no person, desirous that the Bible should be universally read, would hesitate to give his best assistance to its being faithfully and well translated*.

* At the glorious period of the Reformation, when the Church of England took her firm stand on the basis of the Holy Scriptures, her enemies sometimes attacked the right of the people to the use of the Bible: at other times, they took lower ground, and inveighed against the competency of the Translations executed in that day. In the present yet more wondrous epoch, when whole Nations, both in the Old and in the New World, appear to be struggling forth to raise themselves to a better state of things, and the religious part of mankind are anxiously bent on giving to them all that which is their sole security, the Bible; opposition may be expected to assume the same course as formerly: either the alarm will be excited, as though the general diffusion of the Bible tended to free-thinking and sedition; or else the Versions will, perhaps, be represented as illiterate and inadequate. To such objections we may give the same reply, as was in the first-mentioned period given by the Fathers of the Anglican Church: the following Extracts from the Homilies, and from Archbishop Parker's Preface, will meet, respectively, the two classes of objectors.

"The great utility and profit, that Christian Men and Women may take if they will-by hearing and reading the Holy Scriptures, Dearly Beloved, no heart can sufficiently conceive; much less is any tongué able with words to express.

"Wherefore Satan, our old enemy, seeing the Scriptures to be the very mean, and right way, to bring the people to the true knowledge of God, and that Christian Religion is greatly furthered by diligent hearing and reading of them, he also perceiving what a hindrance and let they be to him and his kingdom, doth what he can to drive the reading of them out of God's Church. And, for that end, he hath always stirred up, in one place or other, cruel tyrants, sharp persecutors, and extreme enemies unto God and His. infallible truth, to pull with violence the Holy Bibles out of the people's hands: and they have most spitefully destroyed and consumed the same to ashes in the fire; pretending, most untruly, that the much hearing and reading of God's Word is an occasion of heresy and carnal liberty, and the overthrow of all good order in all wellordered commonweals. If to know God aright be an occasion of evil, then we must needs grant that the hearing and reading of the Holy Scriptures is the cause of heresy, carnal liberty, and the subversion of all good order. But the knowledge of God, and of ourselves, is so far from being an occasion of evil, that it is the readiest, yea, the only mean to bridle carnal liberty, and to kill all our fleshly affections. And the ordinary way to attain this knowledge is, with diligence to hear and read the Holy Scriptures. For the whole Scriptures, saith St. Paul, were given by the inspiration of God."

(Homily of Information on certain Places of Holy Scripture.)

"And

In reference to the Mediterranean, the Author will here briefly notice the progress which is making in several languages. Since the publication of his Volume of Researches in 1822, the Four Gospels in Amharic have been printed in England, under the superintendence of Mr. Platt, and copies of them have been forwarded to Abyssinia. To give completeness to this work, by furnishing the Ancient as well as the Modern Text, the British and Foreign Bible Society was in want of a perfect and well accredited MS. of the Ethiopic Gospels: the Author, having happily met with a very fine copy of the whole of the New Testament in Ethiopic at Jerusalem, purchased it on account of the Church Missionary Society; which has since presented it, together with some other MSS., to the Bible Society. The Syriac Old Testament has been completed under the superintendence of Professor Lee; and will be hailed with admiration by many in Syria, in Mesopotamia, and in India. The Gospel of St. Matthew has been printed at Corfu, in the

"And we may behold the endeavour of some men's cavillations, who labour all they can to slander the translators, to find fault in some words of the translation; but themselves will never set pen to the book, to set out any translation at all: they can in their Constitutions Provincial, under pain of excommunication, inhibit all other men to translate them, without the Ordinaries or the Provincial Council agree thereunto. But they will be well ware never to agree, or give counsel to set them out: which, their subtle compass, in effect tendeth but to bewray what inwardly they mean, if they could bring it about; that is, utterly to suppress them: being in this their judgment far unlike the old Fathers in the Primitive Church, who have exhorted indifferently all persons, as well men as women, to exercise themselves in the Scriptures, which, by St. Jerome's authority, be the Scriptures of the people." (Archbishop Parker's Preface to the Bible published by him A.D. 1572, commonly called the Bishops' Bible.)

This prelate was the first Metropolitan of all England under Queen Elizabeth.

Albanian Language, by the Ionian Bible Society. The great work of the Modern Greek Scriptures appears, unhappily, to meet with some retarding

causes.

