LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Class 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF 
 THE BIBLE AS A BOOK 
 
 Jf 
 
 ALFRED TYLER PERRY 
 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE BIBLE AS A BOOK 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 ALFRED TYLER PERRY 
 >i 
 
 Professor of Bibliology in Hartford Theological Seminary 
 
 FEBRUARY 10, 1899 
 
 LMWorb &cminarp press 
 
 Publishers and Booksellers 
 HARTFORD, CONN. 
 
"1>3 
 
THE PRE-EMINENCE OF THE BIBLE AS A BOOK. 
 
 INAUGURAL ADDRESS OF ALFRED TYLER PERKY, 
 
 Professor of Bibliology. 
 FKBHUAUY 10, 1899. 
 
 In accepting the appointment as Professor of Bibliology in 
 this Hartford Theological Seminary, I appreciate the fact that I 
 am entering upon a unique office. In few institutions of higher 
 learning is the librarian given a voice in shaping the policy or 
 assisting in the government; in still fewer, only three or four, 
 does he give instruction in subjects germane to his department; 
 in no other theological seminary, so far as I am aware, and in 
 only two colleges or universities, is his department raised to the 
 dignity of a distinct professorship. It is a great satisfaction and 
 encouragement to me to find here on the part of Trustees and 
 Faculty so high an estimate of the library as an integral part of 
 the institution, and necessary to the highest efficiency of every 
 other part. 
 
 Though my title changes with this advancement, my duties 
 remain the same as they have been for the past eight years. I 
 desire, therefore, to express my thanks for the kindly apprecia- 
 tion of my endeavors in the past to fulfill these duties, which is 
 shown by this promotion; and I am glad of the opportunity this 
 occasion affords of making acknowledgment of the help I have 
 received from those with whom I have been associated. Two 
 assistants, Mr. Hawks and Miss Hamilton, have been with me all 
 these years, and have labored unremittingly and intelligently 
 for the interests of the library. To their faithfulness and effi- 
 ciency a large meed of praise should be given. On the part of 
 my brethren of the Faculty there have been uniform kindness, 
 and willingness to co-operate with me, and charity for my ignor- 
 ance and mistakes. With the single exception of not allowing 
 me funds enough, a limitation for which they have not been 
 entirely responsible, the Trustees have been considerate of the 
 
 (3) 
 
 228097 
 
interests I have had in charge. To several members of the 
 Board I am under special obligations. To you, sir,* at whose 
 hands 1 to-night have received my induction into office, both 
 library and librarian are greatly indebted. An interest extend- 
 ing over many years has found expression in plans and labors, in 
 exertion of influence, and expenditure of energy, that our noble 
 collection of books might be formed and be fittingly housed. I 
 would pay a tribute of thanks also to Mr. John Allen, who, as 
 chairman of the Building Committee of the Library, arid as 
 chairman of the Executive Committee of the Trustees, has always 
 been hospitable to my suggestions and requests, and has never 
 denied me anything it was in his power to grant; and to Dr. A. C. 
 Thompson, one of the best friends any librarian ever had. 
 
 It is fitting that we should always remember when we think 
 of the library that we owe its beautiful building and its manifold 
 treasures chiefly to the generosity of Mr. Newton Case, whose 
 monument it has become; while the scholarly mind and broad 
 vision of our President have made ours the best theological 
 library in America. With suitable endowment it can be made 
 the best in the world. 
 
 I should shrink from accepting this position were the old 
 conception of the office of a librarian held here. To be an en- 
 cyclopedia of information in regard to all branches of knowledge, 
 or a thesaurus of quaint and curious facts dug up from the deepest 
 recesses of musty tomes, to spend one's time in following out 
 obscure trails in recondite subjects, to become a book-worm, read- 
 ing simply for the sake of reading without practical result in the 
 real life of the world, this has for me no attractions. It is to 
 me a grateful fact that our President has himself outlined a far 
 different ideal. If to be a librarian means to seek to make the 
 library useful by a careful administration, to be a guide to 
 readers, to point out to inquirers where they may profitably dig 
 for themselves in the investigation of special subjects, to make 
 plain the best methods of literary research, to seek further to 
 build up the library by such purchases as will fill gaps and de- 
 velop specialties, and so make and keep it representative and com- 
 plete, if study and labor for these ends is the work to which 
 
 * Mr. Jeremiah M. Allen, of the Board of Trustees. 
 
I am summoned, then I am ready to accept the charge, although 
 conscious of sad deficiencies in qualifications. 
 
 Th'e Bible is for the Christian the Book of Books. It is the 
 revelation of God given him to be his guide through this life, that 
 he may attain unto the life eternal. In it he learns of the divine 
 plan of redemption, with it in his hand he has a treasury of 
 counsel suitable to every circumstance of life; in sorrow it is his 
 comfort, in time of temptation his refuge, and in all the conflicts 
 of the kingdom, his sword of the Spirit. As he reads it he hears 
 the very voice of God speaking to him in warning and encour- 
 agement, in command and consolation. For the theologian, too, 
 the Bible holds the same supreme place. It is his chief text- 
 book, and his final court of appeal. Here he finds the facts of 
 his system, and the norm of their combination and relation. 
 
 It is not so generally felt or acknowledged that for the 
 bibliographer no less than for the Christian and the theologian 
 the Bible is the Book of Books. On the occasion, therefore, of 
 the induction into office of a Professor of Bibliology in this theo- 
 logical seminary, it may not be unfitting to dwell upon the theme, 
 - " The Pre-eminence of the Bible as a Book." We here take 
 no cognizance of the great and important place filled by the 
 Bible in the world of thought. It has been the inspiration of 
 countless writers. Poets and philosophers, historians and essay- 
 ists have received instruction from its truths, and their pages are 
 lighted up by the reflected glory of its high thoughts and exalted 
 imagery. It would be an inquiry of deepest interest to trace in 
 the literature of every age the influence of this supreme book of 
 the world; but it is not to the teachings of the Bible, or its artistic 
 form to the effect of its truth or its style on the literatures of the 
 world that we would direct attention. 
 
 The Bible is a book. It has been written, printed, and 
 bound. As such it has a history in many respects fascinating 
 and suggestive. When God revealed his will to men, he did it 
 through earthly media. He caused his word to be written for 
 our instruction. The divine has dwelt in human form; the 
 eternal verities have been committed to the minds and hands of 
 weak and erring men. The truth of God has been expressed 
 
6 
 
 in the imperfect medium of human language, has been handed 
 down from generation to generation by the pen of the scribe, has 
 been embalmed in the printed page, has been passed on from one 
 dialect to another, has been scattered broadcast over the earth 
 by the labors of men. Since these instrumentalities have been 
 thus divinely honored, it is surely of importance to trace the his- 
 tory of this divine-human product, that we may understand the 
 limitations put upon the divine soul by the human body in which 
 it dwells, as well as the dignity and efficiency accorded to the 
 human flesh by reason of the divine spirit breathed into it. 
 Evidence is not lacking that the divine care has extended even to 
 the more material features of this book. There has indeed been 
 no miraculous intervention to deliver the Bible from the chances 
 of worldly affairs, its wars and conflagrations, the strife and 
 ignorance and fallibility of scribes and translators, the mold and 
 decay of cloister and crypt; and yet the God who gave has cer- 
 tainly by his providence protected his gift from destruction, and 
 has preserved its integrity to the present hour. 
 
