in its errors as well as its excellencies. Some portions of the Vulgate were executed with unpardonable haste; and in many points, Jerome was deterred from doing justice. to his own scholarship, by the storm of calumny and abuse brought upon him by his deviations from the defective versions then in popular use. In such cases, there was no help for Wickliffe, except where Jerome was courageous enough to protest against his own translation in his notes. In the course of ten centuries, moreover, the text of the Vulgate itself had suffered much from the carelessness or the arbitrary alterations of its monkish transcribers; and though repeated attempts had been made for restoring it, the Latin Bibles of the fourteenth century were far from being a perfect representation of the original work. It is plain that a version, executed under these circumstances, could only serve a temporary purpose, and must give place to another when the advance of learning should restore the sacred originals to the hands of christian scholars.

But Wickliffe's Bible has a glory which cannot be affected by its critical deficiencies. Its appearance was the virtual settlement of the great question of Christendom: "Shall the people have the Scriptures ?" It was the prophecy and the earnest of Protestantism.

Soon after the completion of this great work, Wickliffe was summoned from the toils and conflicts of life. On the 29th of December, 1384, as he was performing divine service in the church at Lutterworth, he was seized with paralysis; and after lingering two or three days in a state of unconsciousness, the great soul which had struggled so long and so bravely against the hosts of darkness, awoke in the joy of its Lord.

Within four years from his death, a revision of his translation was given to the public by his most intimate pupil and friend, John Purvey, being executed, no doubt, in obedience to his own injunctions. The alterations are confined mainly to those portions of the Old Testament ascribed to Wickliffe's chief coadjutor, Dr. Nicholas Hereford a good scholar according to his age, but too literal and stiff in his renderings. The remaining books of the Old Testament, and the whole of the New, were touched with caution, and retained almost unchanged the first impress of the master-hand.

CHAPTER X.

INFLUENCE OF WICKLIFFE'S VERSION.

FROM the nations speaking the English tongue, Wickliffe's version has claims to grateful reverence, which have never yet been fully appreciated. England's first Bible, it was, for a hundred and thirty years, her only one.Not only so, but it constituted her earliest popular literature. For, with the exception of Wickliffe's own writings, it was the first book of any magnitude ever written in the English language. The noble Saxon of our forefathers, displaced at the Conquest, by Latin as the language of books, and by Norman-French as that of polite life, became the badge of degradation and servitude. The ENGLISH, into which it gradually changed, by a mixture with Latin and French, had, in process of time, so far regained the ancient rights of the vernacular, as to be, at this period, the spoken language of the great body of the people. Yet in such contempt was it still held, that scarcely an attempt had been made to use it in composition, till Wickliffe, with his great heart of love for the people, laid hold of it

as the vehicle of religious instruction. He took the rude elements directly from the lips of the despised ploughmen, mechanics, and tradesmen. He gave it back to them in all its unadorned, picturesque simplicity; but fused by the action of his powerful mind into a fitting instrument of thought, and enriched with the noblest literature which the world has produced; the utterances of inspired poets, prophets, and apostles, the inimitable histories, narratives, and portraitures, through which divine wisdom has told the sublime story of providence and redemption.

What seeds were those then sown in the virgin soil of the common English mind! What must have been the quickening of intellectual life, in a community where the Book of books furnished almost the only aliment of the hungry soul! Were not the children eager to read for themselves those wondrous stories? Did not the ear of age forget its deafness, to hear the glad tidings of a Saviour and a future rest? Would not a new consciousness of worth steal into the soul of the rude clown, when he learned what God had done to redeem him? The more deeply we enter into the circumstances and spirit of the times, the stronger will grow the conviction, that this first English Bible must have been like an awakening breath from heaven, the beginning of days to the common people of England.

As has been remarked before, no book before the invention of printing, ever had such advantages for becoming widely known. Wickliffe, the great practical reformer, with his thorough knowledge of all classes of English society, had not urged through this gigantic task as a mere experiment. He had his eye on a definite, practicable result, the means for accomplishing which were in his own

hands. Aside from the demand for the Scriptures, excited by his general influence during a long public career, he had at command one of the most effective agencies of modern publication. The active, hardy, itinerant preachers whom he had sent out to proclaim, by word of mouth, glad tidings to the poor, who had threaded every part of England, and become intimately acquainted with the character and wants of its population, now formed a band of COLPORTEURS for the written word. They knew in what far-off hamlets, pious souls were counting the days to the return. of their missionary, and pining for the bread of life; what thinking merchants and tradesmen in the great towns, what honorable men and women among the country gentry, were eager to search the Scriptures, whether these things were so. Several copyists, no doubt, had kept pace with the progress of the translation; and as fast as a few chapters, or a book was completed, these faithful agents would make known the priceless treasure in the homes of the people.Many a touching scene might be imagined, of rustic groups by the wayside, in the churchyard, or around the peat fire at evening, listening for the first time to the words of the Bible in their mother tongue. Then, how would the beautifully written manuscript be passed round, from hand to hand, to be admired and wondered at; and not seldom to be wet with tears from eyes that beheld for the first time, in English characters, the name of Jesus! Nor would the missionary be suffered to depart, before a copy, of at least some portion, had been obtained. If no professional copyist was to be found, hands all unused to the labor of the pen would scrawl painfully a rude transcript of a Psalm, of the Ten Commandments, a few chap ters of the Gospels, or of Paul's epistles, to remain as a