Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1911-04-26
"WILLIAM II. TAFT.
Message From Kinq Georqe.

Message From King George.
New York April 2G.--n delivering
special message from King George
to the meeting in Carnegie hall last
night to celebrate the 30Oth anniver-
sary of the English translation OF the
Bible, Ambassador Bryce of Great
Britain spoke Of the effect the trans
lation had had upon the English
speaking race. He said in part:
The great event which We are here
to commemorate was. like most great
things, no sudden achievement of a
group of gifted scholars but the ma
ture fruit of desires and purposes
which had long been ripening in the
minds of our ancestors
Much Rad been done towards an
English Bible before King James the
First commissioned his company Of
learned scholars for the task. Using
the labors of their many predecessors,
the translators produced a version
which was wonderfully exact for the
scholarship of those days. so exact
that after three centuries the changes
which repeated collections of the man
uscripts and repeated examination OF
the precise meaning OF The Hebrew
and Greek texts have led modern crit
les to make are few and unimportant
in proportion to the whole.
How much of the excellence of our
sreat writers from Milton, Jeremy.
Taylor, and Baxter downwards is
tgaceable to their knowledge of the
diction of the Bible! We can feel it
in four great masters of our tongue
who adorned the last generation TO
all OF whom the Scriptures were ia.
miliar from childhood. We recognize
j. in the speeches of John Bright and
Abraham Lincoln, in the sermons and
essays of Cardinal Newman and in
the earlier writings of Thomas Car.
lyle before his style became German
lied. The names OF Lincoln and
Bright suggest the immense and
unique service which this transla-
ton rendered to men of our stock. 1t
brought this wonderful st0rehOuse OF
historical narrative and moral reflec-
ton, this Incompatible record of the
progress OF the human spirit and OF
all the forms in which its conception
OF the relations of men TO God were
expressed within the reach OF those
who like Bright received no very wide
education and those who like Lincoln
received no education at all.
British and American character
have been largely formed by this
book, because it was in the 18th cell
tury the only book which all the peo.
pie knew and all the people revered.
And if our ancestors in that century
and the next set an example to other
countries in their love of freedom and
their willingness to make sacrifices
for freedom, yet knowing how to use
freedom with moderation and Justice,
is this not largely due to the stimulus
my iNNNi'Nu lioill tIt hlUW WltuSt Ol
the Scriptures in their own tongue
and from the sense that freedom, like
other gifts of God, is to be used with
a sense of responsibility to God for
its use?
Those We're some. of the things
which the Bible did for the individual
soul. And it also formed the one
sermon basis for the literature of the
medieval and modern world. 1t was
the common ground on which all
met whatsoever their diff
as to its meaning, the com
mon starting point for their poetry
and their ethics. Chaucer and Tasso
and Goethe have their roots in it as
well as Dante and Milton 1t has
been a visible symbol of the underly- !
Ing moral unity of the civilized ma
tons, even at times when some of |
them have least respected its authori. |
ty
In the message from King George |
which | have read to you this evening
the English version is truly called |
Our common heritage 1t is such |
a heritage as brothers may enjoy in |