 It is to certain aspects of this history that I ask your attention. 
 We pass by entirely, for the purposes of this evening's discussion, 
 any consideration of the structure or contents or doctrinal teach- 
 ings of the Bible; we shall endeavor to set forth the supremacy 
 of the Bible as a book among other books. In this we limit our- 
 selves strictly to the field of bibliology. We fix our eyes on 
 features which are purely external. We readily grant that these 
 are the less important. It is far more necessary to discover the 
 truth of the Word than to know the varied forms in which it has 
 appeared or the means by which it has been transmitted to us. 
 There are many blessed in its reading through the help of the 
 Spirit who are ignorant of every one of the facts to which we 
 shall call attention; they do not need to know them in order to 
 gain the highest benefit from its perusal. And yet we are per- 
 suaded that our inquiry is not altogether in vain, for every 
 slightest item regarding this book is of value to those who esteem 
 it so highly, and we believe that even from this external history 
 of the Bible we may gain lessons of importance to our faith. 
 
 I. The Bible is pre-eminent among all the books of the 
 world, even in its manuscript form. For many centuries, in 
 
^common with all other books of that early period, it existed solely 
 in this form. But of all the books of antiquity the Bible is 
 supreme in the number and variety of its manuscript remains. 
 The science of paleography would be most seriously handi- 
 capped if there were taken from its resources the abundant 
 material thus supplied. The Old Testament portions furnish 
 almost the only specimens of Hebrew chirography. The New 
 Testament portions illustrate better than any other single book 
 the development of writing among the Greeks and Romans. 
 The early versions afford not only an opportunity for studying 
 the written characters of those languages, but the dialects them- 
 selves. Christian art, too, finds much of interest and value in 
 the illuminations which adorn many of these manuscript Bibles. 
 The Vatican and Sinaitic codices are not equaled by any manu- 
 scripts of any sort for size and simple beauty, and as examples of 
 the early form of Greek writing. None surpass for modest ele- 
 gance the Golden Gospels in Latin of the time of Charlemagne, 
 written throughout in gold letters on purple vellum.* None 
 show more beautiful and instructive miniatures than the Codex 
 IJ< ' anensis. The characteristics of writing in different parts of 
 Europe are easily discerned by comparing the Latin Bibles which 
 were written in various countries. We should know practically 
 nothing about that most interesting and curious blossoming of 
 Irish art in the twelfth century were it not for the Biblical man- 
 uscripts, of which the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels 
 are the most splendid specimens. The bare statement of the 
 number of manuscripts shows us what an important relation 
 the Bible has to these departments of literary research. There 
 are now known over 2,000 Hebrew manuscripts containing the 
 whole or parts of the Old Testament, the oldest of which is of 
 the eleventh century. Of New Testament manuscripts there are 
 known 112 uncial (i. e., written in capital letters throughout, 
 the oldest form of writing), and 2,429 cursive (written with small 
 letters and in a running hand), beside 1,273 lectionaries (service 
 books containing only the portions of Scripture read in church), f 
 Of course very few of this large number are complete. Only 
 
 * This, the only important manuscript of the Latin Vulgate in the United States, is in the 
 possession of Mr. Theodore Irwin of Oswego, N. Y. 
 
 t Kenyon, Our Bible and the ancient manuscripts, p. 120. 
 
8 
 
 two contain all the books of the New Testament. Most cover 
 only one section of the New Testament, Gospels, Pauline 
 Epistles, Catholic Epistles, or Apocalypse. If we reduce the 
 number as given by throwing out those counted more than once, 
 there still remain nearly 3,000 manuscripts of the Greek New 
 Testament, a mass of material not approached in a remote degree 
 by that of any other ancient book. 
 
 II. The pre-eminence of the Bible as a book appears, how- 
 ever, chiefly in its printed form. It holds the unique distinction 
 of having been the first book printed with movable type, and it 
 has been printed more times and in larger quantities than any 
 other book in the world; yes, than any ten of the most popular 
 books of the world combined. 
 
 1. It was surely a noble conception on the part of Johann 
 Gutenberg, the inventor of typography, to consecrate, as it were, 
 the work of the press at the very beginning by the printing of the 
 Word of God. Who but an idealist, a dreamer, would think of 
 such an undertaking at the outset of a new enterprise? But 
 Gutenberg, confident of the success of his invention, was not 
 daunted by fear of failure. He did not count the cost, evidently, 
 for he became bankrupt right speedily. Yet there is something 
 very attractive in the spectacle of this man, who after years of 
 laborious experimenting and painful failures had perfected his 
 invention, planning to glorify God by using it first of all for 
 printing the Bible. It was Gutenberg's pious feeling and opti- 
 mistic imagination that gave to the Bible this unique glory of 
 being the first book printed with movable types. Indeed, there 
 are two Bibles, both printed, undoubtedly, by Gutenberg, which 
 are claimants for the honor qf being the first. To be strictly 
 accurate, neither of these was absolutely the first published fruit 
 of the new process. There is evidence that a " Donatus," the 
 boy's Latin Grammar of the day, a little book of twenty or thirty 
 pages, was published, and perhaps printed, before either Bible. 
 And certainly there were several editions of Letters of Indul- 
 gence printed in broadside, and, like legal documents of to-day, 
 in blank to be filled in with date and the names of purchaser and 
 dispenser. Eighteen copies of these Letters of Indulgence are 
 extant, all bearing date of 1454 and 1455. It is evident, there- 
 
9 
 
 fore, that Gutenberg did small jobs which were immediately 
 remunerative, while he was busy with the more elaborate work 
 of printing the Bible. Such an undertaking was a vast one, 
 when we consider the facilities of the time. Fonts of type were 
 small; there was no such thing as electrotyping. A few pages 
 were set up at a time and printed, and the same type distributed 
 and recomposed for use on other pages of the same book. The 
 press was worked by hand, and none of the labor-saving devices 
 of the modern printing office were available. It is estimated 
 that the printing of the Bible under these conditions must have 
 been a work of two or even three years. 
 
