it has exercised a great and
beneficent influence on the development of the English
language. ' As a mere literary monument, the English
' version of the Bible remains the noblest example of
'the English tongue.1 Critics of all schools, who agree
about hardly anything else, are agreed that it is the
richest repository of thought and imagery, the best model
of pure style, which the language possesses. It is a
library rather than a book. It has something in it for
every seeker ; something for every pure taste. Its
poetry reaches loftier heights and fathoms deeper
depths than any other. Its history carries us further
back, and takes us further into the secret place of the
Most High than any other. It lets us see things from!
the standpoint of God, and sub specie aeternitatis.

Our English Bible must be more than literature, or
it is nothing ; but it is literature, and literature at its
best . Whatever our list of ' best books ' may be, the

Bible must not only be on it, but unquestionably first.

187

i88 INFLUENCE ON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

' It is God's Book as no other book can be ; profit -
' able for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and
'for instruction in righteousness.' But apart from that,
for the noblest poetry and unique history, for practical
wisdom and helpful guidance through the mazes of life,
and for a portrait gallery of truly human men and
women such as can be found nowhere else, it is the
most wonderful combination the world of letters has
ever seen. The moral qualities of the translators influ-
enced their literary work all through. John Milton was
no mean judge, and his testimony is that ' there are no
' songs to be compared with the songs of Zion ; no
' orations equal to those of the prophets ; and no politics
' like those which the Scriptures teach.' ' In the very
' critical art of composition, it may be easily made appear
' over all kinds of lyrical poesy to be incomparable.'

The place occupied by the English Bible in English
literature is as unique as the place of the Bible itself
in the literature of the race. As Caedmon's paraphrases
were the first true English poetry ; as Bede, the translator
of St. John, was the first writer of Old English prose ;
as Wiclif, who first gave the whole Bible to the English
nation, may be regarded as the Father of modern English
prose in virtue of the clear, homely English of his
translation ; and as Luther's German version was the
book which did most to fix the German language and
guide it into the grooves in which it has moved ever
since — so it has been both as regards language and
literature with the Authorized Version. Ever since it
appeared it has dominated, and in a sense hallowed,
all English speech and writing. This is not the testi-
mony of enthusiasts for the Bible only, but of literary
and linguistic experts . As Professor Sweet says : ' The
' publication of Tindale's translation of the New Testa-
' ment, in 1525, paved the way for the Authorized
'Version of 1611, which made Early Modern English
' what it has ever since been . . . the sacred or
' liturgical language of the whole English-speaking race.'
Mr. Green, too, speaks eloquently of the conspicuous
influence which from the first it exerted on ordinary
speech. ' The mass of picturesque allusion and illus-

BEYOND THE SEAS 189

' tration which we borrow from a thousand books, our
' fathers were forced to borrow from one ; and the
' borrowing was all the easier and the more natural
' that the range of the Hebrew literature fitted it for
'the expression of every phase of feeling.' 'Even to
' common minds this familiarity with grand poetic
' imagery in prophet and apocalypse gave a loftiness
' and ardour of expression, that with all its tendency to
' exaggeration and bombast we may prefer to the
' slipshod vulgarisms of the shopkeeper of to-day.'

On all hands it is agreed that throughout the more
modern history of the Anglo-Saxon race no book has
had so great an influence on the standard of English
literature wherever the language prevails, and on the
vocabulary and style of English writers generally, as
the Authorized Version of the English Bible. It has
gone with the emigrant to the ends of the earth, to fix
the standard and preserve the purity of the language
and the integrity of its literature in the Greater Britain
beyond the seas. It went with the Pilgrim Fathers to
New England, with the result that even when the great
Republic of the West was sundered from the Empire,
it remained loyal to the mother-tongue, and to all which
that involves. Nowhere is there more enthusiasm for
the English classics, or a greater determination to claim
a share in the inheritance of letters, than among those
who are furthest from the homeland, and nowhere
is there a deeper interest in the English Bible than
there. Nor can anyone enter with understanding
and sympathy into the treasures of that vast and
ever-growing inheritance ; whether he dwells in
the Old World or the New, beneath the Southern
Cross, in the wheat -lands of Saskatchewan, or on the
lonely South African veldt, unless he has some acquaint-
ance with the English Bible, so much has it entered
into the very texture of all that is best in our national
literature in all its branches. It requires but a brief
examination of authors so different as Shakespeare and
Milton, Scott and Carlyle, Browning, Ruskin, and Tenny-
son, to show that it is not merely that Scripture is often
quoted and alluded to, but that its words and images

IQO INFLUENCE ON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

have entered into the very warp and woof of the cloth
of gold which they have woven for the generations
which follow after. To be ignorant of the Bible is to
lack the key of the treasury alike in literature and grace.

As the result of his experience as an Inspector of
primary schools, Mr. Matthew Arnold said that the
English Bible introduces the only element of true poetry,
the one elevating and inspiring element that enters into
the education of multitudes in our land. The protest
against excluding it from our schools has come from
every quarter. It reaches every class, and influences
all sorts and conditions of men, as nothing else in
literature can. Books are the true levellers, and the
Bible is the truest leveller of all ; always levelling up,
however, rather than down. Just as gunpowder put the
man-at-arms in his leather jerkin on a level with the
knight in his armour of steel, the printing-press has
brought the Bible to the poor as well as to the rich,
to the uncultured as well as to the learned. In its
sacred simplicity and Divine depth it appeals to yearnings
and satisfies needs which are common to every class. It
is the great conciliatory, uniting force amid so much
that makes for antagonism and disruption. It is to
be found on the castle table and in the cottage of the
working man ; and it speaks the same message to every
home in which it is read. It is read by peasant and
prince, by mill -girl and countess, in Eton and Harrow
and in Board Schools, in the Universities and the Boys'
Brigade. Of the six thousand words in the Authorized
Version, not more than two hundred and fifty are not in
common use ; and that is largely because it has set the
standard, created the taste, and been as an Academy
of Letters in the land.

All that this means is seldom seen to be as wonderful
as it is, or even realized, because it has always been
such an outstanding fact in our lives. The Bible as
we have known it since ever we knew anything, speaks
to the simplest as well as to the most thoughtful, to
the busy worker and the student recluse, to those who
are just setting out on the pathway of life and to those
who are putting their armour off ; and speaks to them

INEXHAUSTIBLE DEPTHS 191

all alike with authority, dignity, and power. The most
profound cannot fathom its depths, while the simple-
hearted get all they need or can carry away ; and how-
ever far-reaching its philosophy may be, it never ceases
to be the book of the many, yea, of the all. It is said to
be one of the most severe tests that can be applied
to a book, that those who read it with enjoyment when
they are young should be able to enjoy it as much
when they are old. It often happens that when books
are re-read in these circumstances, their readers are
puzzled to think what they can ever have found in them,
they now seem so superficial and commonplace. But
not only does the Bible stand this test and even invite
it, the witness of multitudes of the wisest and best, of
all ranks and classes, is that they never read even those
parts of it with which they are most familiar without
discovering new beauties, coming under its power more
than ever, and rinding in their own blessed experience
that the half had not been told of its wonders, and
never can be told.

In other references to the worth of Scripture, we
can listen only to those for whom the Bible is more
than literature, for the secret of the Lord is with them
that fear Him, and spiritual things are spiritually dis-
cerned ; but in regard to its value for the language
and for literature, the testimonies of ordinary men of
letters may fairly be adduced ; and these are very many
and very varied in character. ' I am heartily glad,'
said Landor, ' to witness your veneration for a Book
' which, to say nothing of its holiness or authority, con-
' tains more specimens of genius and taste than any
4 other volume in existence.' ' No translation our own
4 country ever yet produced,' said Swift, ' hath come up
' to that of the Old and New Testaments ; and I am
4 persuaded that the translators of the Bible were masters
4 of an English style much fitter for that work than
4 any we see in our present writings ; the which is
4 owing to the simplicity which runs through the whole.'
4 The most learned, acute, and diligent student,' said Sir
Walter Scott, 4 cannot, in the longest life, obtain an
4 entire knowledge of this one volume. The more deeply

192 INFLUENCE ON LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

1 he works the mine, the richer and more abundant he
1 finds the ore ; new light continually beams from this
' source of heavenly knowledge, to direct the conduct
' and illustrate the work of God and the ways of men ;
* and he will at last leave the world confessing that the
' more he studied the Scriptures, the fuller conviction
' he had of his own ignorance, and of their inestimable
'value.' When he was near the end of his life, Dr.
Johnson said : ' I hope to read the whole Bible once
' every year, as long as I live. ... I devoted this week
' to the perusal of the Bible, and have done little secular
'business/ 'The Bible throughly known,' said Froude,
' is a literature in itself . . . the rarest and richest in
' all departments of thought or imagination which exists.'
' At the time when that odious style,' said Macaulay,
' which deforms the writings of Hall and Lord Bacon,
' was almost universal, appeared that stupendous work,
' the English Bible ; . . . a book which if everything
' else in our language should perish, would alone sufHce
' to show the whole extent of its beauty and power.
' The respect which the translators felt for the original,
' prevented them from adding any of the hideous decora -
' tions then in fashion . The groundwork of the version,
'indeed, was of an earlier age.'

The Authorized Version has often been called a well
of English undefiled, and much of its purity is due to
the fact that its water was drawn from the ancient
springs. It has the universal note which gives it a
place among the immortals. It has the Divine touch,
even in its diction, which lifts it above the limitations
of locality and time, and makes it valid and living for
all the ages. Like a rare jewel fitly set, the sacred
truths of Scripture have found such suitable expres-
sion in it, that we can hardly doubt that they filled
those who made it with reverence and awe, so that
they walked softly in the Holy Presence.

CHAPTER VI

SOME FAMOUS EDITIONS OF THE AUTHORIZED

VERSION

0

193

' This book of stars lights to eternal bliss.' — GEORGE HERBERT.

CHAPTER VI

SOME FAMOUS EDITIONS OF THE AUTHORIZED

VERSION

SOME of the famous editions have already been re-
ferred to incidentally, and only a few of the others
can now be enumerated. The first two editions issued
by the Cambridge University Press, which were also the
first issued by others than the King's printers, are of great
interest. The former of these appeared in 1629, and
was printed by Thomas and John Buck ; the latter
in 1638, printed by Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel.
The 1629 edition bore traces of the most careful
revision of the text, the italics, and the margin, by
unknown hands ; and in the 1638 edition this revision was
more carefully and consistently carried out by the scholars
Goad, Ward, Boyse, and Mead. According to Mr. Dore,
the latter is probably the best edition of King James's
Version ever published ; although Dr. Scrivener would
probably claim that honour for the Cambridge issue of
1858, which he employed as the model or standard
copy. The edition of 1638 is the Bible referred to by
Scott in Red gauntlet, where he tells of a lady in Edin-
burgh in reduced circumstances, who, although she lived
in a room ' on the head of the highest stair jn the
' Covenant Close,' ' never read a chapter except out of
' the Cambridge Bible printed by Daniel, and bound in
'embroidered velvet.'

In spite, however, of the evident care which was taken
to correct and avoid errors, each of these editions gave
birth to errors which became notorious, and persisted

195

1 96 SOME FAMOUS EDITIONS

through many subsequent issues. That of 1629 made
i Tim. 4. 1 6 read, ' Take heed to thy doctrine/ instead
of 'Take heed to the doctrine.' That of 1638 put
' ye ' instead of * we ' in Acts 6.3,' whom ye may
' appoint ' ; an error which was falsely imputed to eccle-
siastical bias, and gave rise to much recrimination. The
former error kept its place down to 1762, and the latter
at least as late as 1682.

In modern times there have also been famous editions
which deserve mention. The Cambridge Paragraph Bible
of 1873 has been generally recognized as the first serious
attempt to construct a critical edition of the Authorized
Version. The Variorum Bible of Messrs. Eyre and
Spottiswoode, 1876 and 1888, provides a digest of the
best accredited various readings and renderings of the
text, in footnotes for the English reader ; and so far
as results go puts him practically on a level with the
classical scholar. Bagster's editions of the Bible, too,
are monuments of minute and unpretending diligence.
As for the splendid series of issues from the Oxford
University Press, it is impossible to speak too highly of the
service they have rendered to the sacred cause of Bible
study. They have come as near perfection as human skill
can come ; and all the resources of the paper -maker,
bookbinder, and printer, at their best, have been freely
lavished on their preparation and embellishment. It
is now (1911) two hundred and thirty -six years since
the Authorized Version was first published by the Oxford
Press, and now there are a hundred editions of the
Oxford Bible. Nor is it without significance that in
spite of every attack on the Bible, in spite even of
the appearance on the scene of the Revised Version,
the Oxford record is one of continuous growth. In
1875 half a million of copies of these Bibles in the
Authorized Version were sold, and in 1885 seven hundred
thousand. In 1895 t^ie number had risen to a million,
while ten years later it was actually one million one
hundred and twenty thousand.

