96 THE REV. T. H. DARLOW, M.A.^ ON THE CHARACTER 



can never grow stale or obsolete or out of date, because thej are 

 the common heritage of mankind. This Book goes down to the 

 root of our bitterest needs, our darkest sorrows. It speaks with 

 accents that are not of this world about the only things which 

 really matter at last to each human creature. Now the things 

 common to all men are far more important than the things 

 peculiar to .some men. And the Bible can speak in every 

 language and come home to every race, because it is as catholic 

 as the blood in men's veins and the milk in women's breasts. 



This is not the place to dwell upon the immense and. inherent 

 difficulties of rendering the Scriptures into the poverty-stricken 

 speech of a barbarous people. In the language of New Britain, 

 for instance, no verb could be found meanino; to " forcrive." In 

 the Ibo language, current among three millions of tribesmen in 

 Southern Nigeria, Archdeacon Dennis tells us that the same 

 word has to do for ''right" and "might," that ''servant" and 

 " slave" are synonymous, that "friendship " and "fornication" 

 are scarcely distinguishable, and that " conscience " has to be 

 transliterated. Such examples might be multiplied to almost 

 any extent. They remind us that after all the crucial difficulty 

 in translating the Bible is ethical rather than linguistic. Sir 

 George Grierson, who is the first living authority on Indian 

 languages, has described a tribe in Eastern India whose only idea 

 of a feast was to get intoxicated on their native beer, and whose 

 only word for festival meant literally " much beer drinking." 

 In rendering into their speech the parable of the Prodigal Son, 

 he was put to great perplexity, merely because he could find no 

 word to express the rejoicing on the Prodigal's return, wdiich 

 did not also suggest the idea of intoxication. Tlie fact is that 

 not only the heathen, but the speech of the heathen, must be 

 converted.. Their very language needs to be born anew. Their 

 words and phrases must be redeemed from foul uses and 

 baptized into a Christian sense in order to be able to convey the 

 ideas of the Gospel. 



Nevertheless experience proves in a wonderful way how even 

 crude and imperfect and tentative versions of Scripture can 

 accomplish spiritual results which bear witness to a power wliich 

 is not of this world. Take one of the most recent cases. Last 

 year the Eev. Copland King, of the Anglican New Guinea 

 Mission, wrote to me describing how he had rendered St. Luke 

 into Binandere for a tribe in Papua. By that tribe the seat of 

 emotion is considered to be the throat, not tlie heart. Hence 

 " bad throat " means sorrow, a " throaty " man is a wise man, 

 and to " take the throat " means to love. In St. Luke vii, 45, 