 That such an enterprise was undertaken is witness to the 
 visionary character of the man. That it was carried through so 
 successfully is evidence of that persistency which had given him 
 the invention itself. Whether, then, the first was the Bible of 
 thirty-six lines, so called from the number of lines on a page, or 
 the Bible of forty-two lines, in either case it was the Bible in the 
 Vulgate Latin version which was the first work of importance, in 
 size and character, to be printed in the new method. The Bible 
 of forty-two lines, often called the Mazarine, but better the 
 Gutenberg Bible, has heretofore held the distinction of being 
 the first and is generally assigned to the year 1455. That claim is 
 now seriously disputed in favor of the Bible of thirty-six lines. 
 It may be interesting to call attention to some characteristics of 
 these first printed books. The Bible of forty-two lines is a large 
 folio in two volumes, the first containing 324 leaves, and the 
 second 317 leaves. There is no title page; space is left at the be- 
 ginning of chapters for the insertion of ornamental initials by 
 the illuminator. The types were made in imitation of the cur- 
 rent manuscript style and are a large Gothic or German char- 
 acter. The imitation of the manuscript style extended even to 
 the preparation of many compound letters and characters for 
 standard abbreviations. In an ordinary book-font of English 
 type to-day there are 226 characters, but these include numerals, 
 punctuation marks, and a full set of small capitals. Of large 
 capitals and small letters there are only sixty-six different sorts. 
 In Gutenberg's font, on the other hand, there were 138 different 
 characters aside from the three punctuation marks. These 
 extra letters, compound letters, and abbreviated characters are 
 
10 
 
 some of them quite difficult to decipher; only one versed in 
 Mediaeval manuscripts can read the book with ease. On the first 
 few pages of the Bible the summaries of the chapters were printed 
 in red ink; in the rest of the book they are written in, part in 
 red and part in black. Evidently the original plan of having 
 them printed had to be given up. 
 
 The Bible of thirty-six lines has most of the characteristics of 
 this Bible of forty-two lines, but it is printed from an entirely 
 different and much larger set of types. It is a large folio of 1,764 
 pages, fifteen and three-quarters by eleven inches in size, and is 
 usually bound in three volumes. Like the other, the text is in 
 two columns on each page. Only half a dozen copies of this 
 Bible are known to be in existence, and it is probable that the 
 edition was very small. Of the Gutenberg Bible of forty-two 
 lines there are thirty copies known, of which eight are printed 
 upon vellum. Some copies, however, are quite fragmentary. 
 In view of the fact that this is considered the first printed book, 
 it is much sought after by collectors and has often brought more 
 than its weight in gold. When Sir John Thorold's library was 
 sold at auction in 1884 a copy of the forty-two line Bible brought 
 3,900, over $19,000. In 1897 nearly $20,000 was paid for a 
 copy from the Ashburnham library by Bernard Quaritch, who 
 later priced it in his catalogue at 5,000. The Ashburnham 
 price has only been exceeded once for any book, and that was 
 also for a portion of the Bible, when in the Thorold sale a copy 
 of the Fust and Schoeffer Psalter of 1457 brought 4,950, or 
 $24,156. 
 
 These first Bibles are not only interesting because rare, they 
 are also beautiful specimens of the printer's art which would do 
 credit to any age or any printer. This is one of the astonishing 
 things in regard to the invention of typography, that its first 
 fruits were so perfect. Minerva-like, it seemed to spring full- 
 formed from the mind of its inventor. The first Bibles were 
 large folios, cumbrous to handle, and expensive to manufacture. 
 In 1480 the first quarto Bibles appeared in Venice, and the next 
 year the celebrated Froben, of Basle, the printer of Erasmus, 
 issued the first in octavo. 
 
 2. As the Bible was the first book printed, it held its pre- 
 eminence during the early years of the spread of the invention. 
 
11 
 
 It is affirmed that up to the year 1-190 " the Bible exceeded in 
 amount of printing all other books put together. "* This is a 
 wonderful record, and can only be accounted for by the strong 
 demand on the part of readers. During the preceding centuries, 
 Bibles had been so expensive that few were able to own an 
 entire copy, and most, even of those in more than moderate cir- 
 cumstances, contented themselves with a portion only. Printing 
 cheapened enormously the cost of production, and brought the 
 Bible at once within the reach of vast numbers who had hitherto 
 been unable to purchase it. It is estimated that there were more 
 Bibles manufactured in the first fifty years of printing than in 
 the three centuries immediately preceding. Printing spread 
 from city to city with great rapidity in those first years, so that 
 before the end of the year 1500, presses were set up in at least 
 247 places, t and it is certain that many of these early printers 
 followed the example of Gutenberg and issued the Bible as one 
 of their first works. In the first fifty years, i. e., to the end of 
 tin- year 1500, which period is usually taken as the infancy of 
 printing, all works published in these years being termed in- 
 cunabula, because printed while the art was, so to speak, in its 
 <Tndle, in these fifty years there were issued no less than 1,000 
 CM] it ions of the Bible or some of its parts. The next century 
 witnessed no diminution in this volume, but rather an increase. 
 "While the editions of the Bible became relatively less, as com- 
 paivd with the whole mass of printed matter, they were abso- 
 lutely very much more numerous. The influence of the circula- 
 tion of the printed Bible upon the spread of the Keformation has 
 often been remarked. Notice the provision for this desirable 
 end. There were no less than 160 editions of the Latin Bible 
 before 1517;$ and Luther's radical stand in appeal from the 
 Pope to the Word seems to have stimulated the reading of the 
 Bible, for before 1550 there were 174 more editions of the whole 
 Bible in Latin, to say nothing of 167 of the Latin New Testa- 
 ment printed in the first fifty years of the sixteenth century, and 
 nearly as many more of separate New Testament books. 
 Twenty-seven editions of Erasmus' Latin Testament issued in 
 
 * Stevens, The Bible in the Caxton Exhibition, London, 1878, p. 25. 
 + Reichhart, Beitriige zar Incunabelnkunde, Leipzig, 1895. 
 
 * These and the following figures have been chiefly derived from a collation of Haine, L. 
 Long-Mapch, and Copinger. 
 
 y/^jTBRA^pN, 
 
 f OF THK 
 
 (UNIVERSITY 
 
12 
 
 the seven years 1518-1524 were accompanied by thirty-eight 
 editions of his paraphrase (either the New Testament or its 
 separate books) in the eight years 1517-1524. And Bible read- 
 ing was not confined to the Latin language, universally as that 
 was known. For the Old Testament in Hebrew was printed in 
 1488, the Bible in German in 1466, in Italian in 1471, and the 
 "New Testament in French in the same year. There were nearly 
 fifty (forty-eight) editions of the whole Bible in the vernaculars 
 of Europe before the Reformation, to say nothing of those con- 
 taining only the New Testament or smaller portions. Luther's 
 New Testament in German was issued in 1522, and editions 
 followed in rapid succession in many cities of Germany. " Hans 
 Luft alone printed 100,000 copies on his press at Wittenberg."" 3 
 The sword of the Spirit was put into the hands of the people, and 
 it proved a weapon mighty enough to overthrow the power of 
 the Papacy in half of Europe. 
 
 Notwithstanding this evidence of an extensive circulation of 
 the Scriptures in the Reformation time, we must remember that 
 its high price still limited its widest distribution. Cheap as 
 printed Bibles were in comparison with manuscripts, judged by 
 modern standards they were very expensive. Luther's New 
 Testament sold for eleven and one-half guilders, equal to about 
 $5. Others were correspondingly costly. 
 