There are other three famous editions which may
further be referred to, inasmuch as they exercised an
abiding influence on all subsequent editions. Bishop

MARGINAL DATES 197

Lloyd's edition, which was published in London in 1701,
is memorable as the first to contain the marginal dates
which are now so familiar. They were taken from
Ussher's Annates veteris ei novi Testamenti, and are
of very varying value. Some of them, indeed, are
rather startling in view of modern discoveries. They
have not been materially amended since they first
appeared, and their only authority, of course, is that
of the eminent scholar who prepared them according
to the light he had. There seems to be no reason now
why the Authorized Version should be burdened, and
even prejudiced, by what is no real part of it as such.
Dr. Paris's edition of 1762, which was issued from
the Cambridge University Press, is of great importance
as being in the main the foundation of our modern
Bible. Much care was expended on it, and it did much
to bring the text, the marginal annotations, the italics,
and the textual references into the condition in which
we now have them. It had no real circulation, however,
partly because a large portion of the impression was
destroyed by fire, and partly because it was superseded
by Dr. Blayney's edition, which soon followed.

That edition was published in 1769 by the Oxford
University Press, and is commonly regarded as the
standard from which modern Bibles are printed.
Immense pains were taken with the marginal refer-
ences, over thirty thousand new references being intro-
duced ; some of them very misleading, however, as
based on a parallelism in the English where there is
none in the original. Blayney was specially proud of
his new chapter -headings, but that part of his work
met with no acceptance. His was the last considerable
effort to improve the ordinary editions of Scripture ;
and, like that of Dr. Paris, to whom he owed more
than he allowed, his work is a monument of genuine
industry and consecrated zeal. Yet in spite of the extra-
ordinary pains which he took to avoid new errors and
correct old ones, even his edition was far from faultless.
In 1806, as many as 116 errors were pointed out in
it, including the omission of a whole clause in
Rev. i 8. 22.

198 SOME FAMOUS EDITIONS

In this connection also, as in so many others in the
history of the Authorized Version, we are impressed by
the host of loyal workers who did their best to make
it as perfect as it could be, and to commend it to the
men of their time. Not a few of them were content
to do their arduous work out of sight, satisfied if only
they could thereby serve in the sacred cause. Scholars
and artizans, those who were experts in the ancient
tongues and those who were experts in their modern
crafts, joined hands in the great and often toilsome
endeavours .

BOOK IV

THE REVISION OF THE AUTHORIZED

VERSION

CHAPTER I
UNAUTHORIZED REVISIONS

199

' The pearl is of great price ; but even the casket is of exquisite beauty.
The sword is of ethereal temper, and nothing cuts so keen as its double
edge ; but there are jewels on the hilt, an exquisite inlaying on the scabbard.
The shekels are of the purest ore ; but even the scrip which contains
them is of a texture more curious than any which the artists of earth
can fashion. The apples are gold, but even the basket is silver.' — DR.
JAMES HAMILTON.

BOOK IV

THE REVISION OF THE AUTHORIZED

VERSION

CHAPTER I
UNAUTHORIZED REVISIONS

WHAT has just been said regarding famous issues
shows that revision has been going on from the
first. Some of these issues are famous mainly because
of the extent to which they were revisions. It has always
been held to be the duty of Christian scholars to make
the vernacular Scriptures as representative as possible
of the original manuscripts. God must get our best,
and those who read His Word must be brought as near
to Him as possible. That grows out of the very con-
ception of a translation. In his first preface, Tyndale
laid this obligation on Bible students, that ' if they per-
' ceive in any place that the version has not attained
' unto the very sense of the tongue, or the very meaning
' of Scripture, or to have given the right English word,
' that they should put to their hands and amend it, remem-
4 bering that so is their duty to do.'

It may be questioned, however, whether individual
printers and private editors are at liberty to undertake
this work of revision ; and there can be no question that
it has sometimes been attempted on inadequate grounds,
and done in foolish and even grotesque ways. In 1768,
for example, Dr. Edward Harwood set himself to translate
the New Testament ' with freedom, spirit, and elegance,'

202 UNAUTHORIZED REVISIONS

and gave such renderings as ' the young lady is not
' dead,' in Mark 5. 39 ; and 'A gentleman of splendid
' family and opulent fortune had two sons ' ; ' The indul-
' gent father, overcome by his blandishments, immediately
'divided all his fortune betwixt them/ in Luke 15. n,

12. There have even been attempts made to ' bowdlerize '
the Scriptures. The question asked by Nicodemus in
John 3 . 4 has been refined into ' can he become an unborn
4 infant of his mother a second time ? ' while ' unchaste
' and immodest gratifications ' has been offered as an
improvement on ' chambering and wantonness ' in Romans

13. 13. It might not be out of place to remind those
who like that sort of thing of the testimony of one of the
most experienced teachers of girls in Great Britain : that
she has never known the frankness of Scripture in regard
to such matters do anything but good among her pupils,
and that she has often been grateful for it.

But apart from such eccentricities and follies, an
unauthorized revision of the Authorized Version has been
going on from the first.; and as far back as 1831 the
public attention was drawn, by Mr. Curtis, of Islington,
to the extent to which all modern reprints of Holy
Scripture had departed from the original edition or
editions of 1 6 1 1 . He declared that the result had been
the great deterioration of our Vernacular Translation ;
but the subsequent publication of the 1 6 1 1 text in the
Oxford reprint of 1833 virtually vindicated the un-
authorized revisions which had been made, by showing
how impossible it was to go back to the unrevised
edition. Not only so ; but the discovery thus made of
the extent to which the epoch-making work of King
James's scholars had been patiently and reverently brought
into a more consistent and presentable shape did much
to strengthen the conviction which ultimately led to the
preparation of our Revised Version. The feeling grew
steadily, until for many it was overpowering, that it
was an obvious duty to bring the gains of two centuries
and a half of patient consecrated study and scholarly
research within the reach of all. During the long period
in which the Authorized Version had been pursuing its
career of blessing without a rival, great stores of Biblical

LACK OF ACCURACY

h 'arning had been accumulating, and the capacity of
scholars for making use of the new light had been steadily
growing, and it was felt that it should all be applied
to the sacred cause of Bible translation. All the while,
however, the unauthoi i/eii revision was going on.

The fact that the first two editions in 1611, which
had been issued so simultaneously that the experts are
still unable to agree as to which, if either, was actually
first, differed in a multitude of minute details, as well as
in some matters which were neither minute nor details,
made it inevitable that emendations should be attempted ;
and the process thus begun went on until the nineteenth
century. Only those who take the trouble to compare
an edition of i6ii with one now current can appreciate
the extent to which this work of emendation was carried
on, and as each revised edition in turn perpetrated its
own new errors, finality was not easily attained. Some
of the changes made were external, and dealt with the
marginal notes, and references, and the chapter head-
ings. Most of those, too. which dealt with the aetual
text were concerned with minute matters such as the
employment of italics and the punctuation, and the spell-
ing of proper names ; but in not a few cases the actual
meaning was alVected, although the worst errors of that
sort, such as omitting or adding the powerful word
' not,' were usually too obvious to do much mischief.

Some of the departures from the original editions were
due to blunders on the part of printers and the culpable
carelessness of proof-readers ; and until as recently as
1830 there was often a deplorable lack of accuracy and
care. As early as 1643, the Westminster Assembly
made a report to Parliament on the subject of the great
number of errors which had already crept into the
editions then in use. Hut most of the changes were
deliberately made. Of the first fifty years of the
nineteenth century there were only nine which witnessed
no attempt at revision. Dr. Scrivener, who made
a special study of this feature of the history of the
Authorized Version, and has compiled a list of changes
which, including the Apocrypha, extends to twenty-three
pages of his deeply -interesting volume entitled, The

204 UNAUTHORIZED REVISIONS

Authorized Version of the English Bible of 1611, says
that while some of the differences which he records
must be imputed to oversight and negligence, from
which no work of man is entirely free, much the greater
part of them were deliberate changes, introduced silently
and without authority by men whose very names are
unknown. All the material differences between the 161 1
editions and the Authorized Version as it is now in
common use have been indicated in the margin of the
Parallel Bible of 1885, with both Authorized and Revised
Versions .

Many of the changes which have been made at one
time or another, and have been adopted, consist in such
emendations as inserting the preposition in the phrase
' all manner leprosy ' in Lev. 14. 54, and elsewhere, and
making it read ' all manner of leprosy.' In other cases the
definite article has been introduced, so that we now have
' upon the earth ' for ' upon earth ' ; 'in the battle ' for
' in battle ' ; ' for the press ' for ' for press ' ; and ' Thou
' art the Christ ' for ' Thou art Christ.' Among the
changes in the Gospels recorded by Dr. Scrivener are
such as these : ' The word of Jesus,' since 1762, when so
many emendations were made, for ' the words of Jesus,'
in Matt. 26. 75 ; 'He ran and worshipped' for 'he
' came and worshipped,' since 1638 in Mark 5.6;' There
' is none good but one,' since 1638 for ' there is no man
' good, but one,' in Mark 10.18; 'a son of Abraham '
for 'the son of Abraham,' since 1762 in Luke 19. 9 ;
'at nought' for 'at naught,' in Luke 23. 11 since
1638 ; ' than his Lord ' for ' than the Lord,' since 1762
in John 15. 20; 'because he not only,' since 1629 for
1 not only because he ' in John 5 . 1 8 .

Such changes as ' godly edifying,' for ' edifying,' in
I Tim. 1.4; - hath not the Son of God,' for ' hath not
the Son,' in I John 5. 12 ; and ' which was a Jewess,'
for ' which was a Jew,' in Acts 24. 24, are interesting ;
as well as the wholesale fashion in which proper names
have been dealt with. In the New Testament, for example,
we have Apollos for Apollo ; Stephen for Steven ; Moses
for Moyses,; Cain for Kain ; Nain for Nairn ; Jerusalem
for Hierusalem ; Jericho for Hiericho ; and many others.

HELPFUL CHANGES 205

In his Cambridge Paragraph Bible, Scrivener himself
introduced some further emendations of his own, prin-
cipally in the Apocrypha, which was the least well done
section in 161 1 . Among other changes he gives ' mercy's
' sake ' for ' mercies' sake ' in three passages in the
Psalms ; ' strain out a gnat ' for ' strain at a gnat,' in
Matt. 23. 24, following in this the versions of the English
Bible prior to the Authorized Version ; ' ye believe not '
for 'ye believed not,' in John 10. 25 ; and 'hope ' for
' faith ' in Hebrews 10. 23.

In more recent times, various unauthorized revisions
of a different sort have frequently appeared, such as
Weymouth's Version of the New Testament in Modern
Speech, and the translations which accompany many
of our modern commentaries. Not a few of these have
been of great service to the cause of Bible Study, and
have helped to bring their readers nearer than ever to
the inexhaustible fullness of the Divine Word.

CHAPTER II

THE INCEPTION AND PREPARATION OF THE
REVISED VERSION

207

'The Bible is like an ever-flowing fountain. Take what we will, and
as much as we will, we ever leave more than we take to satisfy the wants
of others. Neither the writers nor the thinkers of any one age can exhaust
its fullness. The books of men have their day, and then grow obsolete.
God's Word is like Himself, " the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."
Time passes over it, but it ages not. Its power is as fresh as if God
spake it but yesterday.' — DR. PAYNE SMITH.

CHAPTER II

THE INCEPTION AND PREPARATION OF THE
REVISED VERSION

FROM the first, as has just been shown, unauthorized
revision of the Authorized Version had been going
on, and on the whole with advantage to the readers of
the Word. Even those who denounced a practice which
at first sight seems so improper, were silenced when the
Oxford reprint of 1833 showed what had actually been
achieved. Within thirty -four years of the first appear-
ance of the Authorized Version, a definite revision of
it had been suggested in the House of Commons ; but
it was soon found out that nothing better could be hoped
for, then at any rate. From the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, however, the minds of many scholars were
turned to some systematic revision, and various partial
private translations were actually made, with varying suc-
cess, by several scholars. As the century wore on, the
desire for a Revised Version deepened ; and early in the
year 1856 motions in favour of such an undertaking were
made both in Parliament and in Convocation. Nothing
came of these, however, except in so far as they turned
men's minds to the possibilities of the situation. The
romantic discovery of the great Codex Sinaiticus at
Mount Sinai, by Tischendorf, naturally quickened the
movement, and increased the desire of many to set about
the work of revision at once in a worthy fashion ; in
order that the whole community might be able to walk
in the fuller light of modern discovery and scholarly

attainments.

p 209

zio THE REVISED VERSION

It was not that any responsible scholars thought that the
Authorized Version was seriously inaccurate or mislead-
ing, but that many believed that it might be made even
more perfect than it was ; and they knew that no changes
which were made on the authority of the new manuscripts,
or as the result of modern research, could possibly im-
peril the faith, or indeed have any bearing on any of
the primary truths of the Gospel. They reminded the
nation of the significant fact that not one of the great
Codices had been available in 1 6 1 1 ; and insisted that
it was the bounden duty of modern scholarship to put the
ordinary English reader as nearly as possible on a level
with the reader of the original tongues. Nor would they
admit that this could be sufficiently or effectively done
by any such device as footnotes. Some of those, indeed,
who were forward to acknowledge the incomparable merits
and charm of the Authorized Version were convinced that
it was only by wise and reverent revision that it could
assimilate the new treasures which God in His providence
had brought to light since the days of King James.

