BIBLE 



703 



BIBLL 



and raise their snowclad peaks 

 to a height of over 24,000 feet. 

 Some parts of the territory are 

 fertile, the chief crops being mil- 

 let, wheat and rice. The chief 

 manufactures are coarse cloths 

 and silks. The inhabitants are 

 allied to the Tibetans, and are 

 skilled agriculturists. They are 

 Buddhists and have two rulers 

 a spiritual ruler, the Dharm Raja, 



BHUTAN 



and a secular ruler, Deb Raja. 

 The capital is Punakha, or Dosen. 

 The government of Bhutan is 

 subsidized by the English gov- 

 ernment in India, receiving 

 3,333 (nearly $17,000) annually 

 in return for a portion of the 

 state annexed by the British in 

 1865. Population, estimated, 200,- 

 000. Only a very few of the peo- 

 ple are of the white race. 



Peter e , ^^ ^ 



) Preaching at Athens fl ITHESTOPTTOF 



J I6LE. The man who sets out on a 

 journey around the world finds that it does 

 not take long to reach a place where most 

 of the things which assume importance in his 

 own life seem unimportant or unknown. The 

 automobile or the works of Shakespeare; the 

 telephone or the dramas of Goethe these 

 have found their way over a comparatively 

 small part of the earth's area. But there is 

 one book which the traveler finds in the re- 

 motest part of the earth. Farther than the 

 railroad has penetrated or the most daring 

 gold-seeker has ventured, the Bible has found 

 its way, until it is almost literally true that 

 there is no country in which it has not tried 

 to make for itself a home. 



This does not mean that the knowledge of 

 the Bible has spread throughout the world; 

 that the Eskimo hut or the African kraal has 

 its Bible as has the Ontario or Texas farm- 

 house; but it does mean that it has been so 

 frequently translated and so widely distributed 

 that almost everybody can have at least parts 

 of it in his own language. In all, there are 108 

 complete translations and over 500 partial 

 translations, and more than 14,000,000 copies 

 of the Bible or of the New Testament are 

 distributed each year. 



What It Is. The Book, the Bible is fre- 

 quently called, but it could with greater accu- 

 racy be called the library, for it is in reality 

 a library of sixty-six books which are usually 

 bound together as one. Even the name to- 

 day has the singular form, but originally it 

 was a Greek plural meaning books. These 



sixty-six books have a greater unity than most 

 libraries, for while they include essays, stories, 

 love-songs, dramas and legal documents, they 

 constitute altogether the sacred writings of 

 Judaism and Christianity, and they have run- 

 ning through them a single thread of purpose 

 which makes of them a whole. The Jews 

 felt that to them, and to them alone, had 

 been granted the revelation of the true God, 

 and their sacred writings had as their purpose 

 the setting forth of this revelation for future 

 generations for future generations of Jews, 

 for it was too wonderful and too sacred to be 

 wasted on Gentiles, or "heathen." 



This was the older part of the Bible the 

 Old Testament, 'as it is commonly known. 

 The New Testament aimed with no less single- 

 ness of purpose at giving a revelation of God, 

 but it spoke to a wider audience. Its teach- 

 ings were for "all the world," "to the Jew first, 

 and also to the Gentile." Thus it is that the 

 Jews of to-day accept only the Old Testament, 

 while for the Christians the two parts have 

 equal authority. 



The Story of Its Long Life. Long ago, when 

 the sacred writings received their name of 

 The Books, that word meant a very different 

 thing from what it does to-day. It referred 

 to the rolls of papyrus, on which were in- 

 scribed by hand those writings which were 

 counted worthy of publication (see MANU- 

 SCRIPT). On such rolls were inscribed the 

 earliest sacred writings of the Jews, and it 

 was probably such a manuscript which was 

 delivered to Jesus when "He went into the 