 4. The forms in which the Bible was issued indicate the 
 demand of the time. Churches needed pulpit Bibles, and the 
 great folios supplied that need. Editions containing only the 
 church lessons, or the Psalter, were also issued in great numbers, 
 the number of Psalters exceeding that of New Testaments. For 
 the benefit of the more ignorant priests there were furnished 
 editions with glosses, as well as some of the sermons most popular 
 in those days. Handier editions in octavo and even smaller sizes 
 gave to students and the public generally what best suited their 
 convenience. 
 
 5. From the beginning to the present time the Bible has 
 held its pre-eminence as a printed book. No one will ever know 
 how many editions of it have been issued, for the number is 
 almost beyond computation, and for countless editions there is 
 no record. The famous bibliographer and bookseller, Henry 
 
 * Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Rev. Ed., Vol. VI, 561. 
 
13 
 
 Stevens, says : " We have been endeavoring for the last quarter 
 of a century or more to compile as complete a list of printed 
 Bibles and parts of Bibles as possible from the earliest period to 
 the present time, and the remarkable result is a table of some 
 30,000 titles, representing about 35,000 volumes."* That was 
 twenty years ago. Bibles have been issued in all styles of type, 
 in all grades of workmanship, in all degrees of expense, in all 
 measures of accuracy. The volume of editions and copies now 
 pouring from the press is greater than ever before, and exceeds 
 many fold that of any other single book. 
 
 6. The printing of the Bible has furnished occasion for 
 some of the most remarkable feats of typography. At the time 
 of the Caxton Exhibition in London in 1877 an edition of one 
 hundred copies was printed from type in Oxford, and bound in 
 London, all in the space of twelve hours. When the Revised 
 Version of the English New Testament appeared in 1881, orders 
 for a million copies were received before publication by the 
 Oxford Press alone, and perhaps an equal number was ordered 
 from the Cambridge Press. The sale of the Revised Testament 
 opened in the United States on May 20th, amid scenes absolutely 
 unparalleled in the book trade since the beginning of the world. 
 It is said that 33,000 copies were sold on that day in New York, f 
 They were hawked about the streets by newsboys and fakirs, and 
 sold even under the shadow of the Stock Exchange. Two 
 Chicago papers, the Tribune and Times, had a large part of the 
 New Testament telegraphed from New York and sent it to their 
 readers complete w r ithin two days of publication. The Tribune 
 employed for the purpose ninety-two compositors and five cor- 
 rectors, and the whole work was completed in twelve hours. 
 The Times had the four Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistle to the 
 Romans telegraphed, and set up the remainder from a copy that 
 was forwarded by rail. The portion telegraphed contains about 
 118,000 words and constitutes the longest despatch ever sent over 
 the wires. A large number of papers followed the example of 
 these in Chicago and sent the New Testament to their readers as 
 a supplement to their regular issues. Besides this extensive 
 newspaper circulation, there were as many as thirty editions 
 
 * Stevens, Bible in The Caxton Exhibition, p. 27. 
 
 t Schaff, Companion to the Greek Testament. N. Y., 1883, p. 403 ff. 
 
14 
 
 issued in America before the close of the year. AVho, in the 
 light of these facts, can doubt the pre-eminence of the Bible 
 among all books. Of no other could such things be possible. 
 
 7. In connection with the printed Bible we may notice 
 another and a unique .form in which the Bible has appeared. 
 Very few books have ever been printed in polyglot form, i. e. 
 in many languages in the same volume; but there are many 
 examples of this in the case of the Bible. The Greek Old Testa- 
 ment and New Testament were neither of them printed until 
 Cardinal Ximines began his great undertaking of issuing the 
 whole Bible in the original languages with the Greek version 
 of the Old Testament and the Vulgate Latin of the whole. This 
 magnificent work was undertaken in order to revive the study of 
 the Scriptures, and was carried out in a most lavish manner. 
 The best scholars that could be obtained were employed at high 
 salaries. The cost of the work was about $150,000, not one- 
 twelfth of which sum could have been received from the sale if 
 every copy had found a purchaser. Only 600 were printed. 
 The Old Testament is given in three languages in parallel 
 columns, the Latin occupying the central place of honor between 
 the Hebrew and the Greek, this arrangement signifying, as the 
 Cardinal states in his Prolegomena, that Christ, i. e., the Roman 
 or Latin Church, was crucified between two robbers, i. e., the 
 Jewish Synagogue, and the schismatical Greek Church. The 
 New Testament is given only in Greek and Latin. The sixth 
 and last volume is filled with lexicons and indices. Begun in 
 1502, the New Testament volume was printed in 1514, the last of 
 the Old Testament in 1517, but the approval of the Pope was not 
 given until 1520, and even then there was some delay, so that 
 the work was not actually put on the market until 1522. The 
 worthy Cardinal did not live to see the consummation of his de- 
 sire, although shortly before his death there was brought to him 
 the last volume as it came from the press. 
 
 The example thus set was followed many times in the next 
 200 years. The Polyglot of Ximines called the Complutensian 
 from its place of publication had already become so rare by the 
 middle of the century that Plantin, the celebrated printer of 
 Antwerp, determined upon a reprint with additions. He secured 
 the recommendation of Cardinal Spinosa, through whom he re- 
 
15 
 
 ceived the aid of Philip II of Spain. Philip not only furnished 
 the means for the publication, but also sent one of the most 
 learned priests of Spain, Arias Montaims, to Antwerp to superin- 
 tend the whole work. The first four volumes contain the Old 
 Testament. Besides the Hebrew text there are also the LXX 
 Greek, the Vulgate Latin, and the Targums in Chaldee or 
 Aramaic. Volume 5 contains the ~New Testament in Greek, 
 Latin, and Syriac. Three more volumes contain dictionaries and 
 grammars of the various languages, sundry indexes, a treatise on 
 Sacred Antiquities, and a complete version of the Bible into 
 Latin by Sanctes Pagninus, which was improved by Montanus. 
 Of this splendid work, issued in 1569-72, only 500 copies were 
 printed, and the greater part of these were lost at sea while being 
 transported to Spain. It is interesting to note that for these two 
 costly editions of the Bible in polyglot form, one of which, the 
 Complutensian, contains the first printed Greek Bible, we are 
 indebted to Spain, to two Cardinals of the Roman Church, and 
 to that cruel tyrant Philip II. 
 
