THE BIBLE ANNIVERSARY.
[To TER EDITOR OF TEE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Writing of the three hundredth anniversary of the publication of the Authorised Version of the Bible in 1911, a correspondent suggests in your issue for June 18th that the Church of England, "whose lasting honour it is to have bequeathed this splendid monument of religion and literature to the whole English-speaking race," should not allow the year to pass without some signal commemoration.
If the plan commends itself, would it not be better that all Christian people of our kin and tongue—indeed, might we not add, all who are interested in the advancement of letters ?— should be invited to join in such a commemoration ? It should be remembered that the suggestion for the new version came, not from the official representatives of the Church of England at the Hampton Court Conference, the many learned Bishops and Deans on the one side, but from the little group of browbeaten Puritans on the other. It was the " schismatical " Dr. Reynolds who moved his Majesty that there might be a new translation of the Bible, and it was the impetuous Bishop of London (Bancroft) who broke in with angry opposition, saying that "if every man's humour should be followed there would be no end of translating." The new translation was, in the end, really due to James I., who was scholarly enough to recognise, in this instance at all events, the need which the Puritan ministers brought to his notice, and who arranged for the new version in spite of the Bishop.
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