Testament Company through those of the New; and in this way greater harmony and consistency will be secured than was possible under the other system.

The revision has been wisely carried on without publicity, and the actual results of their labors are not yet made known. Any public statements, therefore, of particular changes are wholly unauthorized and premature. The Committees, by publishing parts of their work before a final revision, would become entangled in controversy and embarrassed in their progress.

When the revision is thoroughly matured, it will be given to the public, as the joint work of both Committecs, by the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge, which publish the best and cheapest editions of the Bible in England, and will insure the utmost accuracy in typography. When adopted by the Churches and Bible Societies of the two countries, the revised English Bible will become public property, like King James's version.

VI. EXPENSES.-The labor of the Revisers in both countries is given without compensation. The necessary expenses for travelling, printing, etc., of the British Committee, are paid by the University Presses; those of the American Committee, by voluntary contributions of liberal friends, under the direction of an auxiliary Committee of Finance.

VII. PROGRESS AND PROBABLE RESULT.-It was calculated at the beginning of the work that the revision could be completed in ten years of uninterrupted labor." It may take about two years more. At this time (December, 1878) the two New Testament Companies have finished the first and a part of the second revision

(the English Company being several months ahead of the American); the Old Testament Companies have done more than half, perhaps two-thirds, of their work. It is probable that the revised New Testament, at least, possibly also parts of the Old Testament, will be published in 1880, just five hundred years after John Wycliffe finished the first complete version of the Holy Scriptures in the English language.

After they have finished their labors the two Committees will disband. It will then be for the Churches and Bible Societies to take up the Revision, and to decide whether it shall take the place of King James's Version, or at least be used alongside with it, in public worship. It is not expected, of course, that the old version, which is so deeply imbedded in our religious literature, will ever go entirely out of use, certainly not for a long time to come.

The Revision will, no doubt, be opposed, like every. thing new, and will have to pass through a severe ordeal of criticism. Many will condemn it as too radical, others as too conservative, but it will be found ultimately to occupy the sound medium between the two opposite extremes. The Churches will have either to adopt this Anglo-American Bible, or to dismiss an œcumenical revision for an indefinite number of years.. In the one case we shall retain the bond of inter-denominational and inter-national union in a common Bible; in the other, the irrepressible task of correcting King James's Version will be carried on more zealously than ever by unauthorized individuals, and by sectarian enterprise, which will increase the difficulty by multiplying confusion and division.

But we never had the least fear of the final result. There never has been such a truly providential combi

nation of favorable circumstances, and of able and sound Biblical scholars from all the evangelical Churches of the two great nations speaking the English language, for such a holy work of our common Christianity, as is presented in the Anglo-American Bible Revision Committees. This providential juncture, the remarkable harmony of the Revisers in the prosecution of their work, and the growing desire of the Churches for a timely improvement and rejuvenation of our venerable English Version, justify the expectation of a speedy and general adoption of the new Revision in Great Britain and America.

THE OLDER ENGLISH AND THE AUTHORIZED

VERSIONS.'

BY CHARLES P. KRAUTH, S.T.D., LL.D.,

Vice-Provost of the University of Pennsylvania.

I. CHRISTIANITY ENTERED BRITAIN in the second century, prevailed in the third, waned with the passing away of the Roman power, went down before the march of the Pagan invaders, rose again in the sixth century, and was again triumphant before the close of the seventh. Saxon paraphrases and versions of the Psalter, of the Gospels, and of other parts of Holy Scripture; were early made from the Latin. The Danish inroads checked the work of Saxon translation, and the Norman Conquest rendered it useless.

II. WYCLIFFE AND THE REFORMATION.-In the fourteenth century arose Wycliffe (1324-1384). Called to the work of Reformation in faith and life, he saw, with the divine instincts of his mission, that nothing but the I true rule of faith and life could remove the evil and restore the good, and that the restoration would be permanent only in the degree to which every estate of the Church should be enabled, by possession of the rule, to apply and guard its teachings. He appealed to the Word, and to sustain his appeal translated the Word. He appealed to the people, and put into their hands the book divinely given to shape their convictions. The translation of the Scriptures as a whole into English first came from his hands or under his supervision. It was finished in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. It was made from the Vulgate. Even had Wycliffe been a Greek and Hebrew scholar, it is doubt

ful whether he could have secured texts of the sacred originals from which to translate. That he translated the version universally received in the Western Church, quoted by her fathers, read, and sung, and preached from, in her services, and that he rendered it with a severe closeness approaching servility, would help to remove prejudice, and to avert or soften the suspicion that he was adapting Scripture to his own ends, against the Roman hierarchy. Like Luther, Wycliffe drew to him co-workers in his translation; like Luther he suffered from plagiarists of his work; like Luther he saw his work eagerly circulated, bitterly opposed, and triumphant over opposition; like Luther he escaped the stake, with which he was threatened; like Luther his enemies sought to wreak upon his bones the malice which survived his death, but there was no Charles the Fifth to respond, "I war with the living, not with the dead." The Council of Constance ordered the dishonoring of Wycliffe's remains; Pope Martin the Fifth, in the cold blood of a delay of thirteen years, commanded the execution of the order; the Bishop of Lincoln, an apostate adherent of Wycliffe, obeyed it. The * bones were burned, and winds and waves swept them into an "emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over." Wycliffe was the dayspring of the coming noontide of divine light.

III. PAPER AND PRINTING.-Two material aids were maturing, to bear part in the grand revolution which was approaching. Paper made from rags began in the thirteenth century to take the place of parchment; printing from movable type, in the fifteenth, began the unequal contest with the pen. Paper and printing were to be in the struggle of thought what powder and fire