 The Antwerp Polyglot was almost immediately a rare book 
 on account of the loss of so large a portion of the edition. Prop- 
 osition was made to reprint it by another Cardinal (what holy 
 emulation in the sacred college in so noble a cause). This time 
 it was a Frenchman, Cardinal DuPerron. Some work had been 
 done when the Cardinal died, and finally LeJay, attorney of 
 Parliament, undertook to carry it through. Printing began in 
 1628, but the work was not completed until 1645. Parts 1-4 
 contain the Old Testament of the Antwerp Polyglot, i. e., in 
 Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, and Latin; part 5 has the New Testa- 
 ment in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic in two volumes; part 
 6 contains the Samaritan Pentateuch, here printed for the first 
 time, and also the Samaritan, Arabic, and Syriac versions of the 
 same, with a Latin translation of each ; parts Y-9 contain the rest 
 of the Old Testament in Arabic and Syriac. LeJay invested 
 the whole of his property in the production of this truly magnifi- 
 cent work, but its high price and unwieldly size deterred many 
 would-be purchasers, the appearance of the London Polyglot 
 drove it out of the market, and LeJay was utterly ruined and 
 compelled to dispose of the last of the edition as waste" paper. "No 
 one can look at the ten stupendous volumes of this edition without 
 
16 
 
 admiring the audacity that planned so great an undertaking. 
 And he cannot behold the wide margins, the fine press work, and 
 the generally sumptuous air of the book without regretting that 
 so splendid a monument of the press, so noble an edition of the 
 sacred Scriptures, should have brought such disaster to its pro- 
 jector. It was a repetition of the experience of Gutenberg. 
 The enterprise was too vast for the resources of the promoter, and 
 the result too expensive for the purse of the public. 
 
 With a better conception of the possibilities of such work, 
 as well as a keener sense of the value of good scholarship, did 
 Bishop Walton project his Polyglot published in London in 
 1657-61. Less magnificent than those which had preceded, it 
 was far more valuable. Bishop Walton was a Royalist and lost 
 his preferment at the time of the Revolution. During his retire- 
 ment he devoted himself to this work. It was issued under the 
 patronage of Cromwell, who allowed the paper for it to be im- 
 ported free of duty. He is thanked in the preface for his aid; 
 but when Charles II was restored, this acknowledgment was 
 withdrawn and a dedication to the King inserted, so that there 
 are so called Republican and Royal copies. The six folio 
 volumes contain the Bible in nine languages, although no one 
 book appears in so many. A feature of great value is the mass 
 of various readings which occupies a part of the sixth volume. 
 This was a Protestant work, and accordingly soon after its publi- 
 cation it was put on the Index Prohibitorum by Pope Alexander 
 VII. These four editions are called the great polyglots and are 
 a unique monument of printing.* They are by no means the 
 only representatives of this style of printing the Bible. From 
 the Polyglot of Hutter, in 1599, down to the latest issues of the 
 English and German press, there have been many polyglot 
 Bibles, besides the vast number of diglot or bi-lingual editions, 
 with Latin or some modern tongue and another less well known, 
 from the Greek-Latin Psalter of 1481, or the Latin-German New 
 Testament of 1509, to the latest issue of the Bible Society, which 
 prints the New Testament in some African or Indian language 
 together with the English. Xo other book has ever received 
 such treatment, and the Bible in this respect also is seen to be 
 the Book of Books. 
 
 Fine copies of these four rare editions are to be found in the Seminary Library. 
 
17 
 
 III. The pre-eminence of the Bible as a book is shown still 
 further in its wide dissemination, in its extensive translation. 
 
 1. The Bible was written originally in three languages, the 
 Old Testament in Hebrew, with the exception of portions of the 
 books of Ezra and Daniel, which are in Aramaic, and the New 
 Testament in Greek. Before the Christian era the Jews had 
 made a translation of their Scriptures into Greek, which was 
 more widely understood than any other language of antiquity, 
 and also into the Samaritan, which is a form of Aramaic. There 
 were thus three languages that had been blessed with the Revela- 
 tion of God before the coming of Christ. At the beginning of 
 the Christian Church there was not at once need of further 
 translation, for wherever the Apostles went they found Greek- 
 speaking people. This was the universal language of trade, and 
 in the first narrow circle of the Apostolic labors it proved a suffi- 
 cient medium of communication. Moreover, so long as there 
 were personal witnesses of the life, death, and resurrection of 
 Christ, there was not the same necessity for a written word. 
 Only gradually wore the Christian Scriptures collected and 
 circulated with authority. But after the first century the circle 
 of Christian activity widened, and new populations were reached 
 who were not so familiar with Greek. Then the prophecy con- 
 tained in the gift of tongues at Pentecost began to reach its larger 
 fulfilment in the gift to all peoples of the written word in their 
 own languages in which they wore born. 
 
 The beginning of Bible translation had apparently a dog- 
 matic and a liturgical motive. The desire for authoritative 
 statements of the facts of the life of Jesus, and the doctrines of 
 the Christian faith, which led to the original composition of 
 Gospels and Epistles, led also to their translation for the benefit 
 of those who could not understand the original Greek. The 
 -ities of the church service gave an impulse in the same 
 direction. The lessons read in the services, if they were to be 
 understood by the people, must be in the language of the people, 
 and so the Bible was translated for the purpose. The number 
 of manuscript lectionaries in many of the early versions is a proof 
 of this point. Out of this doctrinal and liturgical necessity then 
 arose the first versions of the Bible into the vernacular. 
 
 2. The field of the Church in the first six centuries was the 
 
18 
 
 Roman Empire, and it is interesting to notice how largely the 
 languages of the empire received the Bible during that period. 
 First in order of time, came probably the Syriac, in the second 
 century. This was the language of Palestine and the neighbor- 
 ing regions; and we have knowledge of four and possibly five 
 versions into this tongue before the year 616, besides a version 
 into the Judean dialect of the Syriac, made in the fifth century. 
 Closely following the Syriac came versions into the five dialects 
 of Egypt in the second and third centuries, and many versions 
 into Latin, made in North Africa, in Italy, and in Gaul, at about 
 the same time. These latter were superseded by the Latin 
 version of Jerome in the fourth century, which has since been 
 known as the Vulgate. In this same early period of the Church 
 the Bible, or parts of it, was translated into Gothic, Armenian, 
 Ethiopic, and Georgic. So the circle of the Roman world was 
 completed. As these versions were, in the first instance, made 
 to serve an ecclesiastical purpose, so in turn they became the 
 means of isolating the branches of the Church using them from 
 each other, and from the mother church. They played no small 
 part in the erection of the independent ecclesiastical establish- 
 ments of the East as over against the great Roman Church, which 
 in those centuries was steadily assuming prerogatives of dominion 
 over all divisions of the empire. "Who can consider the fact 
 that every one of the early divisions of the Church had its own 
 vernacular Bible without realizing that the schism which rent 
 them from the main body was nourished by that version in their 
 own tongue, which was to them an independent source of author- 
 ity and prevented their weak yielding to a centralized hierarchy. 
 3. The next period of church history includes the years 
 from 600 to 1400, the so-called Middle Ages. In this period the 
 field of the Church was chiefly the continent of Europe, and her 
 work was the conquest of the tribes of the North and the hordes 
 of barbarians who swept into Europe from the far East. Where 
 the Church went, there went also the Bible. Missionaries of 
 that day, as of this, were forward in translating the Bible for the 
 benefit of their converts, and no less than twenty-two versions 
 of the Scriptures appeared in this period, including practically 
 all the languages of Europe, those which were formed by the 
 dialectic modification of the Latin, like Italian, French, Spanish, 
 
19 
 
 and the transitional Romance, as well as the Teutonic dialects of 
 the north, German, Swedish, Dutch, Anglo-Saxon, English, with 
 the Celtic tongues, Erse and Kyinrish, the Slavonic, and its 
 kindred Bohemian and Polish; while far to the east appeared 
 versions in Persic and Tartar. In not all of these languages was 
 the whole Bible translated; in some only a small part, but still 
 it is true that before the Reformation, and before the invention 
 of printing, the peoples of Europe and Western Asia and North- 
 ern Africa were supplied with the Scriptures in their own 
 languages. We may say what we will about the ignorance of 
 the masses in the Middle Ages, and the practice of the Roman 
 Church in keeping the Bible from the laity, which charges are 
 not without truth, and yet these monuments of Bible translation 
 are evidence of a spirit that was true, and a life that was vigorous, 
 and a method that was right. Where the gospel messenger went 
 there he carried the Word of God as a torch, and it lightened 
 many a dark corner of the world. 
 