It was not, however, till February, 1870, that definite
action was taken. It was then agreed by the Convocation
of Canterbury, on the motion of Bishop Wilberforce, to
appoint a Committee to report on the desirableness of
a revision of the Authorized Version, whether by mar-
ginal notes or otherwise. This Committee reported in
May of the same year, and it was then decided ' that
' Convocation should nominate a body of its own mem-
' bers to undertake the work of revision, who shall be
' at liberty to invite the co-operation of any eminent
' for scholarship to whatever nation or religious body
i they belong.' Soon thereafter two Companies were
appointed for the revision of the Old and New Testaments
respectively .

The chairman of the Old Testament Company was
Dr. Harold Browne, Bishop of Winchester ; while Dr.
Ellicott, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, presided over
the New Testament Company. Over sixty scholars took
part in the work, a larger number than had ever engaged
in such work before. They were not only repre-
sentative of the best scholarship of their time, and

REVISERS' INSTRUCTIONS 211

abundantly qualified for their work ; they were repre-
sentative of all shades of theological opinion, Baptist
and Methodist sitting side by side with Episcopalian and
Presbyterian in an altogether unique fashion. Not only
was the flower of English scholarship to be found among
the Revisers : Scotland was represented by no fewer than
thirteen of her most distinguished Biblical students, and
had thus an opportunity of at last removing the old
reproach that she had done nothing worthy of herself and
her religious yearnings in the department of Bible trans-
lation into the vernacular. American scholars, too, were
in active co-operation with their brethren on this side
of the Atlantic, and took no small share in the proceed-
ings. Their colleagues in their Preface bear testimony
to the ' care, vigilance, and accuracy ' of their fellow-
labourers across the seas. The work of the American
Revisers was, indeed, so important, and has led to such
developments, as to call for consideration by itself.

The instructions of the Revisers were that they should
introduce as few alterations as possible into the text of
the Authorized Version consistently with faithfulness ; and
limit, as far as possible, the expression of such alterations
to the language of the Authorized and earlier English
Versions. No change was to be made or retained in
the text on the final revision by either Company, unless
two -thirds of those present approved of it ; and probably
this rule was responsible for some of the results to which
most exception has been taken. There are many indica-
tions, for example, that the needful two -thirds majority
for changes was much more difficult to attain in the
Old Testament Company than in the New ; a fact which
makes the marginal notes of the Old Testament of special
importance .

The Revisers began their work in June, 1870 ; their
New Testament appeared in 1881, and their complete
work in 1885. That they did their work well, will be
admitted not only by those who think the revision of the
New Testament too revolutionary or that of the Old Testa-
ment too conservative, but even by those who think that
the Old Testament Revisers were too revolutionary or
those of the New Testament too conservative. What-

212 THE REVISED VERSION

ever may be the ultimate fate of what they did, and
whatever may be thought of its value and significance,
or of the relative value of the work done by the respective
Companies, what they accomplished is entitled to the
respect due to an earnest and loyal attempt to get nearer
the exact meaning of the Holy Scriptures ; and to
present to the English-speaking peoples the approved
results of textual criticism, of the discovery of formerly
unknown manuscripts and versions, and of a fuller
acquaintance with the sacred languages.

Among the arguments which had been urged on behalf
of this revision being undertaken, there were some which
could not be readily set aside. It was pointed out that
apart altogether from the progress made by scholarship
and Comparative Philology, there were some two hundred
words in the Authorized Version which had changed their
meaning since 161 1, and others which no ordinary reader
could understand ; and that there were even phrases which
tended to give a wrong turn to the meaning unless there
was much care and considerable knowledge. It was also
pointed out that, from the very nature of the case, as
concerning God's revelation of Himself and His purpose
of grace to men which the best men have, the fullest
light, the most accurate information, the most thorough-
going research, must be devoted to the work of making
the vernacular Scriptures as accurate and luminous as
possible. It was also undeniable that textual criticism as
applied to the Greek New Testament, more especially
through the discovery of the new codices and the labours
of a succession of great scholars, had resulted in the
construction of a more accurate Greek Testament than
was available in 1 6 1 1 . On the side of the Old Testament,
too, it was equally undeniable that Hebrew scholarship
had made conspicuous advances in modern times.

As regards the results of the Revision, considerable
changes were made both on the text and on its external
form, as presented to English readers. The old
divisions into chapters and verses were noted only in
the margin, and the text was printed in paragraphs like
an ordinary book. The old chapter -headings were left
out altogether. In the text itself the number of variations

ALTERATIONS IN THE TEXT 213

in the New Testament from the Authorized Version was
between thirty-five and thirty -six thousand. There were
ever five thousand variations from the Greek Text of
1611. Many felt that there might have been fewer
alterations without sacrifice of accuracy ; while some
of those made were greatly resented — such as the
omission of the Doxology of the Lord's Prayer, and the
new form of words so familiar as, ' On earth peace, good
' will toward men.' But the Revisers had to be loyal
to the text which had approved itself to them. They also
claimed that what had been lost in style by rendering1
the same Greek words throughout by the same English
words was gained in accuracy, which is even more
important.

Fewer changes were made in the Old Testament. Iri
Job, which is the most difficult of the Old Testament
books, there were only 1,389 alterations ; while in the
book of Jeremiah there were 1,278 ; and in the book of
Psalms, 2,094. This was probably due in part to the
strong feeling which had been shown in the interval
regarding the number of changes in the New Testament ;
but it was chiefly due to the fact that there were no
changes in the Old Testament text corresponding to
those which had been made on the text of the New Testa-
ment. There is to all intents only one text of the Old
Testament, and our Hebrew Bible is practically the same
as that in use in the time of our Lord. The New Testa-
ment Revisers were obliged to construct a Greek text which
they thereafter translated ; but the Old Testament Revisers
had practically to confine themselves to the Masoretic
text, and put anything of value from the Septuagint and
elsewhere in the margin. The consequence was that the
alterations on the Old Testament were due, not to textual
changes, but to an increased knowledge of Hebrew and
of textual criticism, combined with a more thorough
study of the Septuagint and the Targums, together with
the Vulgate and other ancient versions.

The changes made throughout fall into four classes,
which need not be elaborated. There were those which
arose from the adoption of new and better authenticated
readings in the original. There were those which were

2i4 THE REVISED VERSION

the result of the original having previously been misunder-
stood. There were those due to the disappearance of
obsolete words. And, finally, there were those due to
the application of the ruling principle that the same
words in the original should be consistently represented
by the same English words. Whether there were too
many or too few, is a matter of opinion or of feeling ;
but no one can study those which were made, side by
side with the Authorized Version, without finding that
new light is being thrown on the sacred page, and that
new depths are being discovered in the Divine Word.

CHAPTER III
ITS RECEPTION AND SUBSEQUENT CAREER

215

'The Bible is like a wide and beautiful landscape seen afar off, dim
and confused ; but a good telescope will bring it near, and spread out
all its rocks, and trees, and flowers, and verdant fields, and winding rivers
at one's very feet. That telescope is the Spirit's teaching.' — DR. THOMAS
CHALMERS.

CHAPTER III
ITS RECEPTION AND SUBSEQUENT CAREER

THE interest which gathered round the publication
of the Revised New Testament on May 17, 1881,
all through the English-speaking world, was altogether
unparalleled in the history of publications. Long before
it appeared, the curiosity and anxiety of the public had
been raised to the highest pitch ; and all sorts of means,
both fair and foul, had been employed in vain in order
to obtain advance copies. The most elaborate arrange-
ments were made for the first day's sales ; but although
more than a million copies had been issued by the Oxford
Press, and a large, although smaller, number by the Cam-
bridge Press, that was quite inadequate to supply the
demand. One London bookseller sold fifteen thousand
copies during that memorable day ; and altogether some
indication was given of the place which the Bible still
occupies in the community. As soon as possible, too, it
was distributed in the ends of the earth.

The excitement on May 18, 1885, when the complete
Revised Bible was sent out, was not nearly so great as
it had been four years before ; but the interest was still
very great and widespread, and the sale was enormous.
One writer at the time declared that no one could any
longer say that religion is less powerful in our time than
it was in the days of the Puritans. If we may judge by
the ordinary test of the sales, alike of the Revised Version
and the Authorized, the English Bible is still immeasurably
the first book in popular esteem. Such sales could hardly
continue year after year if the Scriptures were quite as
much superseded as many suggest or fear.

217

218 ITS RECEPTION AND SUBSEQUENT CAREER

It is probable that not even the most sanguine admirers
of the Revised Version expected that it would be accepted
at once and on all hands as the English Bible, and be raised
to the supreme place occupied so long by the Authorized
Version. To begin with, there was the ordinary con-
servatism of human nature to be overcome, although
against that there might be set the instinctive love of
change, and the faith in the new, which characterize so
many. Not only so ; but this was no case where the
friends of the old were obscurantists, who said, ' The old
' is better/ or ' The old is good.' It was pre-eminently
a case where the old was good, and where it had become
an integral part of the life of the nation at its best.

As a matter of fact, the reception which has been
accorded to the Revised Version has been very mixed, and
probably few even of its' friends are now sanguine that
it will ultimately obtain the first place in the land. The
different standard set up by the two Companies has not
helped matters. Some hold that if the New Testament
Company had been as conservative as the Old, there
would have been a hearty acceptance of their joint work.
Others hold that if the Old Testament Company had been
as courageous as the New, the whole would have com-
mended itself far more than it has done. The fact,
however, remains that now, after the New Testament has
been in the field for thirty years and the Old Testa-
ment for twenty -six, the supremacy of the Authorized
Version can hardly be said to have been seriously shaken.
The sale of the Revised Version has been steadily but
slowly increasing for some years past, and it clearly has
its public ; but the University Presses still issue annually
as they did ten years ago, fully ten times as many of the
Authorized Version as of the Revised. And it has to be
borne in mind that they alone issue copies of the Revised
Version, whereas many others are issuing copies of the
Authorized .

In 1899, Convocation authorized the use of the Revised
Version in churches, leaving its adoption to the discretion
of the clergy, a course very much the same as that
adopted by the Methodist Churches, and a folio edition
was prepared for that purpose. Within recent years,

FRIEND L Y RIVALS 219

too, the British and Foreign Bible Society, who for long
sold only the Authorized Version, have begun to sell
the Revised Bible in three editions, in addition to an
edition of the New Testament alone. The New Testament
is sold at a cost of fourpence, and the cheapest of the
Bibles is tenpence. The likelihood therefore is that the
two versions will go on their way side by side, as friendly
rivals, although some still anticipate that the Revised
Version will sooner or later come into general use as
its merits are recognized.

It is interesting at this juncture to compare the present
state of affairs with the expectation of Dr. Scrivener,
who spent such loving care on the Authorized Version
and its subsequent reprints, and modern representatives.
Writing in 1884, three years, that is, after the Revised
New Testament had appeared, his anticipation was that
the two ' are destined to run together a race of generous
' and friendly rivalry for the space of at least one genera-
' tion, before the elder of the two shall be superseded in
' the affections of not a few devout persons, who, in so
' grave a matter as the daily use of Holy Scripture, shall
' prove slow to adopt changes which yet they will not
' doubt to be made, on the whole, for the better.' The
one generation, however, has come and gone, and there
can be no question that the result has not been that to
which the great scholar thus looked forward.

It by no means follows, however, that the work of
the Revisers has been in any sense thrown away, even if
it never obtain the supremacy. Both versions may do their
best work side by side, and there are frequent indications
in sermons and addresses and many modern writings that
the Revised Version is being largely used for private
study, even by those who still cling fondly to the
Authorized, and will never consent to let it go. Probably
the vast majority of those who know the facts would
assent to Dr. Sanday's claim for the work of the Revisers,
that ' adventitious growths which in the course of cen-
' turies had found a place in the very imperfect text
' used by the old translators have been removed ; true
4 readings substituted for false, and probable readings
' at least placed alongside those that are doubtful. The

220 ITS RECEPTION AND SUBSEQUENT CAREER

1 meaning of the original has been more accurately
' rendered. Much that used to be obscure has now been
' made plain, and that which was comparatively plain
' has been made plainer. Many a fine shade of thought
' has been brought out, which would otherwise have
' passed unnoticed.' The only question, Dr. Sanday holds,
is to what extent and whether the gain may not, in some
greater or less degree, be accompanied with loss. It
is quite possible, however, that readers may be ready to
acknowledge that, especially in the Prophets and the
Epistles, the gain far exceeds the loss, and be anxious
to avail themselves of all the gain, especially in their
private study, and yet be altogether unwilling to see
the Authorized Version follow the Geneva version into
the limbo of old Bibles which have now no more than
an antiquarian interest.

