CRUSADE WITHOUT ARMOUR

Radio Record, 14 April 1938, Page 15

CRUSADE WITHOUT ARMOUR

Radio’s Tale of How Men Brought The Bible to The English People

Written Fer The "Record" by

EMILE

MAN weighing 140 pounds contains enough fat for seven cakes of soap, carbon for 9000

pencils, phosporus to make 2200 match-heads, magnesium for one dose of salts, iron to make one mediumsized nail, sufficient lime to whitewash a chicken coop, enough sulphur to rid one dog of fleas, and water to fill a 10-gallon barrel. Thus the scientists. But, curious creature that he is, man has another quality that even the scientists are unable to measure up in test-tubes or translate into terms of soap and match-heads. It has never yet been weighed, and never yet been put under the microscope.

It goes by the name of the spirit. LASst week I had a radio preview of a play, "Thy Light Is Come," acted, produced and. recorded by the NBS, which tells a true. story of spiritual achievement as vividly as any drama and as excitingly as any thriller. Religion, unhappily, has suffered from its namby-pambies. It has

so often been the refuge of the faint-hearted who find themselves too timid to face the unpleasantness and cruelties of an existence which is little removed from the tooth-and-claw laws of the jungle, that the great fighters it has produeed-its Paul’s, Savonarola’s, Luther’s, Wesley’s and General Booth’s-have too often been forgotten. to. ' And it would be a poor man who, believer or unbeliever, could not pay homage in his heart to these fighters who fought, not for themselves, but for the common people. "mpuy Light Is Come" is radio’s tale of the life of William Tyndale, the English scholar who defied the might of Henry the HNighth and the English Bishops, to give the common people the Bible in their Mother English instead of the Latin that was known only to priests and scholars. He wa3 burned at the stake in the end-but he won. To-day the

English Bible is the world’s best seller. The play will be released from 2YA at 9.20 p.m. on Good Friday, April 15. Later, it will be given at the other national stations. AS I heard it, the play is all good bone and gristle, a model of construction. No words are wasted and no character is brought into the play unless he has a definite task in helping to work out the quick-moving plot. It is spare, trim and econoinical.

For a good radio play these days is like an athlete. It must be trained down as fine 2s it will go, and be able to sprint like a hare. HEN the play opens, Tyndale, aged 28 in the year 1512, is a student at Magdalen Hall, Oxford. . He is the finest Latinist and Greek man in the schools. Into his room eomes hearty Barnaby.

who came to Oxford because the wenches were prettier and the ale was stronger. They talk for a moment, Barnaby frank and hearty, Tyndale with the scholar’s shrinking and withdrawal from this loud man who seems to want his friendship. When Barnaby goes out, Tyndale is left wondering which of them is the more foolish: Barnaby, the dullard who lives only for the moment, or himself, the dullard who lives always in the chronicles of the past. What is the use to him of his Latin and Greek? HE entrance of the next character, an English mason, gives Tyndale the answer. The mason, come to do repairs to the hall, has lost his way and wandered into Tyndale’s room. ‘They talk for a moment, the mason with awe of the scholar’s learning of Latin and Greek. The dialogue leads on with artful simplicity (Continued on page 38.)

0-DAY the English Bible is the world’s best seller, but four hundred years ago men gave their lives so thet their fellow-English-men might read it. "Thy Light is Come," the Easter radio play of the N.B.S., is the thrilling story of this crusade without armour.

Tyndale’s Crusade

Men Played With Death (Continued from page 15.) from a quotation of David the psalmist by Tyndale on building, to a question by the mason. "This here Latin is what the Jews spoke?" And, as the mason goes, Tyndale’s thoughts go rushing on a discovery. > « . "The sayings of the Hebrew prophets had been put into Latin, the sayings of our Lord into Greek. Why not into Mother English so that the common people might read and understand?" Two years later he is in Hamburg, engaged on his life’s work of translating the Bible into English sv that it can be read by the people. There is a price on his head. He works against the laws of Henry the Eighth and the Church, He is helped in his work of distriputing the Bible by the Brethren, a secret band of Englishmen who smuggie the copies of the Bible into England by dead of night and ride far over the countryside dropping the priceless books into the hands of a man who can read them in every hamlet. The leader of these smugglers, A& man unknown to Tyndale, plays with death. In "Antwerp they meet. The leader, to Tyndale’s amazement, is his bonny-faced, hard-riding, ale-swilling countryman Barnaby. ROM this point on, the play races ahead in fine pictorial drama. The listener is carried along on the night journey of the smugglers to the English coast. He sees-through the words of the characters-the signals from the shore, the lantern raised three times in the church tower, the call of a seagull. And he hears the thundering hoofs of the horses of the midnight riders on the still night air-coming closer, dying away, coming closer again-ag Barnaby rides. He hears Barnaby’s rough male voice as he meets the solitary secret agent in every hamlet, "Cam ye read Mother English?" "Tt ean make do, the only man in the parish as can." "Then take this book, and read it to thy fellows. ’Tis a Holy Bible, printed in English." And so he rides on, to capture and death. HILE in Antwerp itself, Tyndale, trapped into a false meeting with Barnaby, is betrayed by a disciple, Phillips, seized by soldiers and taken to the stake for burning. There is a fine touch of artistry about the last words of each of these men, but I shall not tell it here. The play ends in a quiet, simple scene that shelves gently down from the high tension of the climax. In an English village a group of common people are met to hear the reading of the gurt big book in Mother English by a mason who once went many years ago to make repairs at Magdalen Hall. He shuts his eyes and puts his finger into the Bible and reads from the words at which God has placed his finger. It is the sixtieth chapter of the Prophet Isaiah :-- "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord has risen before thee. . o ." ~~