 4. In the Reformation period, from 1400 to 1600, there 
 were versions prepared in twelve different languages and dia- 
 lects, all located in Europe, making more complete the work of 
 the preceding centuries. 
 
 5. In the next period, one of dogmatic controversy and of 
 spiritual coldness and inactivity, from 1600 to 1800, there are 
 noticed seventeen new dialects blessed with versions, ten of them 
 in Europe; and we find also the first fruits of the new missionary 
 activity in John Eliot's Bible in the Algonquin Indian tongue, 
 which has been said to be the " first case in history of the trans- 
 lation and printing of the entire Bible in a new language as a 
 means of evangelization."* With this belong Ziegenbalg's 
 Tamil version (1714), and versions of Dutch missionaries in For- 
 mosan (1661), and Malay (1610?), and Sinhali (1739). 
 
 6. The present century, however, will always be known as 
 the great Bible translating century, as it is the great missionary 
 century of the Christian Church. Indeed, the two movements, 
 have sprung from the same motives, and have gone hand in hancU 
 Almost the first work of the modern missionary when he goes; 
 among a new people, so soon as he has learned the language, is to 
 
 * Dr. E. W. Oilman in Report of the Centenary Conference on Missions, 1888. Vol. II, 28T. 
 
20 
 
 begin translating the Bible. His first attempts are likely to be 
 very crude, owing to imperfect knowledge of the language, but 
 as greater facility is gained in the native speech, and particularly 
 as some native converts are trained in the work of assistance, 
 revisions are made and after a time a standard version is finished. 
 Often the first publication is of a single Gospel or Epistle in order 
 to test the efficiency of the version. So, in the Hawaiian, the 
 Gospel of Luke was published in 1827, while the New Testament 
 was not ready until 1836, and the whole Bible not until 1839. 
 
 Since the year 1800, versions of the whole or a part of the 
 Bible have been made in 385 languages and dialects, and with 
 every year the number is increased. Doubtless on many a mis- 
 sionary's table there lie to-day tentative experiments in Bible 
 translation, which in a few years will be published in London 
 or New York and then be carried back to bless the native races 
 for which they have been prepared. Let one stand before the 
 large case in the Museum of this Seminary and look at the 240 
 versions there displayed, and he must gain a new sense of the 
 amount of learning and consecrated labor that has gone into this 
 work of translation. In many cases the missionary finds a lan- 
 guage without a literature or even without writing. It is neces- 
 sary, frequently, to re-create the language by the infusion of 
 new words, to reduce the spoken words to writing, and even to 
 invent an alphabet in which they may be written, as Ulfilas did 
 for the Goths, and the native Guess for the Cherokee tribe of 
 Indians. As one looks at that case of specimens let him remem- 
 ber that what are there shown represent only one-half of the 
 large number that have been made by the messengers of Christ 
 in all the centuries. The work of the present century appears 
 the more noteworthy when we recall the fact that up to the 
 year 1800 there were only sixty-six languages and dialects in 
 which, so far as we know, any portion of the Scriptures had been 
 translated, while during this century the number has swelled to 
 451. This, let it be noted, is the number of distinct lan- 
 guages or mutually unintelligible dialects into which some por- 
 tion of the Bible has been translated. No account is made of 
 the different versions or revisions in a single language, nor even 
 of the publication of the same version in many different forms; 
 
U IN J. V 
 
 21 
 
 as for example, the Armenian is printed not only in the Arme- 
 nian, but also in the Arabic and the Greek characters. So the 
 German and Spanish versions are printed in Hebrew letters for 
 the benefit of German and Spanish Jews who know the vernacu- 
 lar language, but have learned to read only the Hebrew alphabet. 
 Many languages having characters of their own, like the Chinese 
 and Japanese, are being printed also in the Roman alphabet. 
 These varied forms, interesting as they are, do not make distinct 
 languages and are not considered in our enumeration. 
 
 Of course, in a majority of these languages only a portion, 
 often only a small portion, of the Bible has been translated, and 
 there are still a large number of languages untouched, so that 
 there yet remains work enough for the brain and hand of the 
 twentieth century. It is estimated that the total number of 
 languages and dialects spoken by the more than 1,400 millions of 
 the population of the globe is at least 2,000. In comparison with 
 this, 451 seems a very small number, but we must remem- 
 ber that these 451 languages represent 1,200 millions of 
 people, while the remaining 1,500 languages are spoken by only 
 200 millions. Moreover, many of these tongues are fast disap- 
 pearing; the great conquering languages will more and more 
 dominate the world, and in the meanwhile the goal is being ever 
 more nearly approached of giving the entire Scriptures of the 
 Old and New Testaments to every race under the whole expanse 
 of heaven in its own language. 
 
 7. This practice is in striking contrast to the great non- 
 Christian religions, whose sacred books are not translated. The 
 Koran is read in Arabic even where that language is not under- 
 stood. Christian scholars are responsible for its translation into 
 many tongues, and the same is true of the Vedas and the Avesta. 
 The Buddhist Scriptures have been imported into Japan and 
 copied there for centuries, but no Japanese version has been 
 made. 
 
 This immense mass of Bible translation is furthermore almost 
 exclusively the work of the Protestant churches. The Roman 
 Church in clinging to the Latin Vulgate in a dead language is 
 but imitating the heathen example. To be sure, most of the 
 versions before 1600 .were made under the auspices of the Roman 
 
22 
 
 Church. And since that time there have been many versions 
 into the vernacular made by those in fellowship with that body. 
 But in nearly every case these recent versions have been in lan- 
 guages already supplied with Protestant versions, and they were 
 made in order to offset and destroy the influence those were 
 exerting on the people. Her theory that the Church is the sole 
 custodian and interpreter of the truth has led the Roman Catholic 
 Church to insist upon her own versions and her own editions. 
 ISTo version is to be used unless it conforms to the Vulgate, and 
 all editions of the Vulgate must agree with that of Clement VIII 
 printed at Rome in 1592. 
 
