gion, to differ from that of the Mohammedans, the ancient Pa gans, and the modern heathen nations, ought to be read in our schools; that the book which tells us all we know, with certainty, about God and a future state, and gives us the highest sanctions we have, for our morality, our laws, our institutions of marriage, the family and the state, ought to be read and studied at school? Surely, if argument is to be brought, it would require much argument to show that such a book ought not to be studied there. If ancient history ought to be studied at school, then ought the Bible to be studied, as containing the most ancient, most important, and most interesting history in the world. If the lives of illustrious men ought to be read, then ht this book to be read, with its biography of illustrious nomes, extending from Adam to Jesus Christ. If our youth may read at school the great masters of eloquence and poesy, then may. they read the Bible there, as containing the sublimest strains of the one, and the most finished specimens of the other, which our race has ever produced. If the elements of all moraf and mental science, the principles of virtue and political wisdom may be taught at school, then may the Bible be taught, for it is the fountain whence all these have flowed. If religion itself ought to be taught at school, as a legitimate part, and by far the most important part of all education, then ought the Bible to be taught, as being the book of our common Christianity, the only true and Divine revelation in the world.

But, independently of this last consideration, our plea for the Bible as a school-book still stands good. You tell us you do not receive the Bible as the book of your religion; or, you do not wish your child to learn Christianity at school; or, that this is a part of instruction which you reserve for yourself. Well, be it so. And what then? Our claim for the Bible as

a school book is still untouched. If you deny the inspiration of God, you cannot deny the inspirations of genius which breathe forth on every page. If you choose to ignore all its evidences as a Divine revelation, you cannot ignore its history, and biography, and morality, and learning, its eloquence and poetry, without, at the same time forfeiting your own claim to be a man of taste, capable of appreciating the sublime and beautiful. If unwilling to have the religion of the Bible taught at school, what objection can you have to its learning and morality? You cannot wish to exclude from our schools the most effective and beneficial history, biography, literature, and philosophy, which the world has ever produced.

If it could be proved, by an absolute demonstration that the religion of the Bible is a cunningly devised fable staristianity should henceforth take its place with the mythology of Greece and Rome as an exploded system, stil it would remain true as a historical fact, and, indeed the most remarkable fact on that assumption in the world's history that this book ha been more widely known and received by thegations the earth, has exerted a more beneficial and endur upon them than any other book, whether of facts or of mythologies. And, therefore, both for what it contains in itself, and for what it has done in the world, even as a book of mythology, it would be entitled to take rank, in our schools and colleges, above Homer or Hesiod, Virgil or Ovid. True or false, then, inspired or uninspired, Divine or human, the Bible deserves to b studied at school, so long as anything is studied; so long as men have any interest in knowing, and in causing their children to know, what has been said and done in this world of ours in past ages. And we must be permitted here to say, that the child in this Christian land, who is permitted to go through

all the elegant, fashionable schools of learning, and complete his education without even a reading of the Bible, is chargeable with a degree of ignorance, which, if the book were only human, would be a disgrace to him; and which, if it be Divine, is both a disgrace and an incalculable injury.

V. THE BIBLE IN OUR ENGLISH VERSION.

To all these general considerations in favor of the Bible as the basis of education, there is one more to be added which ought to have special weight with every individual who claims the English as his mother tongue, or loves to read that tongue in its noblest utterances of thought and feeling. It is the circumstance, that we possess a translation of it, which, simply as an English book, is as classical to our language as it is faithful and true to the original. This grand old English Bible, now crowned with the honors of nearly two hundred and fifty years, opened evening and morning to kindle the devotions of the millions that speak our tongue, has come down to us with every quality and attribute that could make any book a "well of English undefiled." Two centuries and a half of profound biblical study, and of advancing criticism in every walk of science and literature, while revealing some minor inaccuracies as to the letter, have brought to light no essential defect or error as to the spirit and tenor of this wonderful version; on the contrary, they have but served to exalt it the more in the eyes of the scholar, the more to enshrine it in the reverential and admiring affections of the people.

It is a matter of the very highest importance to English literature, and it ought to be a cause of profound gratitude to

God, that this glorious old version was made precisely when it was, and by just those men who took it in hand. The fortyseven aged, pious, and profoundly learned men, who, after years of united labor, under the direction, but not dictation of King James, published this version in 1611, only completed a work which had been going on for centuries. There had been five preceding translations into English, all of which had prepared the way for this more accurate version under the royal authority. The work of translation had, in fact, been commenced by John Wickliffe, the morning star of the Reformation, two hundred and fifty years before; and, in spite of all opposition, both in England and on the continent, it had gone steadily onward through the successive versions of Tyndale, Coverdale, the Geneva Bible, and that of the Bishops, until it reached its memorable consummation in the present translation. The learned John Selden, who was a contemporary of these translators, remarks, that "the English translation of the Bible is the best translation in the world, and gives the sense of the original best.". That early opinion has been confirmed by the almost unanimous judgment of posterity; and, in that judgment, the great body of the church, wherever the English tongue is spoken, has rested without desiring any further change.

Now, the glory of this translation, as an English classic, lies in the fact, that having grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength of our mother tongue, it reached its completion precisely at the time when the language itself had attained its noontide of excellence and vigor. The perfection of the one was co-existent with the full maturity of the other; precisely as it had been with the Greek tongue and the old Septuagint. When our translation was made, the age of Addison, with its polish and graceful diction, had not come. But precisely that

age of masculine strength, of graphic diction, of sublime thought of terse idiomatic expression, had come, which best prepared our language to give utterance to the revelations of God. No period before could have done it so well; and certainly none since. It is enough to say that it was the age of Lord Bacon and of Shakspeare. The father of the inductive philosophy, and the greatest name in the annals of dramatic literature, were the contemporaries of these translators of the Bible; and they were soon followed by Milton, Locke, and Sir Isaac Newton. If there are any five names in human history, capable of stamping the seal of immortality upon a nation's literature, they are the five great classic names just mentioned. But it was in the

very midst of these and others like them, some going before, and some coming after-it was in the very words, and idioms, and images of power and beauty, wherewith-they clothed their own immortal thoughts, that our present translation of the Bible first stood forth complete before the world—at once a product and a monument of the scholarship of that remarkable age.

It was certainly a most signal illustration of the gracious, over-ruling Providence of God, that the time should be so auspicious, and the hands so competent for the accomplishment of so great a work. We behold here a fitness of things precisely akin to that which existed when the Greek language was permitted to attain its greatest perfection at home, in the hands of Athenian sages, poets, and orators, and its widest dominion abroad, through the conquests of Alexander the Great, before it became a recipient of the Word of God in the Septuagint translation. Of all times in the history of the Greek tongue that was the best for such a translation. But, speaking after the manner of men, we scarcely can say which was the greater gainer, the Bible or the English language, in having our trans