It may be noticed, too, that there are scholars who hold
that the Revisers have failed to such an extent to bring
out the true meaning in many instances, that the loss
would be greater than the gain were the new version
to replace the old. One of these, dealing specially with
the New Testament, in the pages of The Expositor, after
giving what he held to be instances where there had
been such failure, and declaring that there are minor
inaccuracies on every page, goes on to say : ' The
' Authorized Version, it is true, also has its blemishes
' and imperfections ; but they fade almost into insigni-
' ficance in comparison with the serious errors of the
' Revised. The Version of King James's translators is
' more true to the genius of the English language, and
' characterized in more directions than one by more pro-
' found scholarship. Until both Text and Translation be
' made much more perfect, it involves much less wrong
' and much less loss to the Churches to retain the old
' Version.'

Another scholar, also in the pages of The Ex-
positor, subjects the work done by the Revisers of
the Old Testament to an unfavourable criticism. ' The
' Hebrew text has been left in its original state of
'• questionable integrity. Obscure passages for the most
4 part remain as unintelligible as the lover of " that sweet

A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT 221

4 " word Mesopotamia " can desire.' ' The task of textual
4 emendation they have frankly declined. Palpable mis-
4 readings remain.' ' The timorous conservatism of their
' Old Testament will vex those who desired a translation
4 on a level with modern erudition. Their pigeon -
' Jacobean diction, in both Old Testament and New, will
4 always provoke disparaging comparison with the easy
4 rjiythm of our great English classic. The one per-
4 manently valuable outcome of this singular episode in
4 the history of literature is Westcott and Hort's Greek
' Testament text, which is recognized by Continental
4 critics as a credit to English scholarship.' 4 We, of
4 course, take no notice of its side -notes, which we cannot
4 allow to discount the final decision the Revisers lay
' before the public in their text. By that they must
4 stand or fall.' 4 The Revised Version does not represent
4 unbiassed Hebrew scholarship.'

The reception given to the Revised Version has thus
been somewhat mixed, alike on the part of scholars and
the general public ; but it would be a poor compliment
to the Authorized Version to resent the presence of the
Revised Version, or to seek in any way to limit its
sphere of influence. It is a great achievement of British
and American scholarship, and a valuable commentary ;
and all Bible students should use the two versions side
by side. The Old Testament marginal notes are of
undoubted value, and it is well at times that men's minds
should be taken past any and every form of words, even
the most venerable, to the Word itself. The Holy Scrip-
tures must never be identified with any version, even
the best. On the other hand, even in view of all the
Revised Version has achieved in the matter of precision
as regards the true force of tenses and compound verbs,
and the distinctive sense of prepositions/; as well as
in the fidelity with which it exhibits new shades of
meaning, there is no obscurantism in expressing the wish
that it will never supersede the Authorized Version, but
that the two streams will continue long to flow, on side by
side as they are doing now, to the advantage of those who
study the Record of the Divine Revelation in the history
of men.

CHAPTER IV
AMERICA AND THE WORK OF REVISION

223

'Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.'-
PSALM 119. 105.

CHAPTER IV
AMERICA AND THE WORK OF REVISION

THE first American edition of the Authorized Version
seems to have been issued in the year 1782. Until
then the monopolists at home had been able to prevent
any infringement of their privileges on the part of the
New England printers. After the establishment of the
Republic, however, anyone who chose to do so was at
liberty to print Bibles ; the result being, as a Committee
of theirs discovered, that the lack of supervision led to
even greater variations than in the homeland.

From 1847 till 1851 an American Committee of seven
scholars were engaged in an attempt at revision, which
was projected by the American Bible Society, but with
little outcome. The fruits of their labours were set aside
by those who appointed them ' on the ground of alleged
' want of constitutional authority, arid popular dissatis-
' faction with a number of the changes made.' The
only result of their toil remains in the editions of the
Bible published by the American Bible Society since
1860.

Wheri our Revised Version was arranged for in 1870,
American scholars were invited to co-operate with the
British Revisers, who from time to time transmitted to
them the several portions of their work, and received
from them in return their criticism and suggestions. Dr.
Philip Schaff, of New York, who visited this country in
connection with the work in 1872, was President of the
whole American Revision Committee-; while Dr. William
Henry Green, of Princeton, was chairman of the Old
Testament Company, and Dr. Theodore D. Woolsey, of
Q 225

226 AMERICA AND THE WORK OF REVISION

Yale College, chairman of the New Testament Company.
Nowhere was the excitement over the appearance of the
Revised Version greater than in America. It was the
first version of the English Bible which the New World
had helped to produce, and enormous interest was taken
in it. In order to put Chicago on a level with New
York, a Chicago newspaper actually transmitted the four
Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistle to the Romans by
telegraph on the morning of its appearance.

Effect was given to many of the suggestions which'
were received from across the Atlantic, and various
matters regarding which perfect agreement could not
be attained were printed as an appendix. With all their
reverence for the ancient in literature, the American
scholars naturally felt freer to introduce changes than
their British brethren ; and in the year 1901 an American
Revised Bible was issued, which, however, is not allowed
to be sold in Great Britain, in deference to the rights of
the University Presses in the British Revised Version.

In connection with the joint labours of the British and
American Revisers, it had been agreed that the British
Companies should have a decisive vote, with the proviso
that during a period of fourteen years every copy of
the Revised Bible should contain the appendices with
the American preferences. On their part, the American
Committee pledged themselves that for the same period
they would sanction no other editions of the Revised
Version than those issued by the University Presses in
England. The American Companies, unlike their British
brethren, continued their organization, and latterly set
themselves to prepare and publish a revision of their
own, which accordingly was done ten years ago;; Messrs.
Thomas Nelson & Sons having the sole right of issue.

In many respects this American Revision goes beyond
merely giving effect to the American preferences as set
forth in the British appendices. Very naturally, being no
longer trammelled, they have incorporated many additional
emendations which they had formerly favoured but which
they did not insist on being put on record ; as well as
other changes which they deem improvements . They have
even returned in some instances to the readings of the

REVERENT AND SCHOLARLY 227

Authorized Version, which they considered had been need-
lessly abandoned, sometimes to the injury of the sense
as well as of the sound. The paragraph divisions were
revised, grammar and punctuation were dealt with in
order to make them conform more to modern usage,
column -headings were re -introduced, and some parallel
references were added in the margin, while slight changes
were made in the form of the titles of some of the books.

The changes made in the New Testament are neither
numerous nor important. The rendering of the coins
which are mentioned has been altered, and a few archaisms
have been discarded ; but there are many alterations in
the Old Testament. We find ' Jehovah ' substituted for
' LORD ' and ' GOD ' on the ground that a Jewish super-
stition ought no longer to dominate the English or any
other version-; while ' sheol ' appears uniformly for ' the
' grave,' ' the pit,' and ' hell.' The use of ' shall ' and
' will,' and other matters of the same sort, have also
been dealt with. Very many of the alterations made
appeared to be demanded by consistency. ' Justice ' had
already been substituted for ' judgement,' and for the same
reason ' ordinance ' has now been substituted for ' judge-
ment ' where the word denotes not a judicial sentence,
threatened or inflicted, but a law of action. It is
also claimed that the distinction between ' stranger,'
' foreigner,' and ' sojourner ' has now been made con-
sistently manifest. Nearly five -sixths of the references
in the margin of our Revision to the readings of the
ancient versions have been removed, on the ground that
though the date of these is more ancient than any extant
manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, they are all translations
from the Hebrew, and there is no means of verifying the
text from which they were made.

It still remains to be seen whether the American
Revised Version will fare any better than ours ; but few
who know it will deny that it is a reverent and scholarly
effort to bring its readers more closely into contact with
the exact thought of the sacred writers. It is as worthy
of our grateful admiration as any of its predecessors in
the old country.

CONCLUSION

' What shall it profit a man if he shall gain a telescope and lose his
sight ? ' — JOWETT.

CONCLUSION

IN the foregoing chapters we have seen something of
the history of the Authorized Version, as well as
something of the previous translations to which it served
itself heir, and of which it was the glorious fruit. We
have also seen something of the translation which in our
own time has taken its place alongside of it, to be its
friend and fellow -worker in bringing men and women
ever nearer the very mind of God. And clearly, in
view of all we have seen, it would be a blunder to
think of our Authorized Version as merely one trans-
lation out of many. To all intents and purposes it is
the English Bible for all sorts and conditions of men. As
one of the Revisers put it, it can only be superseded
in that sphere of fuller truth where we shall know even
as we are known.

It is indeed an inspiring story which we have been
tracing. It matters not where we look, it tells of mighty
men of God whose work endures and cannot but endure.
In the far past there were workers like the truly royal
Alfred, who sought to make the law of the Lord the law
of the land, and to found his government on the Divine
Word ; and y£lfric the Archbishop, who nearly a thousand
years ago wrote words which are as applicable now as
they were then : ' Happy is he, then, who reads the Scrip-
* tures, if he convert the words into actions. The whole
' of the Scriptures are written for our salvation, and by
' them we obtain the knowledge of the truth.' As for John
Wiclif and William Tyndale, words cannot set forth all
we owe to them. Wiclif was indeed the Doctor
Evangelicus :

For Christe's love and His apostles twelve,
He taught — and first he folwede it himselve.
231

232 CONCLUSION

To Tyndale, primus inter pares, we are indebted most
of all. His piety, learning, and courage, all led on to
the great Divine end which he attained ; and he builded
better, than he knew. A Scots philosopher has said that
all philosophy since is just Plato rightly understood, and
every new translation of the English Bible since has just
been the principles of Tyndale more thoroughly applied
in fuller knowledge and clearer light. And what shall
we say of Caxton, who laid his printing press on the
altar, and, through his amended Golden Legend, made
England familiar with the Word of God ; of Thomas
Cromwell, who used his great position and ran the risk
of the despot's wrath by encouraging one translator
after another to pursue his work ; or of Miles Coverdale,
the self-effacing man of God, who was ready to serve in
any way if only Christ and His Gospel might be made
known? As for later days, time would fail us to tell of
the wisdom and perseverance of those who in happier times
made use of their scholarly repose and growing light
to dedicate their all to the spread of the Word, which
alone can scatter the world's darkness and win men for
God. The Authorized Version does not gather round
one man's name, as most of its predecessors did ; but
it tells of the dedication of great gifts and acquirements,
of much good sense and foresight and co-operation, for
the glory of God and the well-being of men.

Nor should the consecrated labours of the unknown
copyists of earlier times or of equally unknown printers
and binders of later days be altogether overlooked.
Many of them, who were only tradesmen, entered on their
work in the spirit of a profession, and their names are
written in the Book of Life. Purvey had it long ago that
' a translator hath great need to study well the sense both
' before and after, and then also he hath need to live
' a clean life, and be full devout in prayers, and have
* not his wit occupied about worldly things that the Holy
•' Spirit, author of all wisdom and cunning and truth,
' dress him for his work and suffer him not to err ' ; and
so it has been that a great multitude have laboured
for us in the Lord in wisdom and cleanness, and we have
entered into their labours, that they without us should
not be made perfect.

THE WORD OF THE LIVING GOD 233

The entire record shows how confident believers in
God and His precious Word may be that no change or
discovery can touch the foundations of their faith, or
affect His revelation of grace. Those who tremble for
the Ark of the Covenant must be singularly deaf to what
history is saying to them. All the changes which have
been made since Wiclif's version first saw the light have
left it not only unscathed but mightier than ever. No
doctrine in it has been affected. Its general bearing is
exactly what it has always been. No book can stand
investigation as the Bible can. It invites inquiry as
no other writing does. Not only has nothing material
been touched ; the record has shown that no honest
revision can touch any article of the faith. No enemy can
prevail against it. No weapon formed against it can
prosper. It is the anvil which has worn out many a
hammer _; and so it shall ever be, for it is the Book which
fathoms the depths and satisfies the needs of the heart
of man as only the Word of the Living God can.

In a very striking fashion, too, the record has shown
how truly the Bible is a book made to be translated.
As has been well said, the Bible of all books loses least
of its force and dignity and beauty by being translated
into other languages wherever the version made is not
erroneous. One version may excel another because it
is more expressive, or more majestic, or more Divinely
simple ; but in every worthy version the Bible contains
the sublimest thoughts expressed in plain and fitting
words . It was written for the whole world at first, and not
for any single nation or age ; and although its thoughts
are higher than ordinary thoughts, they are not so because
they have been elaborated by the working of abstraction
or reflection, but because they have come from the primal
fountain of all truth. To translate the Bible, as one of
the Puritans has it, is to draw the Sword of the Spirit
from its scabbard ; while as another of the Puritans put
it, the fact that our Lord and His Apostles quote from the
Septuagint, even where it differs from the Hebrew,
reminds us that the sense of Scripture is the gold and
the words only the purse, and that it is the sense we must
have if our deepest needs are to be fathomed and satisfied.

