E have now traced the Bible to its source. Step by step we have gone backward until we have reached the fountain from which came the water of life. Henceforth we shall always understand how to answer the question, "Where did the Bible come from?" We are now assured that the New Testament we have was possessed by the churches in the closing years of the first century. The Gospels which are in our hands to-day were in the hands of the Christian churches before the last of the Apostles had passed away. The Epistles which we possess as a sacred heritage and treasury of the highest Christian knowledge were in the hands of the bishops and officers of the churches eighteen hundred years ago.

      The same words of hope, and love, and light which inspire and quicken us, came with all their force and [80] power to the Apostolic Fathers. The story of our Lord's life and death, resurrection and ascension to heaven, which our Gospels unfold, is the same story which the Apostles related in the hearing of the men who put our Lord to death. It is the same story which two of the disciples and two of their friends and companions wrote in the four-fold picture of our Redeemer which the Gospels contain. All this should deepen our love for the New Testament.

      And we are equally confident regarding the Old Testament. It is the sacred Scriptures of the Jewish nation and all converted to their faith and was possessed by our Lord and His Apostles. It is helpful to feel that when we teach our children the stories of the Patriarch, the sweet music of the Psalms, and the eloquent words of the Prophets, we are teaching them what Jewish parents taught their children in the time of our Lord. Nay, our Lord Himself was taught these same things when He was a child; and we see how the Scriptures entered into His very life.

      We have now another question to deal with, rather different from the one we have answered. The Old Testament was originally written in the Hebrew language, and the New Testament in the Greek language. To us these are strange and foreign tongues. They are languages which the masses of our people do not [81] know. But we have the Bible in English. When and how was it put into the English language?

      This is a most interesting question, and I will answer it as well as I can. In answering the question where the Bible came from, I have gone backward step by step. But in answering the question of the translation of the ancient Scriptures into the English language, I shall adopt a different method. I shall go back to the earliest information I can get, and then work forward step by step to our own times. A short history of our English Bible should not be without interest for us.

      St. John in his Gospel tells us that Pilate placed on the cross of Jesus the words, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews"; and Luke says the same--and that the words were in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. These three are the languages which have had much to do with the sacred Scriptures. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek; and by the middle of the second century both Old and New Testaments were translated into Latin. It was in Latin that we had the Scriptures at first; and, so far as we know, for many centuries English-speaking people had to get the story of the redemption from this language,

      I do not think any one can tell when the English [82] speaking people first had the Scriptures in their own tongue. It is quite certain that at a very early period the Latin Bible, known as the Latin Vulgate, was the Bible of the clergy and that used in public worship. It may have been that some portions of the Scriptures were translated into the common language of the people at a very early date; but it is doubtful if many were able to read them. Our English version is the growth of ages, and cannot be ascribed to any one man. The Old and the New Testaments in the original languages were the work of many men. God used a multitude of agencies, and sent us His revelations through a number of human channels. In like manner, the production of the English Bible in its latest form, the Revised Version, has been secured by many men, working in different ways, each doing his share--God guiding the whole, until we have now what many hold to be the best English Bible the world has ever seen.

      I cannot go through the history of all the translations; but will mention a few. I propose, first, to refer briefly to some of the early workers at our Bible; then to describe the work of Wycliffe, and of Tyndale, and a few others.

      If we should go to Bethlehem, and visit the church built over the spot where our Savior is said to have been born, the guide will take us to the Chapel and [83] Tomb of St. Jerome. About 383, A. D., Jerome, who was one of the most scholarly men of his times,

LATIN GOSPELS. (St. Matt. xii. 42-45)--Sixth century. The Four Gospels, in Latin, of the version of Saint Jerome, written in uncial letters in the sixth century.

went to Rome. The Bishop of Rome at that time was named Damasus, and he it once asked Jerome, [84] who had become his secretary, to undertake he task of correcting and improving the Latin Bible then used in the Western churches. He consented; and in 385, A. D., he completed the revision of the New Testament. After the death of Damasus, which occurred in the same year, Jerome retired to Bethlehem where he founded a monastery, and where be lived for thirty years engaged in useful works, pious devotions and learned studies. It was here in the sixtieth year of his age that he began a new translation into Latin of the Old Testament from the Hebrew, a task which not many men in his time were competent to perform. He died at Bethlehem in September, 420, A. D.

      His work was known as the Vulgate, and was the only Bible which the English possessed for some centuries. For more than a thousand years it was the Bible from which every version in English was made. It is the Bible followed by the Roman Catholics in all their translation work. What is called the Douay Bible, with the Rhenish New Testament, was made from the Vulgate. [85]

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