ENGLISH BIBLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 June 1938, Page 5

ENGLISH BIBLE

CENTENARY OF REFORMATION. THIS YEAR’S OBSERVANCE. The fourth centenary of the Reformation of the English Bible is being observed this year. The arrangements are in rhe hands of a National Council which was set up on May 31, 1935, at a meeting in London addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. J. Scott Lidgett and Dr. S. M. Berry. The work of this widely spread representative council will culminate on Sunday, June 19, which is to be celebrated throughout the world as a day of thanksgiving for the gift of the English Bible. Special sermons will be preached in many of the churches. In New Zealand, the British and Foreign Bible Society is taking its share by arranging for the rebroadcasting of an address on “The Splendour of the Bible” by Viscount Sankey, the Rt. Hon. Sir Isaac Foot, P.C., and the Archbishop of York. In 1537 Miles Coverdale issued a revision of the first English Bible and it received the King’s licence. Archbishop Cranmer was anxious that the Bible should be set up in parish churches. That was the beginning of the “Chained Bible,” for in those days a book was so valuable that each copy of the Scriptures was chained to a pillar of the church as a protection against thieves. Only a few could read, and the parishioners gathered round the book in the church and listened to the reading of Holy Writ by the local reader. Today, four hundred years later, the Bible has been circulated in . every country of the world. In 1936 the grand total of circulation was 23,267,181 copies. If all the Bibles issued by the world’s three leading Bible societies in one year could be stacked one upon the other, the pile would be more than five times the height of Mt. Everest — the highest mountain in the world. On the other hand a report of a British Government Committee' on “The Teaching of English in England” says that at the present time the Bible is probably less widely read and less directly influential in our life and literature than it has been since the Reformation. More than ever before, then, it is realised that it is the serious responsibility o£ each succeeding generation to maintain at all costs the privilege of the “Open Bible.” as this liberty is being contested in many parts of the world. In the days of the chained Bible, the problem was to obtain enough Bibles to supply the needs of the people. Today the problem is not to supply copies, but to have the contents of the Scriptures read and studied by the people more widely. All work towards this end is serving a noble purpose, for in the words of T. H. Huxley “The Bible is the Book that is Woven into the life of all that is noblest and best in English history."