234 CONCLUSION

The entire record is one of self-sacrificing devotion to
truth and duty, and not a few of those who have done
most in the sacred cause have had to adventure their
liberty and their life. It has often been remarked how
many of the workers in this field had to die for the
truth ; but it is by these things that men live : and the
heroic story ought to be far better known than it is, that
it may quicken and encourage those who are following
after. In these days of the Tercentenary there ought to
be a fresh sense of gratitude to the long line of workers
who gave us of their best, and to whom we owe so much.
It is a very precious inheritance which they have handed
on to us, and it involves vast responsibilities. There is
always the danger that what was sought for and greatly
prized when it cost much, and could only be attained
through great daring, may be neglected when it is offered
freely and can be had for nothing. ' He hath not dealt
' so with any nation ' ; and those who wish our public
and private life as a people to be clean ; those who
wish to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath and the
purity of the home ; and those who wish to maintain
the integrity of the Empire as great and free, should
all, make much of our English Bible, and do everything
they can to induce others to do the same. In that way
alone can the nation be saved from social unrest and
industrial dispeace and bound together in a helpful
unity.

It is to be feared that there is too great a tendency to
read about the Bible, instead of reading the Bible itself.
But it is round the Word itself that the promises gather.
It is the Word itself that is seed, the engrafted Word
which is able to save the soul. It is in the Word itself
that the Divine power inheres. No number of magazine
articles, no matter how interesting they may be, or how-
ever artistically illustrated, can serve as Bible substitutes.;
nor can any religious stories, no matter how natural
their characters or well -pointed their moral, take the
place of the actual study of the Word of God itself as set
forth in the Scriptures. Alike in the home and the school
and the church, everything ought to be done to encourage
systematic study of the Bible ; and that not as a task,

THE TESTIMONY OF THE SPIRIT 235

but as a delight. Nothing will go very, far wrong where
the Living Word is read and honoured;; but without that,
nothing else will very much avail. Loyalty to the
Authorized Version has no meaning unless it be read
and obeyed. The desire to be up-to-date and in touch
with the latest revision and the latest results is no better
than a fad, if it expends itself in discussion about tenses
or chapter -headings or the removal of archaic phrases
and obsolete words. Not only so, but there should be far
more strenuous insistence on and practice of the Reforma-
tion doctrine of the Testimony of the Holy Spirit. He
Who gave the Word at first, and has overruled all the
translations for His own glory, must guide us into the
depths, if it is to mean for us all it ought to
mean. We only know in practice that the Bible is inspired
when it inspires us, and an interest in the Book must
not be mistaken for an interest in the Book's Author.

Daily Bible Readings are now circulated everywhere
in enormous numbers, and doubtless very many of them
are loyally read, and prayer should continually be offered
that they may all be used and blessed. As for such a
pledge as that of the Christian Endeavour Societies, that
some portion of the Bible will be read every day, eternity
alone can reveal how much it means. The most admirable
text -books, too, are now to be had, which throw light
on the Word from every quarter, and the best of them
are available for all who have received an ordinary
English education. The most useful of these perhaps
are those which do not profess to do more than deal
with the text, its vocabulary and constructions, in such a
way as to let the reader know exactly what the sacred
writers said and meant, and leave him there. Where
that is done without prejudice or bias, it is better even
than the ' without note or comment ' ideal, which has
so much to say for itself, inasmuch as it concentrates
attention on Scripture itself and not on any human ex-
positor of it. Such text -books, whether for schools and
colleges or for private study, ought also to be followed
with wistful prayer by all who wish to see the Kingdom
of God coming in the midst.

The record shows that there have been ebbs as well as

236 CONCLUSION

flows in the popular appreciation of the Word. When
John Lewis wrote his History of the Translations of
the Bible, in 1738, he was very much discouraged by
the way in which the Bible was then neglected. But the
Methodist Revival was at hand to exalt the Scriptures
anew,; and both the Universities were erelong to issue
new editions of the Authorized Version, on which endless
trouble had been bestowed. The story of Mary Jones, too,
whose romantic love for the Bible led to the formation
of the British and Foreign Bible Society, shows how scarce
Bibles were then, even in parts of the United Kingdom.
But once again Revival was at hand, and God's Word
was erelong scattered broadcast over the land as it
had never been before. There is always a tendency in
such matters to think of the former days as better than
our own,; but there has probably never been anything
in all the history of Bible publication to equal the interest
which gathered round the appearance of the Revised
Version of the New Testament, only thirty years ago.
Indeed, it is not easy to harmonize the conviction of
many that the Bible is neglected as it was not formerly,
with the fact that its sale is so great and is steadily
increasing. A merely conventional or traditionary sale
would soon show signs of exhaustion and decline.

There were always those who did riot read the Bible,
even in the good old times. At the very time when the
crowds were gathering round the - chained Bibles,' to
hear the Word read, there were whole districts in England,
in Cornwall and Devonshire and the North for example,
where the people would have none of it. It is probable
that only a minority of the nation then desired an English
version. A preacher of that period says, ' How merci-
* fully, how plentifully, and purely hath God sent His
4 Word to us here in England. Again, how unthankfully,
4 how rebelliously, how carnally and unwillingly do we
4 receive it.' Both in England and Scotland there were
some who required penal enactments and royal procla-
mations to induce them to purchase copies of the Bible ;
and what was bought on these terms would probably
not be very gratefully read. It is true that these edicts
were sometimes in favour of particular versions ; but,

LIVING LIFE-GIVING WATER *37

then as now, only those made much of the Bible who
were anxious to know God and His way of salvation,
and to discover how they might be forgiven and delivered
from the power of indwelling sin. In any case, it is
certain that there never were so many copies of the
Scriptures in the homes and the hands of the people as
there are now, and we should give God thanks for that,
and make the most of it.

If we were to try to imagine what the nation would be
without the Bible, we would have a new sense of what
it has done and is still doing in the land. One of the
impressive features of the great waterless wastes of
Australia is the terrible silence which prevails* There
are no singing birds or brawling brooks, no rustling
branches or sounds of beasts, and it is said that only
those who have been through it can have any conception
of what it means. For those who have been left in these
solitudes this silence becomes an all -pervading horror
which has driven men mad. But how infinitely more
terrible it would have been had there been no voice
of God speaking to us from the dim unknown. Strauss
has told of the horror which overwhelmed him when
he came to the conclusion that amid all the voices of
earth there was none which spoke for God ; yea, that
in all the universe there was no God who could speak
to men. He says that when he found himself a helpless
creature amid the whirl and hiss of the jagged iron
wheels and the deafening crash of the ponderous ham-
mers, the sense of abandonment was very awful. He
was looking up into the heavens, in the imagery of
another German, and seeing only an empty socket, ghastly,
silent, and mocking, where there should have been a
Father's eye.

But thanks be to God, this is not a silent land, a land
without a Bible, and it is a tender gracious eye which
we see when we look up to our God. The well is deep,
but we have wherewith to draw up the living life-giving
water. The English Bible is still fresh and mighty,
even if it has archaic or obsolete words. It has waxed
old, but it has not decayed. Its youth abides, and the
sun never seta on its sphere of influence. Many volumes

238 CONCLUSION

have perished since it first saw the light ; but its message
is as modern as ever. It has not only kept up-to-date,
it has anticipated every need of men, and still responds
to every new demand. Blessed are they that walk in
the light of it ; and blessed are they who spread its
light . ' They shall renew their strength ; they shall
' mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and
' not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint.'

INDEX

, translation by, 14, 231

Alfred the Great, translation by,
16, 231

America and Revised Version, 211,
225 ; early attempts at revision,
225 : preferences and appen-
dices, 226 ; Revised Version of
1901, 226

Apocrypha, in early versions, 145 ;
in Authorized Version, 90, 146 ;
gradual disappearance from
Authorized Version, 146 ; in
Geneva Bible, 146 ; importance
of, 147, 148 ; poverty of, 149

Authorized Version, wonderful
career, 3 ; and Revised Version,
6, 8, 119, 196 ; reads like an
original work, 7 ; revisers'
tribute to, 8 ; dedication, 82 ;
the translators, 87 seq. ; archaic
element in, 99 ; no partisan
notes, 100 ; marginal notes and
references, 101, 117, 129; won-
derful unity, 103 ; preface, 109
seq. • opposition to, no seq.,
154 seq. ; revision rather than
translation, 1 16 ; first editions,
125, 127 ; crown monopoly of
printing, 126 ; testimonies to,
131 seq., 164, 183, 190 seq. ; its
pure English, 134 ; in what
sense authorized ? 139 seq. ;

working its way, 153 seq. ; in
Scotland, 157 ; in the home,
161 seq. ; in the church, 169
seq. ; in the nation, 177 seq. ;
in English language and litera-
ture, 187 seq. ; famous editions
of, 195 seq. ; probable future of,
219
Autographs, original lost, 3

BAGSTER'S editions, 196

Barrie, J. M., and his mother's

New Testament, 164
Bede's St. John, 15, 188
Bible, given to be translated, 7,

9, 170, 233 ; and freedom, 178 ;

and expansion of empire, 182,

189 ; and philanthropy, 184
Bishops' Bible, 57, 72, 95, 139
Blayney's edition, 197
British and Foreign Bible Society,

219, 236

CAEDMON'S paraphrases, 13, 188
Caxton's work, 34, 232
Cambridge Paragraph Bible,
196

" Chained Bibles," 55, 236
Constantinople, fall of, 36
Complutensian Polyglot, 38
" Cottar's Saturday Night," 162

339

INDEX

Coverdale's Bible, 53, 104; his great

services, 55, 105, 232
Cranmer and translation of Bible,

S3

Cromwell, Oliver, 165, 179, 181
Cromwell, Thomas, 53, 232

DANIEL'S BIBLE, Sir Walter Scott

and, 195
Dedication of Authorized Version,

82 seq.
Dying, the Bible and the, 163.

EALDHELM'S PSALTER, 14

Egbert's Gospels, 14

English Bible, roll-call of workers,

6 ; versions of, 53 seq.
Erasmus, Greek New Testament

of, 37 seq. ; his noble ideal, 37 ;

and Tyndale, 37
Errors in versions, and editions of

Authorized Versions, 125, 126,

195, 203
Ezekiel's vision, 4

FAMILY BIBLE, 162
Freedom, the Bible and, 178

GASQUET, FATHER, and Wiclif,

28
Geneva Bible, 56, 57, 67, 72, 153 ;

influence on Authorized Version,

96, 104

" Golden Legend," 34, 232
Great Bible, 55, 72, 105, 139
Greek language in the West, 36
Guthlac's Psalter, 14

HAMPTON COURT CONFERENCE, 73,

77, 83, in

Harwood's revision, 201
Home, Bible in the, 161 seq.
Humanism, 37, 38

IGNORANCE of Scriptures among

Romish clerics, 28, 46
" Injunctions" to clergy (1536 and

1538), 148

JAMES I. and Puritans, 77 ; at
Hampton Court Conference, 78 ;
and Geneva notes, 79,81 ; James s
zeal for new translation, 79, 87,
103, in ; his admirable arrange-
ments, 79. Himself a translator
of Scriptures, 80. His unworthy
character, 81, 83

James II. banishes the Bible, 180,
181

LANGUAGE, Authorized Version and

English, 187 seq.
Lechler of Leipzig, 19
Lloyd's edition, 197
Lollardism, great influence of, 24 ;

in Scotland, 64

MANSFIELD, LORD, and Crown
monopoly of printing Bible,
126

Matthew's Bible, 54, 104, 139
More, Sir Thomas, and Wiclif, 19,
28

NEW LEARNING, 36, 38

Nicholas of Hereford and Wiclif,

26, 102
Norman Conquest and work of

translation, 17

ORIGINAL autographs lost, 3
Oxford Bibles, 196, 197
Oxford reprint of 1833 (1611),
202

INDEX

241

PARIS'S edition, 197

" Plenaria," 17, 34

Preface to Authorized Version
109 seq.

Printing and vast changes it
wrought, 33 ; consecrated to
Divine service, 34 ; and reforma-
tion, 35

Puritans at Hampton Court, 78;
and Dedication, 84; translators
and, 232

Purver and Wiclif , 26 ; and a trans-
lator's qualifications, 233

QUOTATIONS in Scripture from the
Fathers, 4

REVISION of Authorized Version,
demands for, 209 seq.

Revisers, the two companies of,
210 ; their instructions, 211

Revised Version and Authorized
Version, 6, 8 ; changes in, 213 ;
its publication, 217 ; convocation
and, 218 ; sales of, 218 ; import-
ance of, 219, 221 ; criticism of,
220 seq.

