The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-05-07
IN HOTEL LOBBIES.
The King James Version


 "The celebration of the tercentenarS of the publication of the King James version of the Scriptures has brought out some fresh Illuminating English" said a professional man.
 "It has been nearly 40 years since my college days. and during the time of my matured observation there has been an apparent relaxation of Protestant ortho- doxy. I was brought up in the strict est school of Calvinism, and many of the divines whom I heard preach In my youth might turn in their graves could they know that some of the present gen. eration held liberal views on certain of the great doctrines insistent in the years gone by.
 'Butsthe younger preachers and the younger adherents of so-called Calvin istic churches are doubtless as near Heaven today as were the severer theo- logians of a half century agone. l was taught to believe that every word in the Bible was inspired. All of the religious people I knew believed in verbal inspira- tion. I still come near believing in ver- bal inspiration of the Scriptures. Prac- llCdlly uO sO DelltNes bul WHdt oNNAh ed out to say was that among all schol- ars, no matter whether or not they be- lieve in the Bible as inspired of God from Genesis to Revelation, there is an agree ment that as English literature the King James version ranks first. The English Bible, Milton and Shakespeare will al- ways be classics. Those three books as literature will be forever related, and no student of the English language can make any sort of headway unless he be- comes saturated with idioms of the King James version and the plays of Shakespeare.
 "President Taft. in his letter to the tercentennal meeting, delivered himself clearly and with good taste when he said: T desire to express my deep inter- est in the recognition which is being taken in this country of so notable an event as the three hundredth anniver- sary of the King James Version of the English Bible.
 The publication of this version of the Holy Scriptures in the year 1611 as- sociates it with the early colonies of the English people upon this continent. It became at once the Bible of our Amer ican forefathers. It's classic English has given shape to American literature Its spirit has influenced American ideals in life and laws and government.
 I trust that this celebration may continue to deepen the influence of the Bible upon the people of this republic
 And King George sent an equally im- pressive message: I rejoice. said the king, that America and England should join in commemorating the publication 900 years ago of that version of the Holy Scriptures which has so long held it's own among English-speaking peoples. Its circulation in our homes has done more, perhaps, than anything else on earth to promote moral and religious welfare the Atlantic.
 "'The version which bears King James name is so clearly interwoven in the history of British and American life that it is right we should thank God for it to- gether. I congratulate the President and people of the United States upon their share in this our common heritage
 Ambassador Brice, in conveying his sovereign's message, spoke in his own behalf of the simplicity, dignity and beauty of the language of the version, and declared that the excellence of the greatest English writers could be traced to their knowledge of the diction of the Bible
 "The authorized revised version of the Holy Scriptures Is quite generally used nowadays, and serves well enough from a religious point of view; but it cannot be compared for literary purposes to the older version. Catholic scholars as we'll as Protestant scholars have always been ready to pay tribute to the superiority purely as literature, of the King James translation