SOME BEFLECTIONS ON HOW EMPIRE CAME TO US. 



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Perhaps it may be made clearer to you what sort of Empire 

 it is that forms the subject of this paper, if I quote from the 

 Prime Minister's recent speech at the Mansion House on the 

 occasion of the City's welcome home to the Prince of Wales. 

 He said : " It is the most remarkable Empire the world has ever 

 seen — mighty, powerful, but loosely knit — no Dominion, but 

 Dominions — no centre from which Dominion is exercised, from 

 which you control and from which you direct, but a combination 

 in partnership of free nations controlling themselves, free to 

 choose their own path, free to choose their own population, free 

 to make their own history." 



These are the conditions I have in mind as I enter upon some 

 reflections as to how we became the cradle and centre of such 

 a family of peoples. 



It will make for clearness if I select three dates from which 

 to make excursions both before and behind, in seeking to account 

 for the conditions which the Prime Minister has so eloquently and 

 vividly described. 



I take first of all the year 1611. I invite you to stand in 

 imagination on the steps of Hampton Court Palace and watch 

 that historic Conference break up on completing a seven years' 

 task which resulted in the possession by the English people, 

 for the first time, of the Bible in our own language — not only 

 enriching that language, but fixing it for all time as the language 

 of the English people. First of all, look back from 1611. How 

 has this position been reached ? There is a passage in the Book of 

 Samuel which reads thus : " The word of God was rare in those 

 days : there was no open vision." That describes sufficiently 

 many centuries of our English history. The loss to the Nation 

 was great. The loss to the Church was greater. There was 

 some foreign enterprise — notably the Crusades, but the zeal 

 was misdirected. For the most part we were a quarrelsome 

 people amongst ourselves, nor did we work any real deliverance 

 abroad. But all the time, some light was on its way. We do 

 not forget the translational work of the Venerable Bede, nor 

 of our Great King Alfred. But we had to wait till the fourteenth 

 century for the man who gave us the whole Bible in our own 

 language, and who took steps to make it generally known. From 

 the time of John Wycliffe — so nearly synchronizing with the 

 introduction of the printing press — the English people began to 

 wake up ! 



A hundred years of Bible reading, under difficult conditions, 



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