Revival, the Bible and, 171, 174

Rolle's Psalter, 18

Rogers, John (Matthew), 54

Romish, Church and Scripture, 17,
2&> 45> 46, 1 14 ; versions of
English Bible, 58; and their
influence on Authorized Version,
95, 106

SALE of Bibles, in early times 35,

48> 55> 57. 72 J in modern times,
196, 218

Sanday's claims for Revised
Version, 220

Scotland, and Wiclif, 63 ; Lollard-
ism in, 64; Tyndale's Version

in, 65 ; first Scots Bible, 67 ;

Authorized Version in, 157 ; and

Revised Version, 211
Scrivener, and Authorized Version,

88, 90, 129, 195, 203, 204; and

Revised Version, 219
Scriptures, their inherent power,

7 ; mediaeval ignorance of, 28,

46
Sorrowing, the Bible and the, 163

TAVERNER'S BIBLE, 54

Tercentenary of Authorized Ver-
sion, 3, 4, 5, 234

Testimonies to Authorized Version,
131 seq., 190 seq.

Toulouse,Council of, and Scripture

I?

Translations into vernacular
throughout Europe, 47

Translators of Authorized Version,
87 seq. ; their great learning, 87 ;
their remuneration, 88 ; their
industry, 91 ; their singular
success, 92 ; their instructions,
95 seq. ; their ideal, 117

Trent, Council of, and Apocrypha,
149 ; and Vulgate, 156

Trevisa, John of, 18, 113

Tyndale, and Erasmus, 37 ; gave
us our religious vocabulary, 43 ;
vast influence of his translation,
44, 99, 104, 231 ; his great
determination, 44; his scholar-
ship, 47, 49 ; editions of his
translation, 48, 49, 50; victory
in seeming defeat, 50 ; revision
of his work, 54 seq., 71 ; on duty
to revise, 201

UNAUTHORIZED changes, 125, 204

seq.
Ussher, Archbishop, 19, 197

242

INDEX

VARIORUM BIBLE, 196

Version, ancient, 113; English,

53 seq.
Vulgate, Jerome's, 26, 37, 58, no

129, 156

WEYMOUTH'S VERSION, 205
Whitchurch and Great Bible, 55,

Wiclif, period prior to, 19; his
widespread influence, 24 ; his
translation, 26, 231 ; and English
literature, 27, 188 ; a pioneer,
28, 29 ; and revision, 72

William of Shoreham's Psalter, 18

XIMENES, Complutensian Poly-
glot, 38, 39

MORGAN AND SCOTT LD., LONDON, ENGLAND.

AN INTERESTING AND APPROPRIATE ADDITION
TO THIS WORK IS FORMED BY THE LATEST LIST
OF THE VARIOUS EDITIONS OF THE BIBLE WHICH
ARE NOW IN GENERAL USE IN THIS TERCEN-
TENARY YEAR, 1911

1611-1911

' All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable
for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness :

1 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished
unto all good works.'— 2 TIM. 3. 16, 17.

THE BIBLE LIST.

Morgan and Scott Ld.
LIST OF EDITIONS OF THE HOLY BIBLE.

PAGE.

Authorized Version 5°-63

Christian Worker's Bible (The) 73

Cyclopedic Concordance 76

Emphasized Bible (The) 77

Family Bibles, A.V. & R.V 68 & 69

French Bibles 79

Gospels 69

Greek New Testaments 78

Hebrew Bibles 78

Helps to the Study of the Bible 75

How to Mark your Bible 72

Interleaved Bibles 72

Interleaving to Order . 80

Interlinear Bible (The) 71

Inscriptions Illuminated 80

Lettering in Gold 80

Modern Speech (New Testament) 79

Newberry Bible (The) 77

New Testaments 61-63

Reference Bibles, A.V 50-56

R-V .... 64-65

Revised New Testament 67

Revised Version 64-67

Pulpit Bibles, A.V. & R.V 68

Scrivener's Greek Testament 78

Special Orders 80

Special Prices (for Distribution) 69

Students' Bibles 71 & 72

Scofield Reference Bible (The) 54

Teachers' Bibles (with Helps) 74

Text Bibles, A.V. 56-60

,, R-V 65-67

Thumb Index (see below).

Topical Bible (The) 77

Two- Version Bible (The) 70

Wallets for Carrying the Bible 80

Welsh Bibles 79

Weymouth's New Testament 79

Wide-margin Bibles 72

Any Bible in this List can be had with THUMB INDEX for 1/6 extra.

Complete Catalogue free on application,
S

The Bible List.

Abbreviations used in this List :— S/S Silk Sewn, R/C Round Corners, G/E Gilt
Edges, A/G Art Gilt, G/G Green under Gilt, R/G Red under Gilt, G/R Gilt Roll,
C/'L Calf Lined, B/B Bevelled Boards, C/B Cloth Boards.

SPECIAL NOTE.— Many of ihe Bibles in this List may be had <with the
Metrical Psalms, at an additional charge of a fe<u> pence.

REFERENCE BIBLES.

Brilliant 48mo Reference Bible, with Maps.

PRINTED ON OXFORD INDIA PAPER. Size, sf x z\ x f inches.

2 Th« LOUD will prennT, him, ; « PH. 43. 5
«i>d keep him iliie; c>4 hi shall 2 ll.b. fc«-
U blewd upon tU •»»!• I «.»'

Sthou wilt not d«li.fr him unt
Iks -ill ofhi.en.mie..

3 Tb. Lout will nrmth.0 hit

6 O nay 6od, mj i

II A 18

13 A 58

16 A 19
I6AS9
19 A 66
19$ A 59
19 A 71

French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .
French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .
Argalian, Yapp, Cloth Lined, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .
Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges .
Turkey Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges, G/R .
Turkey Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid .
Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn. R/C, R/G Edges
Sealskin, Yapp, Leather Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid
Best Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges, Solid.

Pearl 32mo Clarendon Reference Bible, with Maps.

Size, s| x 3! x J inches.

s. d.

3 9 net.

5 0 net.

0 net.

0 net.

0 net.

6 net.

6 net.

3 net.

3 net.

David'1 s trust in God.

PSALMS.

The church's complaint.

4 When I remember these things, • 1 «ia..i.i5. a ffmv thou didst » drive out the
pour out my soul in me : for I had gone * D«. 7. i. heathen with thy hand, and c plantedst
with the multitude, I went with them j"iV ao 7 them; how thou didst afflict the peo-

to the house of God, with the voice of . p, eo g. ' ple.and cast them out.

joy and praise, with a multitude that E..' 15. 17. 3 For they eot not the land in pos-

kept holyday. flHBMt session dby their own sword, neither

s.

d.

20x82

Cloth Boards, Red Edges .......

1

3 net.

20x18

Cloth Boards, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges ....

1

6 net.

21x14

French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Gilt Edges ....

1

8 net.

21 X 18

French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

1

10 net.

22X18

Paste Grain Leather, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges

2

2 net.

21X51

French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

2

6 net.

21X53

French Morocco, Yapp, Cloth Lined, R/C, Red under Gilt Edges

3

0 net.

21X55

French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, R/C, Red under Gilt Edges .

3

9 net.

23X58

Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges .

5

0 net.

PRINTED ON OXFORD INDIA PAPER. Size, 5$ x sf x \ inches

21 AlS

French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

3

9 net.

21 A 51

French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

4

6 net.

22 A 53

Paste Grain Leather, Yapp (in Colours), Cloth Lined, R/C, A/G Edges

5

6 net.

21$ A 22

Cowhide, Limp (in Colours), Round Corners, Art Gilt Edges

5

6 net.

21 A 55

French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, Round Corners, R/'G Edges .

6

0 net.

23 A 58

Superior Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges

7

6 net.

26 A 19

Turkey Morocco, Limp, R/C, Red under Gilt Edges, Gilt Roll .

8

0 net.

26 A 59

Turkey Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid .

10

6 net.

In Colours, Green, Maroon, Purple.

29 A 66

Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges

12

0 net.

29^ A 69

Best Green Sealskin, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, G/G Edges, Solid .

15

6 net.

29 A 71

Best Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C. R/G Edges, Solid

16

6 net.

29$ A 47

Best Green Sealskin, Semi-Yapp, C/L, S/S, R/C, G/G/E, Solid .

18

9 net.

Morgan and Scott Ltd.

30x82
30x18
31x18
31x51

Ruby 24mo Reference Bible, with Maps.

Size, sf x 4 x i inches.

H * She shall be brought unto the
kln§ in raiment of needlework : the
virgins her con?r>anions that follow
her shall be brc "ght unto thee.

15 With gladness and rejoicing shall
they be brought : they shall enter into

3^x55

33X58

39x66

• C»nt. 1. 4.
» 1 Pet 1. 4.

• ft. 68. 24.
i I Pet. 2. 9.

Rev. 1. 6.
* 20. 6.

• Zech. 14. 9.
/I Cos. 14.10.

4 He shall choose our ^inheritance
for us, the excellency of Jacob whom
he loved. Selah.

5 c God is gone up with a shout, the
LORD with the sound of a trumpet.

6 Sing praises to God, sing praises :

5. d.
Cloth Boards, Red Edges 1 6 net

Cloth Boards, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . . . . 1 11 net.

French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . .26 net.

French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . .29 net.

French Morocco, Yapp, Cloth Lined, Round Corners, R/G Edges . 3 6 net.

Superior French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, R/C, R/G Edges . 5 3 net.

Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges . .69 net.

Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges. . 11 3 net.

PRINTED ON OXFORD INDIA PAPER. Size, sf x 4 x f inches.

French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . .43 net.
French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . .56 net.
Superior French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, R/C, R/G Edges . 6 9 net.
Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges . .86 net.
Alaska Seal, Yapp, Leather Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C. R/G Edges . . 10 6 net
Turkey Morocco, Limp. Round Corners, R/G Edges, Gilt Roll . .90 net,
Turkey Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid . 12 0 net.
Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges . 13 6 net.
Best Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges, Solid. 18 0 net.
Finest Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid 22 6 net.
Bound in Art Colours. Best hand finish throughout.

Nonpareil 16rao Clarendon Reference Bible, with Maps.

Size, 6^ x 4^ x \\ inches.

Christ's repeated

ST. JOHN 21.

charge to Peter.

16 He aaith to him again the second
time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou
me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord ;
thou knowest that I love thee. He
saith unto him, "Feed my sheep.

* ch. 10. n.
Lu. 12. 3».
Acts 30.38.
i Pet. s- "-
6 i Co. 13. 6-

the disciple whom Jesus loved follow-
ing ; which also leaned oil his breast
at supper, and said, Lord, which, is he
that betrayeth thee ?
21 Peter seeing him saith to Jesus,

60x82 Cloth Boards, Red Edges

60 X 18 Cloth Boards, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges ....

61 x 18 French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .
61 x 51 French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

61 J x 55 French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, Round Corners, R/G Edges .

63 x 58 Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges .

PRINTED ON OXFORD INDIA PAPER. Size, 6J x 4$ x f inches.

61 A 18 French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . . 4

61 A 51 French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . . 4

61 J A 55 French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, Round Corners, R/G Edges . 6

63 A 58 Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges . 9

66 A 19 Turkey Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, R/G Edges, Gilt Roll . . 10

66£ A 58 Pigskin, Yapp (in Colours), Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges . 12

69 A 66 Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges . 15

69^ A 69 Best Green Sealskin, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges, Solid . 21

69 A 71 Best Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges, Solid 22

d.

6 net.
0 net.
0 net.
9 net.
3 net.
6 net.

0 net.

6 net,

9 net.

6 net.

0 net.

6 net.

9 net.

6 net.

6 net.

The Bible List.

Emerald 16mo Reference Bible, with Maps.

Size, 7 x 4f x i inches.

Miraculous draught of fishes. ST. LUKE, 5.

Christ deanseth the leper.

him ; and he laid his hands on every
one of them, and healed them.
41 *And devils also came out of
many, crying out, and saying, Thou
art Christ the Son of God. And d he
rebuking them suffered them not 2 to
speak: for they knew that he was
Christ.
42 "And when it was day, he depart-

A.D. 31.

11 And when they had brought their
ships to land, a they forsook all, and
followed him.
12 IT c And it came to pass, when he
was in a certain city, behold a man
full of leprosy : who seeing Jesus fell
on his face, and besought him, saying,
Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make
me clean.

" Mat. 4. 20.
& 19. 27.
Mark 1. 18.
ch. 18. 28.
'• Mark 1. 34.
43.11.
' Mat 8. 2.
Mark 1. 40.
rfver. 34,35.
Mark 1. 25,

B

40 x 82 Strong Cloth Boards, Red Edges

41^x84 Smooth Black Leather, Thin Boards, Antique Design, Gilt Edges

41 x 51 French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .
4Iix5S Superior French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, R/C, R/G Edges
43x58 Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges .

Levant Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges .
Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges

49x58
49x66

2

3

4

6

8

12

15

d.
0 net.

6 net.
0 net.
6 net.
6 net.
0 net.
0 net.

FOR WIDE MARGIN EDITION see p. 72.

PRINTED ON OXFORD INDIA PAPER. Size, 7 x 4! x f inches. Weight, n| ozs.

41 A 19 French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, R/G Edges, G/R ... 5 0 net.
41 A 51 French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . .56 net.
4Ji A 53 Superior French Morocco, Yapp, Cloth Lined, R/C, R/G Edges . .60 net.

