Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1911-04-25
A Most Significant Celebration
BIZ BISHOP w. A. cANDLEI

! AT the suggestion Of the American BIZ
BILE Society this day, April %, will be
observed i'm the churches of the United
States as the Tercentenary Anniversary
OF the King James Version of the Holy
Scriptures. Our people have never been
called upon to celebrate a more impor-
tant event. nor one that has had
greater or more blessed influence upon
our history.
This version of the Bible, than which
there has never been a better transla-
ton made into any tongue. was finished
about the time the Cavaliers were set
Ting at jamestown and the Pilgrim
Fathers" were taking refuge at Leydel
on their way to Plymouth. 1t was this
translation the American colonists
brought with them when they came to
the Western wilds, and its influence
permeated all their lives and insti.u-
tions. In his Bunker Hill Grafton Mr.
Webster said OF them, THE Bible came
twith them And 1t is not to be doubted
that to the free and universal reading
of the Bible is to be ascribed in that
age that men were indebted for right
views of civil liberty The motives
which drove them into their temptation
| in the wilderness were inspired by the
reading of this Book, and in their con-
flicts, like their Master before them,
they constantly relied upon the fact
that il was written in it that man
\ shall not live by bread alone" Its
teachings had entered into the very
fibre of the character of their devout
ancestors in England, and it became to
them the very bread of life, by which
their own souls were nourished.
| M Tame, the celebrated French es-
sayist, or one occasion when turning
over the leaves of Tindales version of
the Scriptures, tto which the King
James version owes much of les excel
lence) said Hence have sprung much
of the English language, and half of the
English manners; to this day the coun-
try is biblical; it was these big books
which had transformed Shakespeares
England.
/ There were, as we all know. English
versions of the sacred Scriptures before
the days of King James. Before that
time there had been a series of efforts
to give a faithful English translation
of Bible, in whole or in part. The SER
les began with Caedmon of Whitby and
the Venerable Bede; it was continued by
iWycliffe and the devout scholars of his
day; and a little more than a century
later it was resumed by William Tin
dale aud Miles Coverdale, the latter IS
suing the first complete printed Eng
fish Bible.
/ OF the translators who preceded the
men who made the King James Version
1--we owe most perhaps to Tfndale. Other
| translators had been content to make
English versions from versions in other
4 tongues. to make translations from
TRANSACTIONS; but Tindale went direct
to the Hebrew and the Greek in which
the Bible was originally written More
over TO him we are indebted for the
popular form of the Scriptures as We
have them now Bishop Wescott most
truly says of this feature of his work,
His influence decided that our Bible
should be popular and not literary,
speaking in simple dialect. and so by
| it's simplicity it should be endowed
with permanence He felt by a happy
instinct the potential affinity between
the Hebrew and English idioms and en-
riohed our language and thought for
ever with the characteristics of the
Semitic mind" 1t was the settled and
firm intention. rather than any indefi-
mite instinct, which moved Tindale,
however When in controversy with a
monk who exalted the Pope's regula-
tons and laws above the Scriptures, the
great translator exclaimed, II defy the
| Pope and all his laws. and if God spare
my life, ere many years l shall cause
boy that driveth the pillow shall know
more of the Scriptures than thou
doest."
We will appreciate more highly the
fact that the Bible may now be had by all
| in our land who wish it, If we will
| consider it's cost and the difficulty of
obtaining it before the time of Tin
dale. The price of Bible in the year
/ 1874 two hundred and fifty years be-
| fore Tindale completed his transla-
ton Of the New Testament. was about
y,
day laborer in England was about five
cents a day. or the wages of ten years
would not have sufficed TO buy a copy
j o. the Bible; and when bought the
| laborer could not have read it, for il
was written in an unknown tongue.
while the Iaborer could nor read his
own language. A hundred years later
the Bible cost over $500, although a
/ goose or a pig could be had for eight
cents. Every copy was made by hand.
and the book which took Wycliffe's
copyists ten months to make may be
turned out now " one publisher alone
at the rate of one hundred and twenty
copies an hour A New Testament
complete in paper covers can be bought
for one penny in London. Tindale's
words to the monk have been more than
fulfilled. While geese and pigs are
higher than ever. the Scriptures in Eng
dale's work, and the invention of the art
of printing which in the order of Prov
idence seems to have been timed for
the rapid publication Of the Bible in all
lands, have brought this to pass.
For his work Tindale was imprisoned
in the castle at Vilvorde for eighteen
months, but it was not possible that by
men the word of God could be bound.
After his condemnation by the Council
of Brabant, he was strangled and burn
ed. October 6, 1886. praying Lord open
the King of England's eyes" Seventy
five years later when the hing James
Version was published under the direc-
tion am authority of the monarch OF
that name, the prayer of Tindale was
MORE than answered 1t was then God
opened the eyes of both the reigning
king and he whole nation.
After Tindale's work came Cover
dale's Bible in 1885; Matthews Bible in
1881; the Bible of Taverner in 1889, and
Cranmer's Bible. or "Ihe, Great Bible"
in the same year, Whittfngham's New
Testament in 1851; the Genevan Bible,
translated by three English exiles IN
Geneva, in 1860; "the Bishops Bible"
in 1860; the Rheims, or Douay New Tes-
lament. 1852, followed by the Old Tes-
lament in 16O9-1610.