at
extreme kind. It was the version of _William Tyndale_, which was
printed at Worms in Germany, in 1525. In 1534 the Convocation or
Church Parliament of England made a petition to King Henry VIII. to
allow a better version to be made. The work of translation was
interrupted by an order to have an English Bible in every church. As
the Church version was not completed, a version made in 1535 by _Miles
Coverdale_ had to be used instead. Two other versions, also somewhat
inferior, appeared in 1537 and 1539, and then a slightly improved
version called the _Great Bible_ appeared in April, 1539. It is {7}
also called Cranmer's Bible, because Archbishop Cranmer wrote a preface
to the second edition. Three other important versions were published
before the end of the 16th century. The Calvinists, who were the
predecessors of the modern Presbyterians, published a New Testament at
Geneva in 1557, followed by the whole Bible in 1560. The English
bishops published what is called the _Bishops' Bible_ in 1568, and the
Roman Catholics published an English New Testament at Rheims in France,
in 1582. We cannot fail to be impressed by the eager desire felt at
that time by the people of Great Britain, of all religious parties, to
study the Holy Scriptures, a desire to which these various translations
bear witness.

All previous English versions were thrown into the shade by the
brilliant _Authorised Version_, which was commenced in 1604 and
published in 1611. Its beauty and accuracy are so great that even the
Presbyterians, both in England and Scotland, gradually gave up the use
of their Genevan Bible in favour of this translation. But since 1611
hundreds of manuscripts have been discovered and examined. "Textual
criticism," by which an endeavour is made to discover the precise words
written by the writers of the New Testament, where discrepancies exist
in the manuscripts, has become a science. Many results of this
criticism have been embodied in the _Revised Version_, published in
1881. The English of the _Revised Version_ is not so musical as that
of the _Authorised Version_, and it seems probable that a deeper
knowledge of the ancient versions will before long enable us to advance
even beyond the verbal accuracy attained in 1881. But at the same time
we know that both our modern English versions give us a noble and
trustworthy interpretation of the Greek. And criticism has made it
certain that the earliest Greek manus