work. Luther knew how to translate. He understood the original Greek and Hebrew, and was able to render them into clear, forcible, beautiful German.

Question 3: how had Luther prepared himself for the work of translation? Did he ever consciously prepare himself for this task? Bring out the facts regarding the circumstances which led him to undertake it. So far as we can tell, it was an unexpected experience on Luther's part, an afterthought, after he was taken to the Wartburg. When as a young monk he took up the study of Hebrew, and memorized its strange vocabulary, and rules of grammar, was he thinking to himself, some day I can put this to good use, making a translation of the Old Testament? As a matter of fact, Luther never looked upon his translation as of great importance. He fully expected that after he was dead, other translations would be made which would more nearly meet the needs of coming generations. Do we always understand the relative importance of what we are doing? Do we ever know beforehand just what opportunities will come to us for putting into use any special knowledge or training which we may have acquired?

Certainly when Luther began work on the Old Testament he needed every bit of knowledge of Hebrew which he had acquired. What does he tell us about the difficulties he and his associates had with this work?

What proportion of Luther's contemporaries would have been prepared to put a vacation to good use, as he did, by translating the New Testament? We know they were very few. Luther himself had only learned Greek a few years before this time, when his friend Melanchthon came to be a professor at Wittenberg. Luther himself had already been a professor of theology for some years, and Melanchthon taught him Greek, after his arrival. Probably nine men out of every ten, in Luther's position, would not have considered it worth while to learn this language which the world had almost forgotten for a thousand years. What does this show as to Luther's character?

What may we learn from Luther's example, as to the secret of advancement and success? Instead of whining because we never have any opportunities, or any "luck," like some other people, what might we better be doing?

INFORMATION FOR TEACHERS.

The Character and Influence of Luther's Translation.

"Erasmus, in 1516, published the first edition of the New Testament in Greek. Luther, at this time professor at the University of Wittenberg, was lecturing upon Romans when this edition came into his hands, and was impressed by this new source of information. He eagerly set himself to learn Greek with the help of his friend Melanchthon, and so he was prepared for the great task of translating the New Testament directly out of the Greek into German. It was during his exile in the Wartburg that he found the necessary time to make this translation. It appeared in print in September, 1522, and it is astonishing in how short a time this New Testament circulated all through Germany. It was reprinted everywhere, and often very carelessly, so that Luther had to complain against the printers as falsifying his translation. He himself did not take any payment for his work; he wanted the publishers to sell it as cheaply as possible. And it was a masterpiece, not only for the beauty of the language, which was the best and most popular German that had ever been written, but also in the way Luther translated, giving not the single words but the meaning of the sentences, not transferring from one vocabulary to the other but transmuting (if one may say so) the whole expression of thought from Greek into German. The Bible became a German book; one. hardly feels that he is reading a translation. Luther had more trouble with the Old Testament. In order to master the Hebrew he had to rely on friends; he even asked some Jewish rabbis to join their meetings. He tells us that they often had to look for a single word three or four weeks; that in particular Job was so difficult that they scarcely finished three lines in four days. The Pentateuch was ready in the year 1523; then year after year the work went on. The prophets were not finished until 1532, and in 1534 the first complete Bible was issued. The work was highly praised by Luther's friends and unduly criticized by his antagonists. He himself replied sharply to such criticism and he had a right to do so, because the attempts made by Eck and Emser, the champions of Roman Catholicism, to translate the Bible themselves were feeble and betrayed much dependence on Luther's translation, which they had so severely criticized. Luther himself never felt satisfied with his own work and always tried to improve it. At two

