t had been like a tiny stream flowing through a dry
land, and reaching only a few people. Now it had become as a river of
truth, ever growing deeper and wider, guided by God in all its
wanderings across the earth.

The Bible was now no longer locked up in a language which was already
half-forgotten. With this Greek translation its world-wide work had
begun!

But while the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures was becoming
an open door through which the people of many lands could draw nearer
to God, a second witness to the truth of God's Book was hidden away in
Samaria.

For the Samaritans had their own copies of the Books of the Law, and
kept them closely shut up among their own people for hundreds of years.

It is impossible now to give the actual date when the Samaritans began
to use a different copy of the Scriptures from the Jews. The
Israelitish city of Samaria was captured by Sargon, king of Assyria, in
722 B.C.; but although he carried away the most important inhabitants
captive, a great number of the poorer people remained on the land, and
when Sargon filled the country with new and heathen settlers, so many
marriages took place between the two races that the Children of Israel
lost their old name and were known to the Jews of Judah as 'Samaritans.'

Yet the Samaritans still clung to the Jews' religion, and the
separation did not probably become complete until Nehemiah expelled all
those Jews from Jerusalem who had married heathen wives. (Nehemiah
xiii. 23-30.)

Now Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that among these exiles
was a man named Manasseh, a grandson of the high priest, and that,
indignant at being cast out, he fled to Samaria. Here he determined to
set up a separate worship of Jehovah, and, having obtained permission
from the king of Persia to erect a Temple, he built a Holy Place on
Mount Gerizim, which became the centre of a new form of religion.

It is thought that Manasseh had carried away a copy of the Books of the
Law from Jerusalem, and by means of certain alterations in the words he
made it appear that God had chosen Mount Gerizim in Samaria for the
site of His House, instead of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem.

Now at this time all the Jews still wrote in the ancient style, forming
their letters as we see them on the Moabite Stone; but not long
afterwards they adopted the square letters of Hebrew writing such as
are still in use to-day.

The Samaritans, however, in their