 This Protestant policy of giving the Bible at once to new 
 peoples, and using the Scriptures as an instrument in evangelism 
 is amply justified by the history of missions. We cite an illus- 
 tration or two.* In the Congo region of Africa the Portuguese 
 had control for 200 years after 1500. Under their protection 
 the Romish priests evangelized the country. Thousands upon 
 thousands were baptized; masses and penances, crucifixes and 
 confessionals, were abundant; but there was no version of the 
 New Testament and no attempt to instruct the people in the 
 word. When the Portuguese power fell and the priests were 
 compelled to withdraw, the whole people lapsed at once, and soon 
 not a trace of Christianity remained. 
 
 A similar thing happened in Japan. The once flourishing 
 church subjected to persecution, after a brave resistance, suc- 
 cumbed; it had no vernacular Bible to feed its life. 
 
 Contrast with these the case of Madagascar. In 1834 the 
 first converts were baptized after eleven years of effort; in two 
 years the missionaries were forced to leave, but they left behind 
 5,000 copies of the Bible in the native tongue. In spite of the 
 fiercest persecution of the heathen government, in spite of the 
 severest penalties visited upon those who read the Bible, in spite 
 of the martyrdom of thousands in the next twenty-five years, that 
 church, nourished by the living stream of God's word, remained 
 steadfast and even increased in membership from 200 to 1,000. 
 History speaks with no uncertain voice on this subject. !N"o 
 mission work is effective and permanent that does not give the 
 
 * Cf. Dr. B. W. Oilman, in Report of the Centenary Conference on Missions, London, 1888. 
 Vol. II, 288. 
 
23 
 
 Bible to the people. The failure of the Roman Catholic mis- 
 sions in China, in Japan, in India, and in Xorth America is evi- 
 dence of this. Their missionaries were as devoted and as 
 persistent and as learned as those of Protestant Churches, but 
 their work has disappeared from the sight of men. 
 
 Xot only has the Bible thus proved a most valuable ally to 
 the missionary; it has often become a missionary itself, and many 
 a congregation has been gathered and instructed in the truth 
 through the medium of a copy of the Scriptures. A copy of the 
 Bible bought by a native and carried back to his country home is 
 the means of the conversion of a whole village in Brazil. A copy 
 found in a cast-off garment leads numbers in a Chinese village 
 into the truth. Similar stories might be told of every quarter of 
 the globe. The Word of God is its own witness, and in its 
 printed form becomes a messenger of the gospel. 
 
 8. So vast has this work of issuing the Bible become, so 
 important is it felt to be as a means of evangelization, that large 
 societies have been formed which devote themselves to this one 
 thing, the printing and circulation of the Word. Missionary so- 
 cieties often add this to other phases of their work, but during 
 the last century the Bible societies have been the chief agencies 
 in this enterprise. Always co-operating with the missionary 
 societies, they have also supplemented their work, and their col- 
 porters have gone into many regions yet unreached by distinc- 
 tively missionary labor. Since 1 804, when the British and For- 
 eign Bible Society was organized, the first in time as it has always 
 been the greatest in achievement of all such agencies, there have 
 been no less than eighty Bible societies formed, besides number- 
 less auxiliaries of these. Our own American Bible Society, 
 organized in 1816, is second in size and importance and efficiency. 
 It is encouraging to notice that with very few exceptions these are 
 all undenominational agencies. Although Christian people 
 have not yet been able to unite for the purpose of preaching the 
 gospel to the heathen, for the most part they have been able to 
 work together in the printing and circulation of translations of 
 the Scriptures. In this, again, the Bible is raised aloft above 
 every other book. Of no other can it be said that large, perma- 
 nent publishing houses have been established for the express 
 
24 
 
 
 
 purpose of issuing them. And few, if any, publishing houses of 
 any sort equal in amount of business the nearly four million 
 copies issued annually by the British and Foreign Bible Society. 
 
 IY. There are many other features connected with the 
 printing and circulation of the Bible which it would be interest- 
 ing to dwell upon if there were time. 
 
 1. We should like to describe the people's Bibles of the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At that period of history 
 there were few of the common people who could read or write, 
 and even many of the priests could not read their Bibles. So, 
 for the benefit of the poor preaching friars, as a means of helping 
 them to expound the Gospel message, and also to teach the people 
 the Bible truth through the eye as well as the ear, there were 
 issued a large variety of books dealing with the Bible story in one 
 form or another. Usually the life of Christ was taken for a 
 basis. One page would contain a picture of some scene in his 
 life with a few words of explanation. The opposite page would 
 contain some illustration of that scene, or typical representation of 
 it, drawn from some other part of Scripture. For example, the 
 death and resurrection of Jesus were illustrated from the story of 
 Jonah. These books were called block-books, because each page 
 was printed from a single engraved block of wood. There were 
 more than a score of such printed in numberless editions in the 
 fifty years before the invention of typography. So popular were 
 they that editions with type-set descriptions continued to appear 
 even to the close of the fifteenth century. The predominantly 
 religious character of these and other early books is an indication 
 of the fact that learning was chiefly confined to ecclesiastics, and 
 that the knight and the serf equally found their pleasure in other 
 than literary ways. 
 
 2. The student of the early versions into European lan- 
 guages is struck by the fact that in many instances the earliest 
 form of the vernacular Bible was poetical. "We must remember 
 that these nations were at this time Christian. The people were 
 familiar with the truth of the Bible; but in their own language 
 they had none of its words. The first attempt to give the Bible 
 to the people in their own tongue often took the form of metrical 
 versions of the narrative portions, such as Genesis and the histor- 
 
25 
 
 ical books of the Old Testament, and especially the Gospels. Of 
 this character is the rhymed Harmony of the Gospels in Low 
 Saxon known as Otfried's Christ. Such is the Heliand, a heroic 
 poem with a Gospel basis, in the same language, and both be- 
 longing probably to the ninth century. Such is the Ormulum in 
 our own English, and the earlier paraphrases of Caedmon in 
 Anglo-Saxon. 
 
 Illustrating another form of adaptation of the same sort is the 
 Historia Scholastica of Petrus Comestor. Written in the year 
 1170, this work was translated into many of the European lan- 
 guages, and was printed over and over again in the early days of 
 the art. It consists of a somewhat free use of the Vulgate, inter- 
 spersed with annotations from profane history and with scholastic 
 explanations. The French version of this, made by Guyard des 
 Moulins in 1294, followed the Vulgate text more closely and 
 more completely, and with some additions appeared in 1477 as 
 the first printed Erench Bible. Of similar character was the 
 Aurea Biblia of Rampigollis, which was exceedingly popular in 
 the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Golden Legend of 
 Jacobus a Voraginc may also be iiicntioiuMl here, for, while it 
 contains many stories of the saints, and much apocryphal material 
 regarding Jesus, it yet does gives the Gospel story. 
 
