IN opening this chapter I wish to make a statement which may seem startling, but which I hope in the following pages to substantiate as sober truth. The statement is this: the English Bible in the standard versions is a finer and nobler literature than the Scriptures in their original tongues. Some Hebrew scholars may dissent from this affirmation. Others may declare that no translation of a masterpiece can equal the original. This last objection we may answer by calling attention to the fact that the Bible suffers least from translation of any of the works of human genius. Dealing as it does with the elemental emotions and common needs of men, its peculiar power is little affected by passing from one mobile language to another. A bit of literature whose charm is in its form, like most of the poetry of Poe, cannot carry its special value into another tongue. But the great books, whose power lies in their disclosure of

fundamental truths and passions, find in every developed language appropriate words for the same experiences. Especially is this true of the English translation of the Bible. Tyndale declared that ' the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin. The manner of speaking is both one, so that in a thousand places thou needest not but to translate it into the English word for word, when thou must seek a compass in Latin, and yet have much work to translate it well-favoredly, so that it have the same grace and sweetness, sense and understanding with it in the Latin as it hath in the Hebrew/ In our translation of the Old Testament we come nearer tasting the savor and feeling the emotions of the original than did the men of the first century reading the Septuagint, or the Roman reading the Vulgate. For a translation to be understood and felt, the people receiving it must be akin in temper to the people who produced the original. And the truth is that the characteristic qualities of the English mind are very similar to those of the Hebrews. Our great writers, like theirs, have moral earnestness, prophetic passion, simplicity of speech; and the Anglo-Saxon likes the energetic, emotional, poetic, and forcible in statement.