TERCENTENARY OF THE BIBLE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 986, 2 May 1911, Page 3

TERCENTENARY OF THE BIBLE.

At the local Presbyterian Church on Sunday morning, the Rev. G. K, Aitkeu preached a sermon in reference to the Tercentenary of the Bible. His text was from Psalm cxix, 105, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” The event, he said, was one of the greatest in our history, not from the fact alone that it was published by authority of King James 1., but what the Bible had stood for during all these years. The translation stood in the very front today as authoritative and complete. Alex. Geddis, the Biblical critic of the eighteenth century, paid this fine tribute to these men, who were as truly great though unknown to us, as any that England ever produced : ‘‘ The highest eulogiums have been made on the translations of James I. both by our own writers and by foreigners. And indeed, if accuracy, fidelity, and strictest attention to the letter of the text be supposed to constitute the qualities of an excellent version, this, of all versions, must in general, be accounted the most excellent. livery sentence, every word, every syllable, every letter and point, seems to have been weighed with the nicest exactitude, and expressed either iu the text or margin with the greatest precision. It is well remarked by Robertson above xoo years ago that it may serve lor a lexicon of Hebrew language as well as for a translation.” This statement indicates how perfect the work was, and although other translations iu several languages had preceded that of 1611, the complaint was justified that they were either imperfect or incomplete. With the version issued under the authority and by the command of James I. it was otherwise. Having obtained a list of all the most learned men of the Universities on July 22nd, 1604, he announced the appointment of 54 of the best scholars of the kingdom who were commissioned to do this work. The instruction given these men was very clearly defined. They were ordered to make what was known as the “Bisuop’s Bible” the basis of their translation, ana though they were to cousult other authorities they were to departd from it only when the text required it. They were to make no marginal notes except where it was required to explain or express more fully the Hebrew or Greek terms. The translators were divided into six companies, each company undertaking some special portion of Scripture. Only a few of the names of the 54 translators, 47 of whom served in this capacity, have come down to us. In the case of any of the six companies failing to agree in relation to any part ot the text, the point of disagreement was to be reserved and submitted to the whole company. Between the middle and end of last century a board of revisers were appointed by our colleges and schools to examine all records and documents and produce a revised translation of the Scriptures. The most learned of our scholars were selected for the purpose and for several years laboured at the work set before them. In iBSx the revised copy of the New Testament was issued, and while in some respects it altered the sense in which we had read certain texts, in all essential matters no changes were introduced. This translation was followed two years later by the revised Old Testament, but the few alterations that the translators suggested were so insignificant that up till to-day the revised Bible has not taken the place of the old translation with which we are familiar. This is perhaps the greatest compliment that could be paid to the men who had so mearly put into the English language the words of the living God, from the language in which it had been originally written, and is an abundant evidence, were it required, to indicate how perfect and satisfactory their work had been. The preacher then pointed to what was perhaps the greatest factor for the quality of the work that had been done. The great Reformation that had stirred the hearts of men was of recent date. The people were emerging from the constraint under vyhica they had long been held. They were being led to teel the freedom of civil and religious rights, and consequently there was a demand for the Scriptures iu the common tongue, iu the most perfect lorm possible, to satisfy the men aud women to whom the Bible had been a sealed book. The translators knew that men had suffered aud died lor the right to interpret and read the Word for themselves, •and consequently were inspired to do the best within their reach. In contrast to their accomplishment, take the works of the great Shakespeare, aud we find that as the ages have passed, revision after revision has had to be undertaken, in order to keep his works abreast of the changes iu language that in every age comes with popular use. The translation of the Bible in 1611, word by word, phrase by phrase, is just as it left the translators hands, and what we read of God’s word iu our time is in no way or sense different irom what was read by the subjects of James I. Referring to the Bible’s literary quality the preacher quoted the words of a well-known writer: “The debt of our race to the Authorised Version 110 doubt lies iu part at least in the literary realm. No other book has affected so profoundly, aud with results so noble, the English language. The Authorised Version gathers into its cadeuces all tue music of which our mother tongue is capable. Its simplicity makes it intelligible to children, its rhythm

satisfies the ear of the artist, its clearness makes it the most translucent vehicle of religious truth to be found in human literature. The Authorised Version has helped to keep alive in English speech its finest qualities, it has created standards of simplicity and directness—of mingled strength and sweetness —which have affected for good, English literature everywhere. Father Faber’s oft’ quoted description of the English of the Authorised Version is perfectly true. He says : “The uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible lives on the ear like music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert scarcely knows how he can forego. Its felicities seem 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 perfect idolatry, in extenuation of whose fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. 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 ever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing which doubt never dimmed, and controversy never soiled ; and in the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible.’’ It is quite right to recognise the happy circumstance —say, rather, the providence of God —which gave birth to this version of the Bible in the golden hour of our mother tongue, when the English of Spencer, of Shakespeare and Milton was in the familiar speech. So it came to pass that the highest truths ever revealed to the human intellect found their expression in the clearest and simplest form of speech ever used by human lips. But the literary quality of the Authorised Version is not to be traced to purely literary causes. There was the blood of the martyrs in the ink in which the Authorised Version was written. It was born in an age of suffering. Its sentences were wrought out like beaten steel in the furnace of persecution. To us in these peaceful days, when freedom has become a platitude, and we have ceased to understand its value, because we have forgotten its cost, it is difficult to realise what a price of suffering our forefathers paid to win a free Bible. We are, all of us, the spiritual debtors of Wickliffe, who first translated the Bible into our mother tongue, but we forget what perils Wickliffe faced to give his countrymen the Word of God in the speech of their own firesides. He escaped martyrdom by dying a natural death; but in 1415— thirty-five years after he died —his bones were dug up by the order of the Council of Constance, and burnt to ashes and cast into the nearest running stream —the Avon. And the popular judgment on the performance is expressed in a rude stanza:

The Avon to the Severn flowed, The Severn to the Sea, And Wickliffe’s ashes spread abroad Wide as the waters be.

William Tyudale, a gentler spirit than Wickliffe, but one as heroic, was the first who dared to print the Bible in English, but he had to do it on foreign soil, to hide his press as though it were engaged in a crime, aud to smuggle his sheets into England as if they were false coin. The first edition of the New Testament he printed—in 1526 — was burnt iu front of St. Paul’s Cathedral with a circle of bishops to bless the fire. Tyndale was seized at last at Antwerp and died at the stake, rmid blazing faggots, a martyr’s death, his last words, uttered in a firm, loud voice being ; “ Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.” These are some of the things that inspired the translators of our authorised version aud sent them to, and maintained them in, their great work, with the determination to give to the people all the richness and beauty rud perfection they could command. What is the message that all this has for us to-day ? Is our ignorance of and indifference to the claiips ot the Bible compatible with its noble history ? Although iu literary merit, in moral standard, iu spiritual emancipation, the Bible stands for the highest aud the best, we have shut it out of our schools of instruction to the young, aud if we have not shut it out ot our homes we have closed it up iu onr homes and made it a dead letter so far as onr knowledge goes. If you have patriotism, if you have national pride, if you love righteousness, then for the sake of these esteem and value the Bible, the word of the living God, aud for His sake as well as your own, make yourselves familiar with its teaching.