 3. It is one of the anomalies of history that the organized 
 body of Christ which would seem to be most interested in the 
 circulation of the Bible has been most active in its suppression. 
 To be sure, the censorship of the press was no new idea. From 
 the beginning of the making of books there has been the exercise 
 of the right to forbid and to permit certain books. State and 
 Church, heathen emperor, Mohammedan caliph, and Christian 
 bishop alike have destroyed works they considered harmful either 
 to the truth or to their own dominion. When books were 
 printed it needed but an extension of this principle, vicious 
 though it was, in order to bring forth the condemnation of coun- 
 cil and Pope, Parliament and King, the burning of forbidden edi- 
 tions, the rule of censorship and the Index Prohibitorum. It is 
 noticeable that the issuance of decrees against books really began 
 with the printing of them. Perhaps before that, in the manu- 
 script period, it was easier to control the matter. Books were few, 
 
 ^ or 
 
the copying of them was laborious, and the number of copies was 
 limited. But when the printing press began to pour out its 
 thousands of volumes some more vigorous measure was needed. 
 Besides, so long as the dominion of the Roman Church was not 
 in danger, she had less fear of heretical books; but when the 
 revival of learning and the Lutheran Reformation threatened to 
 overthrow that dominion she at once used decisive means to 
 suppress all hostile publications. What is surprising and will 
 always remain incapable of defense is the fact that in suppressing 
 'heresy she thought it necessary to suppress the Bible. Berthold, 
 Archbishop of Mainz, the very birthplace of the printer's art, 
 was the first to undertake the restriction of the press. On Jan- 
 uary 10, 1486, he prohibited the translation of books from Latin, 
 Greek, or other languages, into the vulgar tongue, or their sale 
 when translated, except upon the approval of certain doctors and 
 masters of the University of Erfurt. This edict, although 
 couched in general terms, was really aimed at the German Bible, 
 of which several editions had already appeared. In 1559 the 
 first official list of prohibited books was issued by Pope Paul IV. 
 In this, all Bibles in modern languages were forbidden, and 
 forty-eight editions were particularly specified, while the general 
 clause, * and all similar editions," was intended to cut off all 
 vernacular versions from the faithful. 
 
 From this first Index down to the present time there has been 
 no material change in the policy of the Roman Church in regard 
 to this matter, except where, as in this country, the prevalence 
 of Protestant sentiment has forced a modification. The Holy 
 Office of the Inquisition has repeatedly laid its withering hand 
 upon the Bible. Its last work in Italy in the present century 
 was to prevent if possible the circulation of the Italian version. 
 In Spain it has been impossible, it is even now not wholly safe in 
 all parts, to attempt to distribute a vernacular Bible, while in 
 South America the agents of the Bible societies have repeatedly 
 met with abuse and persecution at the hands of the priests. It 
 would be most interesting to trace the development of the con- 
 demnation of the Bible, and to show how the Protestant schism, 
 springing as it did from a study of the Word, and supported as 
 it has always been by an appeal to the Word, has forced the 
 
27 
 
 Roman Church into an attitude of opposition to the free circula- 
 tion of the Scriptures. 
 
 We cannot forget in the history of our own English Bible 
 the names of John Wicliff, opposed, threatened, tried again and 
 again, and only preserved by the strong friendship of John of 
 Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and of William Tyndale, an exile, a 
 hunted fugitive, printing in secret, hurrying presses and printed 
 sheets from city to city in order to escape the vigilance of his 
 enemies, and at last suffering martyrdom because of his un- 
 quenchable desire to give the gospel to his nation in their own 
 tongue. Nor can we forget the picture of Bishop Tonstall of 
 London buying up the copies of Tyndale's Testament in order to 
 burn them publicly, nor the interruption of the printing of the 
 Great Bible in Paris by the intrigue of the Inquisition in spite of 
 the royal permission. The attitude of the Roman Church is 
 perhaps well set forth in the words of Henry Knighton, the 
 Canon of Leicester, and a bitter enemy of Wicliff. " The Gospel 
 which Christ committed to the clergy and doctors of the Church, 
 that they might sweetly dispense it to the laity and weaker per- 
 sons, according to the exigency of the times and the wants of the 
 people, hungering after it in their mind, this John Wicliff has 
 translated out of Latin into the Anglican, not angelic language; 
 whence through him it has been published and disclosed more 
 openly to laymen and women able to read than it used to be to the 
 most learned and intelligent of the clergy. And so the gospel 
 pearl is cast abroad and trodden underfoot of swine; and what 
 was dear to clergy and laity is now rendered, as it were, the com- 
 mon jest of both; so that the gem of the Church becomes the 
 derision of laymen, and that is now theirs forever, which before 
 was the special property of the clergy and doctors."* 
 
 Inspired, as we believe, by a true desire to promote the 
 truth, yet led into strangely mistaken measures, the Roman 
 Church has consistently, from the beginning, opposed giving the 
 Bible to the people in the vernacular. ~Not content with with- 
 holding the wine of the sacrament, she has withheld also the 
 refreshing water of the revealed Word. The Bible in the 
 Roman Church has been a book permitted, not enjoined, 'a treas- 
 ure to be guarded, not a spiritual food to be dispensed. 
 
 * Quoted in the English Hexapla, p. 8. 
 
28 
 
 We cannot pause to speak of the vast literature in opposition 
 and defense, in explanation and criticism, to which the Bible has 
 given rise, nor of the prodigious expenditure of toil in its 
 study. These and other interesting phases of our subject we 
 must pass without further detail. 
 
 As we look back now over the path we have come, are we not 
 more firmly assured than ever that this Bible which lies at the 
 foundation of our faith, which is " the only perfect rule of faith 
 and practice " is, even in those external features which are sub- 
 ordinate, shown to be the Book of Books? In the abundance 
 and variety and beauty of its manuscripts, in the priority and 
 multiplicity of its printed editions, in the unique forms in which 
 it has been set forth and the thrilling incidents of which it has 
 been the occasion, in the multitude of its versions into strange 
 tongues and in the extent of its distribution over all the earth, 
 in the number and range of books to which it has given rise, in 
 the intensity of the opposition to it and the unquenchable zeal 
 with which its promoters have been inspired, in the missionary 
 activities it has supported and the spiritual results flowing from 
 its bare circulation, in all these respects it is seen to be pre- 
 eminent as a book. 
 
 We have dwelt only on that which is superficial in regard to 
 this book. It is because there is something more than the super- 
 ficial in it that these facts acquire any significance or interest. 
 When the Eternal Word tabernacled in the flesh every utterance 
 and every deed, every look and gesture assumed a beauty and 
 glory derived from the divine personality from which they 
 flowed. And so when the divine revelation was made to appear 
 in a human form, clothed in the language of men, and borne from 
 land to land in the guise of human books, then every fact re- 
 lating to that appearance and every item of the historical trans- 
 mission of that word from age to age and from nation to nation 
 becomes of value and worthy of the attention of those who love 
 the Word for what it is and because they hear through the human 
 language the very voice of God. 
 
 We in this Seminary taking our stand on the Word seek to 
 comprehend it more fully, and to interpret it more accurately. 
 We learn to distinguish the external and human from the in- 
 
29 
 
 ternal and divine, but both we seek to know more thoroughly, 
 that the purposes of God through His Word may be the more per- 
 fectly made known to men. 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 Due two weeks after date. 
 
 30w-7,'12