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T HE K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
After this come many translations. There is almost a mania for translating the Word of God into* the language of the people. We have the Miles Cover- dale Bible, 1535; the Geneva Bible, 1560; the Bishop’s Bible, 1568; and even the versions translated by individ uals at their own expense. In 1604, King James I. decides to have a translation and issue it without comment. The best scholars of the land were selected and the best Eng lish Bible ever published was the result. It is interesting to note that Martin Luther was born in Germany just a year after Tyndale, and by the providence of God he was shut up in the Castle of Wartburg, where he had time and leisure to translate the New Testament into the German tongue. All down the ages the Bible is still by the ark of God, protected by His providential care, and its preservation against the opposi tion of paganism, ecclesiasticism and in fidelity is one of the miracles of the ages. CRITICS OR CHRIST? Rev. G. Ensor has put the matter well. “Which must I believe?” he asks— “ critic or Christ? Christ was a He brew scholar. As a man he would have nothing t o ' learn from any Hebrew chair of this or other lands. He was an Aramaic scholar. He lived two thou sand years nearer to the prophets than the critics today. Christ as a critic was sinless. No critic of this or any Chris tian age has had the opportunity to per sonally converse with Moses. But Christ spoke to him on the Transfigura tion Mount. If I knew on indisputable testimony of any teacher who had seen and spoken with Moses, living or dead, I should attach enormous value to his opinion of Moses and his words—more, I think, than to the dictum of any He brew chair.
“ I take it that it cannot be said of or by any critic that he himself was the subject-matter of, or even referred to, by any prophetic writer. Of no living or dead critic can it be said that he in spired any portion of the Prophets. But this is affirmed emphatically of Christ. Of no modern critic, sound or unsound, will it be affirmed that the Holy Spirit, the author of the Old Testament, has descended in bodily form upon him. No critic has arisen and come to us again to stand by the same words he taught respecting Holy Writ. Christ did. These consideration« absolutely out weigh an infinite mass of hypothesis, of possibility, probability, plausibility, or affirmation against the truth of Holy Writ. I find that Christ, after his resur rection, with tenderest reproach re proved as fools His disciples for not be lieving everything that Moses said. I find that some modern critics stigmiatize in harshest" terms the credulity of those who believe anything that Moses has said in disagreement to their dicta. For all this I find I hold with Christ against the critic.” jfe jH SECOND HAND BIBLE STUDY We are deeply convinced that much of the doubtful teaching and unstable profession of the present day is conse quent upon a superficial, and, in many cases a second-hand, acquaintance with the Word of God; and this, again, is often to be traced to an unsuspected indolence which has crept .in upon the heart and mind at the very time when outward activities were largely on the increase. It is easier to receive a doc trine than to examine it, to accept an induction than to inquire into the steps by which it has been reached; and the carelessness and inaccuracy resulting from undue'haste or idle credulity are banefully telling on much of our Chris tian life and work.:—Pennefather.
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