different periods he held meetings with his friends for the purpose of revising the Bible. The records of these meetings of the committee for the revision of the Bible (if one may call it so) have come down to us, and it is highly interesting to see how carefully they discussed every word and how it is always Luther himself who at last finds the most apt expression. "It is a great privilege of the German nation that it received this excellent Bible at the very beginning of the new era. The German language is moulded by this Bible. In Luther's time the dialects still prevailed. Luther's Bible had to be translated into the dialect of lower Germany. The south of Germany and Switzerland had quite another dialect. The Zurich reformers, in 1529, published a Bible in this dialect, translating from Luther's Bible as far as it existed at this time and providing for the rest a translation of their own. It is unquestionably due to Luther's Bible that the Germans have now one language for all literary purposes. The German classic writers, Herder, Wieland, Klopstock, Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, were all trained from their childhood by the language of this Bible. Even now there is a remarkable difference in style between authors of Protestant and of Roman Catholic origin in Germany. In the easy and fluent language of the former we see the influence of Luther and Goethe, whereas the latter often show a certain stiffness and a greater number of provincialisms. The attempts to translate the Bible independently of Luther have never succeeded in gaining any large circulation, although there have been many such, not only from the Roman Catholic side but also from Protestants. A famous one is the so-called Berleburg Bible, by certain mystics, published in 1726-42 in eight volumes. In the nineteenth century scholars undertook to give more scientific and more exact translations, but valuable as these may be for scholarly purposes, the German people will never abandon its classic Bible. It is difficult even to introduce a revision. There was a revision some twenty years ago, but in this Luther's text was retouched and altered only at a very few points, most of the corrections introduced by the revision committee being rather restitutions of Luther's original renderings, which had been badly 'improved' by former printers. It is remarkable that even the printed Bible never stands still, but is always changing, the printers acting as the copyists did in former times. The copies of the revised text printed at Stuttgart

differ slightly from the copies printed at Halle and Berlin, to mention three of the modern centers of German Bible printing. "Luther's translation was the signal for a general movement in this direction. It is not so much translating the Bible into new languages there were only a few in Europe which had no Bible before as rather the making of new translations in all languages of the Christian world as far as this was influenced by the Reformation. Some of these translations were inspired by humanism or the new learning more than by the spirit of the Reformation. The humanists abhorred the vulgarity of the monkish Latin, and they extended their aversion to the official Bible of the church, the Vulgate of Saint Jerome; therefore they tried to translate the Bible into what they thought to be Ciceronian Latin, and some of them translated this again into French or German. But most of the translators were simply following Luther's model, nay, they used Luther's translation even more than the original. King Christian III of Denmark gave orders that the translators should follow Luther's version as closely as possible. In this way the Dutch, the Danish, the Swedish, the Finnish, the Lettish, and the Lithuanian Bibles were more or less influenced by or even based upon Luther's." Von Dobschutz, The Influence of the Bible on Civilisation.

ADDITIONAL READING REFERENCES.

The best recent biographies of Luther are by Preserved Smith, and McGiffert. Each contains interesting chapters on Luther's work as a translator. See also the old standard biography of Luther, by Kostlin.

CHAPTER XLII.

THE FATHER OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE.
THE WORK OF WILLIAM TYNDALE.

PURPOSE OF THE LESSON.

To awaken appreciation of this hero, as a man whose life was glorified by a great purpose, persistently adhered to.

TELLING THE LESSON STORY.

In the preceding lesson we saw that Luther's work as a Bible translator was made possible by unexpected circum

stances. It was an accident, so to speak. In William Tyndale we see a man who in his youth deliberately chose as his lifework the translation of the Bible into English. If he had lived to finish the work, he might indeed have entered upon a broader career and made a name for himself as an all-around leader of the English Protestants. In the marginal notes to his translation he showed great power as a writer. But he was martyred when he had finished only about half of the Old Testament, so that his short life was almost entirely devoted to the one special task - Bible translation. (Bring out some of the main points of the story.)

DISCUSSING THE LESSON.

It might interest the class to work out another movingpicture scenario, showing the life of Tyndale. A series of scenes might be worked out as follows:

a. Tyndale in a debate with a learned priest. Throw on screen Tyndale's words, "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scripture than thou dost."

b. Tyndale asking help from Bishop Tunstall, and the bishop frowning and shaking his head. Tyndale boards a ship in London, bound for Hamburg.

c. Tyndale is shown hurriedly snatching up the unfinished printed sheets of his New Testament, in the printing establishment of Peter Quentel in Cologne. He and a friend drive away with the sheets in a trunk.

d. Big bales of cloth are being taken from a ship just arrived in London. A merchant goes with a wagon load of these bales, to a warehouse. Here, with a few friends, the bales are opened, and great piles of books appear on the floor. Show on the screen the title-page of Tyndale's New Testament.

e. A bonfire in a London street. A man in clerical garb throws a number of books into the flames. Some of the crowd cheer, others frown.

f. Tyndale in his narrow cell, coughing severely, and shivering in his ragged overcoat. The keeper enters bringing some warmer clothes. He also places some books on the little table, with paper, pens and ink.

g. A great pile of faggots in the prison court, and in the center of the pile, the dead body of Tyndale. A crowd of