The Newtown bee., 1905-06-16

After the rain had held off long enough that the best of children with | their friends might get sout in the
 morning and literally crowd the Gen. gregational church to it's fullest seat
 ing capacity, galleries and all, the
 people could well afford, last Sunday
 evening, to do as they do in Spain-let
 it rain, even if the rain did somewhat
 mar the attendance at the lecture.
 the Connecticut Bible Society, who gave this stereopticon lecture on "How We Got Our Bible," has evil
 dently put a great deal of time into it's preparation. You cannot go into
 store and purchase the slides as you
 would buy book; neither can the de- Scriptive lecture be read anywhere.
 This must be dug out of various mines,
 some of them abstruse German books;
 and it is no holiday pastime to get form.
 One is led, as he hears such lecture: to count his blessings one by one; and
 not the least of these blessings is his privilege of worshiping and reading,
 undisturbed, Gods Book. It is almost incredible that in England-wonder- full, enlightened, free England, as we think of her tO-day-there once should have been terrible persecution for men
 who sought to give the Bible to the people,; but England was not free
 that Moses did not write the law and David did not pen his Psalms because
 there was no writing at such an early
 age, let him ponder the fact that in-
 Scriptions deciphered to-day on pillars
 and piles in Egypt and Assyria show
 that 2OO0 years:beforesMoses in Egypt
 and 400O years before Moses, in As
 syria men were putting down their
 thoughts inIpermanent form. It is an
 interesting story how Tischendorf, the
 great Herman scholar, was pulled up
 monastery Ion the slopes of Mount
 Sinai, how he saw in his rooms in a
 waste basket some leaves which the
 monks had placed there for kindling fire, how his practised eye at once told him that they were part of a Bible manuscript of priceless value, how for years, backed by the power of the Russian government, he was trying to obtain this manuscript, the monks holding it back at fabulous price when they learned it's worth. Thus came one of the three great manuscripts of the Bible, Sinaitic. It is remarkable coincidence that the three great man. uscripts of the world are in the pos session of the three great branches of | the Church: The Sinaitic at Moscow in the possession of the Greek church: | the Vatican at Rome in the possession | of the Roman Catholic church; and l the third great manuscript in the National Museum at London in the | possession of the Protestant church. l When our Authorized Version was made, none of the great manuscripts had been discovered; it was made mostly from Greek manuscripts of the date of the Middle Ages, and 50 can not, by necessity, be nearly so accurate as the Revised Version. The Author lzed Version was a growth. It was, in the main, the product of the compari- son of several Bibles which were then in existence-Tyndale's, Coverdale's and Wyckliffes. The work of the Connecticut Bible Society is to get the Sacred Page into the hands of the for cut is fast filling up and to make of them Christian citizens. In New Britain, the other day. some 300 As syrianS were found; and some of them are now consistent members of the Congregational church there.
 An offering of $13.1 was made to the work of the society which Mir Roberts represented. This with the offering of the Sunday school in the morning to the Congregational Sunday school and Publishing Society, s24 o6, and to the regular work of the church, S15. 40, made about $53 given in the church in the services of the day.-[*
 Mrs H. M. Smith, who has been vis- ting friends 1T Amherst, Mass, and Hartford, returned home, Tuesday.