OP THE BIBLE INFERRED FROM ITS VERSIOJ^S. 



89 



But the history of Bible translation is too long to summarize. 

 Let me only mention some results. So far as I can form an 

 estimate, after research among printed editions of the 

 Scriptures, I find that at least some book of the Bible has been 

 translated and published in about 680 different languages and 

 •dialects. That total, however, includes certain obsolete languages 

 represented by the printed text of early manuscript trans- 

 lations ; and it also takes in as many as sixty-five existing 

 ■dialects in which versions have been produced merely for 

 philological reasons. Making these deductions, the fact remains 

 that at least some book of Holy Scripture has now been published, 

 with a religious or missionary purpose, in quite 600 distinct forms 

 of human speech. 



Try for a moment to realize the significance of such figures. 

 The Gospel speaks to the world already in ten times as many 

 versions as can be claimed for any masterpiece of human 

 literature, and the disproportion goes on increasing year by year. 

 One other book does indeed pass that ratio. The versions of 

 the Pilgrim's Progress number more than ten per cent, of the 

 versions of the Gospel, though they do not reach twenty per 

 cent. But, as Prof. Moulton puts it, " the Pilgrims Progress 

 will not disturb any inferences we may draw from the primacy 

 of the Gospel among books which exercise a universal sway 

 over the mind of the world, primitive and civilized alike." 

 These manifold and multiplied versions of Scripture contribute 

 a new and impressive chapter to the ever-growing volume of 

 Christian evidences. God's Book has conquered and subdued 

 the Babel of human speech ; already it lies open, more or less 

 completely, in languages that are current among fully seven- 

 tenths of mankind. 



Moreover we note that at the beoinninjT of the nineteenth 

 century, the Scriptures had been published in translations 

 understood by only about two-tenths of mankind. Since then, 

 the Scriptures have appeared in new versions which appeal for 

 the first time to half tlie human family. Thus, in the history 

 of the Bible during the last hundred years two outstanding 

 phenomena confront each other : the age of fierce and remorse- 

 less criticism has been also the age of unparalleled translation 

 and propagation. 



The fact that according to God's will Holy Scripture speaks 

 to the world in translated forms, carries various implications. 

 It shows, at any rate, that the divine and essential quality of 

 the Bible — that which makes it to be the Bible" and not an 

 ordinary human book-^must be something which does not 