4JiA55 Superior French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, R/C, R/G Edges . 8 0 net.

43 A 58 Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges . . 10 6 net.

46 A 19 Turkey Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, R/G Edges, Gilt Roll . . 11 3 net.

In Colours, Green, Maroon, Purple.

49 A 58 Levant Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges . . 14 0 net.

46 A 59 Turkey Morocco Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid . 15 0 net.

In Colours, Green, Maroon, Purple.

49 A 66 Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges . 17 6 net.

49 A 71 Best Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges, Solid 25 6 net.

49JA47 Best Sealskin, Semi-Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid . 27 0 net.
49 A 74 Finest Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges,

Solid. Bound in Art Colours. Best hand finish throughout . . 30 0 net.

INTERLEAVED THROUGHOUT WITH WRITING PAPER FOR MS. NOTES.

Size, 7 x 4f x i§ inches.

49 1 67 Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Pockets, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges

s.
28

d.
6 net.

Minion 16mo Clarendon Reference Bible, with Maps.

Size, 7| x 5 x i J inches.

Christ commendeffi humility.

ST. LUKE 10.

Seventy disciples sent oat.

47 And Jesus, "perceiving the
thought of their heart, took a child,
and set him by him,

48 And said unto them, Whosoever
shall receive this child in my name

" Mat. 9. 4.

Mat. 18. i.
» Mat. 9. 37.
e Mat. 10. 40.
d ch. aa. a6.

Mat. 23. ix.

50x82 Cloth Boards, Red Edges

51 x 18 French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges

his face into every city and place,
whither he himself would come.

2 Therefore said he unto them,
6 The harvest truly is great, but the
labourers are few : pray ye therefore

s. d.
2 3 net.

3 9 net.

Morgan and Scott Ltd.

53

Minion 16mo Clarendon Reference Bible, with Maps— Continued.

s.

d.

51x51

French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

5

B

net.

5ii*55

Superior French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, R/C, R/G Edges

7

6

net.

53x58

Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges .

9

6

net.

59x66

Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges

16

6

net.

PRINTED ON OXFORD INDIA PAPER. Size, 7j x 5 x f inches. Weight, 13^ ozs.

5iAi8

French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

5

9

net.

Si A 51

French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

7

6

net.

52JA53

Argalian, Yapp, Cloth Lined, Round Corners, Art Gilt Edges

9

6

net.

In Colours, Green, Maroon, Purple.

53 A 58

Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges .

11

0

net.

56 A 19

Turkey Morocco, Limp, R/C, R/G Edges, Gilt Roll ....

12

0

net.

56* A S8

Pigskin, Yapp, Leather Lined, Silk Sewn, Round Corners, A/G Edges

15

0

net.

In Colours, Green, Brown, and Blue.

59 A 66

Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges

18

0

net.

59iA69

Best Green Sealskin, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, G/G Edges, Solid .

24

0

net.

59 A 71

Best Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges, Solid

26

0

net.

INTERLEAVED THROUGHOUT WITH WRITING PAPER FOR MS. NOTES.

Size, 7j x 5 x if inches.

59 1 66 Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges .

27

d.
9 net.

Brevier 16mo Clarendon Reference Bible.

Size, 7 x 4! x i^ inches.

Christ comforteth

ST. JOHN 14.

his disciples.

CHAPTER 14.

i Christ comforteth his disciples : 6 professeth
himself the way, the truth, and the life : 13
prayers in his name effectual. 16 He pro-
miseth the Holy Ghost: rj and leav«th his
peace with them.

LET « not your heart be
troubled : ye believe in
God, believe also in me.

• ch. 5. 30.
b ver. a6.

ch. 16. 38.

•ch.is. 7,16.
Mat. 7. 7.

* Eph. a. 18.
' ver. 27.

ch. xi. 33.
/ ch. 13. 31.

also ; and a greater works than
these shall he do; because 6I go
unto my Father.

13 cAnd whatsoever ye shall
ask din my name, that will I
do, that /the Father may be
glorified in the Son.

14 If ye shall ask any thing in

71 X 18 French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

71 x 51 French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges .

7Ti x 55 Superior French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, R/C, R/G Edges

73x58 Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges .

s. d.

4 6 net.

6 9 net.

8 9 net.

10 6 net.

PRINTED ON OXFORD INDIA PAPER.

7iAi8
71 A 51

7ii A 55
73 A 58

76 A 19

76 A 59

79 A 66

79k A 69
79 A 71

79 A 74

Size, 7 x 4f x i inches.

French Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . .CO net.

French Morocco, Yapp, Round Corners, Red under Gilt Edges . .86 net.

Superior French Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, R/C, R/G Edges . 10 6 net.

Persian Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges . . 12 6 net.

Turkey Morocco, Limp, Round Corners, R/G Edges, Gilt Roll . . 12 6 net.

Turkey Morocco, Yapp, Leather Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid . 16 6 net.

In Colours, Green, Maroon, Purple.

Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, Silk Sewn, R/C, R/G Edges. . 18 9 net.

Best Green Sealskin, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, G/G Edges, Solid . 24 6 net.

Best Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, R/G Edges, Solid. 27 0 net.

Finest Levant Morocco, Yapp, Calf Lined, S/S, R/C, A/G Edges, Solid 31 6 net.

Bound in Art Colours. Best hand finish throughout.

54

The Bible List.

THE SCOFIELD REFERENCE BIBLE

With a New System of Connected Topical References to the Greater
Themes of Scripture, Annotations, Revised Marginal Renderings, Sum-
maries, Definitions, and Index, to which are added Helps at Hard
Places, Explanations of Seeming Discrepancies, and a New System of
Division into Paragraphs, with Twelve Coloured Maps and Index to Maps.

Edited by Rev. C. I. SCOFIELD, D.D. Consulting Editors :— Rev. HENRY G. WESTON,
D.D., LL.D. (President Crozer Theological Seminary) ; Rev. JAMES M. GRAY, D.D. (Dean
of Moody Bible Institute); Rev. WILLIAM J. ERDMAN, D.D. (Author "The Gospel of
John," etc., etc.) ; Rev. Prof. W. G. MOOREHEAD, D.D. (Prof, in Xenia, U.P., Theological
Seminary) ; Rev. ELMORE G. HARRIS, D.D. (President Toronto Bible Institute) ; ARNO C.
GAEBELEIN (Author "Harmony of Prophetic Word," etc.); Rev. ARTHUR T. PIERSON,
D.D. (Author, Editor, Teacher).

I 5]

GENESIS

[I 20

was good : and God divided the light

12 And the earth brought forth

from the darkness.

grass, and herb yielding seed after

5 And God called the light *Day,

his kind, and the tree yielding fruit,

and the darkness he called Night.

whose seed was in itself, after his

And the Evening and the morning

kind : and God saw that it was good.

were the first day.

13 And the evening and the morn-

The second day: vapour above.

ing were the third day.

water below.

Lit* CXDOnSC
(i.e. of

The fourth day : the sun, moon,

G And God said, Let there be aafir-

waters be-
neath, of va-

and stars become visible.

mament in the midst of the waters,

pour above).

14 And God said, ^Let there be

and let it divide the waters from

» i.e. the tx-

lights in the firmament of the heaven

the waters.

panse abooc,
the "heauen"'

to divide the day from the night;

7 And God made the firmament,

of the clouds.

and let them be for signs, and for

and divided the waters which were

8. a. '

seasons, and for days, and years:

under the firmament from the waters

c Psa. 136.

15 And let them be for lights in the

which were above the firmament:

5-9-

firmament of the heaven to give

and it was so.
8 And God called the ^firmament

<* The word
does not im-

light upon the earth : and it was so.
16 AndGod ^madetwogreat lights;

Heaven. And the evening and the

ply a creative
act; vs. 14-18

the 4greater light to rule the day,

morning were the second day.

are declar-

and the lesser light to rule the night :

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14 From the place of his habita-
tion he looketh upon all the inha-
bitants of the earth.

15 He fashioneth their hearts alike ;
fche considereth all their works.

16 There is no king saved by the

*Ps. 32. 8.
••lPet.3.10.
* Jer. 32. 19.
' 1 Pet.2.22.
mPs. 20.7.

Prov. 21.

31.
" Ps. 37. 27.

11 Come, ye children, heai
to me : * I will teach you th
the LORD.

12 * What man is lie that
life, and loveth many da
he may see good ?

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«> ch. 2L 89.
3 Cor. IL 22.
Phil. 8. 6.

o Dent 83. 8.

2 Kin. 4. 88.

Luke 10. 89.
d ch. 5. 84.
• ch. 26. &
fch,2J.20.

3 b I am verily a man which am a
Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia,
yet brought up in this city c at the
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arise, and be baptiz*
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of the Lord

17 And Mt came
when I was come J
salem, even while I

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Moral virtues, and PROVERBS, X

Before
CHRIST
cir. 1000.

>3Xii6 Pers
£ x 89 Turk
>6xii4 Turl

3 °To do justice and judgment is
more acceptable to the LORD than

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silver and their gold with them,
punto the name of the LORD thy
God, and to the Holy One of Israel,

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16 And Jarae, when he w»a
baptized, went up atraight-
•fltjroutcfthemtw: md. lo,

tarn, and he law the Spirit of
Oiu <Se*eetidii>g like a dore.

him. Get tbee henee. Satan :
for it in written. TIiou nhait
worehip the Lord thy God. and
him only shait thou serve.

11 Then the devil kareth
him. and, behold, angela cane

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Chritfi nativity

ST. 1UKE, i

and circumcUion.

76 And thon, child, shalt be called
the prophet of the Highest: for thou
nhalt go before the face at the Lord to
prepare hw ways;

77 To give knowledge of Miration
unto his people by the remission of
their sin*,

78 Through the tender mercy of our
God ; whereby the dayspring from on
high hath Tinted u,

WTo giTe light to them that rit in
darkneae and in the shadow of death.

14 Glory to God in the highest, and
on earth peace, good will toward men.

U And it came to pan, as the angel*
were gone away from them into hea-
ren, the ihepherdi said out to another,
Let ua now go e»en unto Bethlehem,
and aee this thing which is come to
pass, which the, Lord hath made known
unto us.

16 And they came with haste, and
found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe
lying in a manger.

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Puttl prtacheth

THE ACTS

the gospel at Rome.

a And the barbarous people shewed
us no little kindness : for they kin-
dled a fire, and received us every one,
because of the present rain, and be-
cause of the cold.

3 And when Paul had gathered a
bundle of sticks, and laid them on the
fire, there came a viper out of the heat,
and fastened on his hand.

4 And when the barbarians saw the
venomous beast hang; on his hand,
they said among themselves, Nodoubt
this roan is a murderer, whom, though

Men and brethren, though I have com-
mitted nothing against the people,
or customs of our fathers, yet was I
delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into
the hands of the Romans.

z8 Who, when they had examined
me, would have let me go, because
there was no cause of death in me.

19 But when the Jews spake against
it, I was constrained to appeal unto
Caesar ; not that I had ought to accuse
my nation of.

ao For this cause therefore have I

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5 And he shook off the beast into the
fire, and felt no harm.

6 Howbeit they looked when he should
have swollen, or fallen down dead sud-
denly: but after they had looked a

of Israel I am bound with this chain.
31 And they said unto him, We nei-
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ren that came shewed or spake any

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8 For every one that aaketh re-
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CHAPTER 23.

MIHEN spake Jesus to the mul-
J» titutle, and to his disciples,

2 Saying, The scribes and the
Pharisees sit in Moses' seat :

3 All therefore whatsoever they
bid you observe, that observe and
do; bat do not ye after their
works : for they say, and do not.

4 For they bind heavy burdens
and grievous to be borne, and lay
them on men's shoulders ; but

whosoever shall swear by the gold
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17 Ye fools and blind: for whe-
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temple that sanctineth the gold T

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The calling of Andrew, &c. ST. JOHN 2. The marriage in Cana.

30 This is he of whom I said, After

me cometh a man which is preferred
before me : for he was before me.

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45 TI Again, the kingdom of
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34 All these things spake
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parables; and without a parable

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17 IF And, thou son of man, thus saith
the Lord GOD; Speak unto every
feathered fowl, and to every beast

28 Then shall they know t
the LOUD their God, whid
them to be led into captivif

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19 The sun shall be no more
thy light by day; neither for
brightness shall the moon give
light unto thee : but the LORD
shall be unto thee an everlasting
light, and thy God thy glory.

3 To appoint unto the
mourn in Zion, to giv
them beauty for ashes,
of joy for mourning, tl
ment of praise for the g
heaviness; that they m

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21 But if the wicked will turn from
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and keep all my statutes, and do

transgressions,
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heart and a new

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St. MATTHEW, 26.

40 And he cometh unto the
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to Jesus, and said, Hail,
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50 And Jesus said unto him,
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Christ's exaltation. EPHESIANS, 2. The effects of grace.

17 That the God of our Lord 2 Wherein in time past ye

Jesus Christ, the Father of walked according to the course

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The sower

ST. MATTHEW 13.

and the seed.