In consideration of the very large proportion of Christians in Syria, who belong to the Greek Rite, and consequently are in fraternal communion with those, who, in Constantinople, Asia Minor, and Greece, use the Greek New Testament, the Author was induced to employ a learned Priest of Jerusalem, Ysa Petros, who has been repeatedly mentioned in his Journal, to commence an Arabic Version of the New Testament according to the Original Greek: both the languages are familiar to him. This translation has been received in Malta, perfect, as far as to the end of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The use of it may not be immediate; but it may, at a future period, be wanted. The expense of executing it was inconsiderable. The basis of it was the Propaganda Version, which Ysa Petros followed, making everywhere alterations conformable to the Original Greek.

The Arabic Bible of the Propaganda, it is generally stated, is intelligible in Syria: this is true; yet it contains very many words not at all used in common conversation: were it more universally read, these words might, probably, come into use; or, if this should not be effected, were Education to become general, so as to lead to the fixing of a Modern Arabic Dialect for Western Asia, a new Version would be found an expedient undertaking. On hearing common persons attempt to read the Arabic Bible, it is manifest, that, while they catch the leading sense, they occasionally faulter at parti

cular words: this may arise from a defect, either in the Version, or in their education; probably from both *.

7. The last principle to be noticed, as entering into the Constitution of a Bible Society, is one common to a thousand other benevolent Institutionsthat of VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION. It were superfluous to enlarge on this topic. All, who have had the happiness to contribute to the actual operations of the Bible Society, must have seen, that, wherever people are sufficiently enlightened to comprehend the principles on which this Institution is formed, and possessed of sufficient purity of motive to maintain those principles in their simplicity and integrity, it is then best, for the sake of greater success, to adopt the truly Christian method of union: nor is

*

The Author will here add a few minor remarks, which occurred to him, relative to the language of Syria.

The spoken language of the country is everywhere Arabic; resembling, in a high degree, the Arabic spoken by the natives of Malta, in the elision of various terminations in the Ancient Arabic: which indeed are printed, and, for the sake of dignity, pronounced in the more solemn reading of the Scriptures; but which form no part of Modern Colloquial Arabic. I noted down only the following peculiarities.

The letter C is pronounced very often like the French j. I was surprised, at Ain Yabroud, to hear some pronounce like ch; thus how much was pronounced like chem in English: it appeared to me analogous to an anomaly in Modern-Greek pronunciation, the x being pronounced by the natives of Athens, Myconi, and various adjacent Islands, not like k, but ch: thus xavos would be pronounced echeenos.—The universal custom in Syria (differing from that in Egypt) of prefixing to the first and third persons of the verb (present or future tense) has the most unpleasant and perplexing effect, till the ear and tongue are practised in it: it is, however, closely similar to an old English idiom, still used by the vulgarthus I am a-going, for I am going; that is, I

for

اروح

for انا باروح

am at or in the act of going; corresponding to the preposition

any union so likely to be effective and durable, as that which is cemented by a feeling of free will and free choice.

SUGGESTIONS ON A BIBLE SOCIETY AT JERUSALEM.

It had been suggested in the Instructions delivered to the Author in 1815, as an interesting subject of inquiry on the spot, whether a Bible Society could not be formed at Jerusalem. Too familiar as he has since become with the state and temper of professing Christians in the Levant, he frankly owns that he did not, in his recent Journey to Palestine, entertain sanguine hopes of such an establishment: nor was the object much upon his mind, till a remark from his fellow-traveller, as they were crossing the Plain of Galilee, strongly recalled it to his recollection. Subsequent conversations, both on their way to Jerusalem and in that city itself, led them to suspend their expectations; believing that equal or much greater benefit would, under present circumstances, be derived from measures less complex and less ostensible, than the term "Society" implies. Christian co-operation is, in fact, little understood in Turkey; and, from the publicity of such a kind of union, the natives would shrink with trembling. Not to lose sight of the principles, however, in which it would be desirable that Christians, under more auspicious circumstances, should concur, the Author drew up, in short compass, a few leading topics; with the intention, had it been advisable, that they should be submitted to the Ecclesiastics of the different Communions at Jerusalem; and, if they should agree, be signed by them, and by Mr. Fisk, and others of the Missionaries from Europe