44 Then he saith, I will
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swept, and garnished.

45 Then goeth he, and taketh
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Jesus washeth ST. JOHN, 13.

45 And he that seeth me seeth
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46 I am come a light into the
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tke disci].

having loved his owi
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them unto the end.
2 And supper being

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Necessity of preaching

11 For the scripture saith,
Whosoever believeth on
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12 For there is no differ-

CHAP. XL to the Gentiles inj

to jealousy by them thai
no people, and by a fo<
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20 But Esaias is very 1

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The Bible List.

THE REVISED BIBLE WITH REVISED
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15.22] B. JOHN. [16.22

•Cp. M»tt

11.22,24
A Luke li
47,13.
See

«h.a«.

I had not come and spoken
unto them, 'they had not
had sin : but now they have
no excuse for their sin.

righteousness, "because I
go to the Father, and ye be-
hold me no more ; it *of
judgement , because the

"rer. 16.
17, 1».

'8«»

ch.12.IL

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CHAP. 6, v. 20.]

S. LUKE.

[GEL*

" John & 5.
•For
Ter. 20—23,
cp. Matt. 5.
9—12.
'Op. luai.
61. 1 (mg.)
468.2.

>iox8i C

)I2 X 14 Pi

513x58 P<

*o And n he lifted up his eyes on his
disciples, °and said, Blessed are Pye
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now: for ye shall be filled. 'Blessed
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CHAP. 2J, v. 12.]

t For ver.

12-16, see

Mark 11.

15-18

* Lake 19.

«3-t7.

Cp. John

2. 1-t-lfi.
a Cp. Ex.

12 z And Jesus entered into the
temple 1of God, and cast out all
them that sold and boxight in the
temple, and overthrew the tables of
0 the money-changers, and the seats
of them that sold &the doves ; 13 and

S. MATTHEW. [CHAP. 21.

" from heaven or from men ? And
they reasoned with themselves, say-
ing, If we shall say, From heaven ;
he will say unto us, zWhy then did
ye not believe him ? 26 But if we
shall say, From men ; a we fear the

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Pearl 16mo Revised Bible. Size, 5^x4x1 inches.

0. 11. H. KINGS. 291

lB.k.*i

baud, and go meet the man of God,
and inquire of the LOUD by him.
sayiuK. Shall I recover of this sick-
9 ness ? So Hazael went to meet him.
and took a present > with him, >even

city of David : and Ahaziah his son
reigned in his stead.
25 * In the twelfth year of Joram
the ton of Ahab king of Israel
did Ah»7h»h the son of Jehoram

<&»
2Chr.
ixii.1, J

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222 I. SAMUEL.

14.38

IHeb.
center*.

Sanl said, Draw nigh hither, all ye ' did to Israel, how he
1 chiefs of the people : and know and : against him in the wi
see wherein this sin hath been this ! 3 came up out of Egyj

set himself
ly, when he
>t. Now go

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The Bible List.

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27.9.

S. MATTHEW.

21

36 Then cometh Jesus with them unto
a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto
bis disciples, Sit ye here, while I go yonder

whole council sought false witness against
Jesus, that they might put him to death;
60 and they found it not, though many false

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closed up the flesh instead thereof:
22 and the rib, which the LORD God
had taken from the man, made he
a woman, and brought her unto the
man. 23 And the man said, This

thou wast naked ? Hast tho
of the tree, whereof I com:
thee that thou shouldest n
12 And the man said, The
whom thou gavest to be w

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S. MARK.

101

17 And one of the multitude answered him,
1 Master, I brought unto thee my son, which 'Or

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CHAP. 6, v. 3.]

GEN

'Or,
going

in their
astray

ever,
shall

'for
his

that
days

he
be

also
an

is flesh :
hundred

2 yet

and

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3. 14 S. MATTHEW. <

wroth, and sent forth, and slew all
the male children that were in
Bethlehem, and in all the borders
thereof from two years old and
under, according to the time which

Make ye ready the way of tho
Lord,

Make his paths straight.
4 Now John himself had his rai-
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The Bible List.

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»Heb t»
generation
iiini (mi-
ration.
* Gen. 4. 17.

11 Their inward thought is, that their
houses shall continue for ever, and
their dwelling places 2to all genera-

11 1 know all the
tains : and the wild
are 2 mine.

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The Bible List.

THE TWO-VERSION BIBLE.

Being the AUTHORIZED VERSION with the differences of the REVISED VERSION printed in
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marked R.V. are placed all the readings of the Revised Version, which differ from the
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Brevier 8vo Reference Two-Version Bible, with Maps.

Size, 8£ x 5^ x i| inches.
R.V. Jacob li-.aveth Laban. GENESIS 31. Laban purswth

is said
unto me
in tbe
dream,
Jacob:
and

2 S

he-goats
as flock

11 And "the angel of God
'spake unto me in a dream,
saying. Jacob : And ' I said,
Here tarn I.
12 And he said, Lift up now
thine eyes, and see, all the
2 rams' which leap upon the
'cattle' tare ringstraked, speck-
led, and grisled : for d I have

B.C. 1739.

the Syrian in a dream *b
night, and said unto him, Ta;
heed 2 that thou * speak not
Jacob "either good or bad.
25 8H" Then Laban overtoo
Jacob. Now Jacob had pitch'
his tent in the Amount' : ai
Laban with his brethren pitchi
in the * mount' of Gilead.

" ch. 48. 16.
>> ch. 24. 60.
•Heb.
AW*JM|
to 600.

d Ex. 3. 7.

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THE INTERLINEAR BIBLE.

AUTHORIZED AND REVISED VERSIONS WITH THE MARGINAL
NOTES OF BOTH VERSIONS AND REVISED REFERENCES.

THE INTERLINEAR BIBLE is a Bible so printed that, from one and the same text, both
the Authorized and the Revised Versions may be read. The method adopted is shown
in the following passage, which— read along the upper line throughout— gives the Revised
Version, and — along the lower — the Authorized.

CHAP, n, Y. 42]

S. LUKE

[CHAP.

for aye tithe mint and rue and

all nS^ofW and paSS OVCr

*gteSt* and ctlie love of God :
*')ut these ought ye to have done,
and not to leave the other un-
done. ^ Woe unto $S, Pharisees !

a ch. 18. 12.
Deut. 14. 22.
6 Ps. 33. 5.
Jer. 5. 1.
Mic. a 8.
Zech. 7. 9.
r Cp. 1 John
3.17.
d Marie a 19
(for rag.).
e Cp. 1 Sam.
16.22.
/ ch. 20. 20.

53 Ar»rl when he was come oui
•AIIU. as he said these thin?

the scribes and the ]
began to "vt^vm li\
mently, and to provofo
speak of *many $jngj
ing wait for him, ^d ,

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STUDENTS' BIBLES.
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Bleesedness in remission of sins. PSALMS. God's goodness and grea

thy servant : save me for thy mercies'

1 Heb. /
vUl eoun-

in the way which thou shalt g

Bake.

ui thee,

willguide thee with mine eye.

ixKiM, *f i\f~~,,;~ iT^Letmenotbeashamed.OLoBD;
Width oj Margin. for j have called n thee . let the

wicked be ashamed, and <*3let them

mine cyt
ball be
ftn tltft.

0 * Be ye not as the horse, or I
mule, which have cno under!
ing : whose mouth must be h

be silent in the grave.
18 • Let the lying lips be put to si-

A wn«* 3. S.
* ob 36. 11.

with bit and bridle, lest they
near unto thee.

lence : which /speak *grievous things
proudly and contemptuously against
the righteous.

< Sun. 2. 9.
Jot, Ut
thtmit
cut ,,if >,.,

10 "Many sorrows shall 6e 1
wicked : but * he that trusteth
LoRD.mercy shall compass him

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The Bible List.

STUDENTS' BIBLES— Continued.
Emerald 16mo Reference Bible, with Maps.

WITH WIDE MARGINS FOR MS. NOTES. Size, 8| x 6£ x if inches.

Christ's feet anointed.

ST. LUKE, 8.

32 They are like unto children sitting

A.D. 3t

47 ° Where

in the marketplace, and calling one to

"ITiin. 1.

sins, which 2

Width of Margin.

another, and saying, We have piped
unto you, and ye have not danced ; we

14.

she loved m
forgiven, th

have mourned to you, and ye have not

i Mat. 9. 2.

Mark 2. 5

48 And he

wept.

are forgivet

33 For 'John the Baptist came nei-

« Mat. 3. 4.

49 And th

ther eating bread nor drinking wine ;

Mark 1.6.
ch. ] IS.

him began

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David prayeth for deliverance.

PSALMS.

2 And ° enter not into judgment

a Job 14. 3.

6 Cast

Width of Margin.

with thy servant : for b in thy sight
shall no man living be justified.

* Ex. 34. 7.
Job 4. 17.
Ps. 130. 3.

them:
destroy

3 For the enemy nath persecuted
my soul ; he hath smitten my life

Eccles. 7.
20.
Rom. 3. 20.

7Send
me, and

down to the ground ; he hath made

Gal. 2. 16.

from tb

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730 M 83

732 Mi8

733 M 58
739 M 66
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A RE-ISSUE. 32nd Thousand.

HOW TO MARK YOUR BIBLE. By MRS. MENZIES. Cloth Boards, is.

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Morgan and Scott Ltd. 73

THE CHRISTIAN WORKER'S BIBLE.

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74 The Bible List.

THE TEACHER'S BIBLE

WITH THE

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Morgan and Scott Ltd. 75

THE TEACHER'S BIBLE— Continued
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THE OXFORD HELPS TO THE STUDY
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76 The Bible List.

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78 The Bible List.

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GREEK NEW TESTAMENTS.

NEW TESTAMENT IN GREEK.
By Prof. EBERHARD NESTLE, D.D.

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SCRIVENER'S GREEK TESTAMENT.

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Morgan and Scott Ltd. 79

THE WELSH BIBLE.

Pearl 24mo Welsh Bible. Size, si x 3! x f inches.

Anfon g devMeg. ST. MAKO, VI. PortWV pvm mil.

3 Ac wedl dyfod y Babbatb, efa • d.'.cch-
reuodd athrawliieiiia jrn j tynagog: *
a wnao:b llawer a'< clyws«iit,

a Ac w«tl I fercb yr Herodlaa honu
cMjrftn I tnewn, a dawnulo, a bo<iiu«
Herod, * 'r rhal ot-ld yn oUtedd '

«' n ddywedvd, 0 bs le y daeth y'petban y bren'uin a dily w>«U>iiI wrih T UJuueea,
'ma Gofyn I ml y peth a fynnech, ac mi a 'i

hyn I hwn?" a pii.% d>!oethlneb yw h
rood Iddo, fel y gwnelil y cyfryw nertu-
twdd tnry el ddwyUw ef ?
S Onld hwn yw 'r M«r, m."b Malr, brawd
' , a Joaea, a Jodaa, a Simon ? ac '

rhuldaf I tL

23 Ac efe a (Jyngodd Iddl, Beth byiin«(? a
ufynach I ml, ml a '« rhodiUf I tl, hyd
banner (> niieymas.

24 A lilthao H Aeth allan, ac a ddywnd-
odd wrth el mam. Fa bctb. a '

yw el cbwloryddaf ymayn eiu ollth ni?

A hwy a i HyBli wyd o 'I pl*1|fW ef. , rf _

4 Ond yr Ie«u a ddyweuodii wrthynt. bltnao a ddywedudd. Feu loau Fedydd-
Nid yw prophwyd yn adl-brU oud yn a \ Iwr.

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LA SAINTE BIBLE,

Qui comprend 1'Ancien et le Nouveau Testament, traduits sur les Textes
Originaux Hebreu et Grec.

Par LOUIS SECOND, Docteur en Theologie.
Nonpareil 16mo French Bible. Size, 6$ x & x i inches.

Chap. XIII. MATTHIEU. Chap. XIII.

homme, il va dans des Ileus arides, cher- i yeux, parce qu'ils volent, et vos orellles,

U n'en trouve point. ' parce qu'elles entendent! Je vous le dis 17

chant du repos, et

44 Alors U dit : Je retoumerai dans ma mui-
son d'ou je suis sorti ; et, quiuid il iirrive,

45 il la trouve vide, balayee et oru6e. 11 s'eu
va, et il prend avec lul sept autres esprita
plus mechants que lui ; ils entreut dans

vericc, beaucoup de prophetes et de
justes ont d^sir6 voir ce que vous voyez,
et ne 1'ont pas vu, entendre ce que vous
entendez, et ne 1'ont pas entendu.
Vous done, gcoutez ce que slgnifie la 18

la maison, s'y 6tablissent, et la dernifere parabole du semeur. Lorsqu'un homme 19
conditiou de cet homme est pire que la ecoute la parole du royaume et ne la

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THE NEW TESTAMENT IN MODERN

SPEECH.

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By R. F. WEYMOUTH, M.A., D.Lit.

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8o The Bible List.

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OO I '43