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A.

I am glad to be here to-night and to pay my humble tribute
to the work of the Bible Society. During its term of existence it
has been doing work; compared to which the labours of governments
and parliaments are small and ineffectual. It has been engaged in
the greatest of human duties, what Wordsworth called "the spreading
of knowledge in the widest commonalty", and the knowledge which it
has spread is the most vital of any knowledge, the knowledge of
what is man's chief end.

To-night we are met for a special purpose. This year we
celebrate the quatre-centenary of the English Bible, for it is four
hundred years since Tyndal produced that translation which is the
basis of our version. He was the pioneer, and he paid for his boldness
with his life. Without the foundation he laid, the great edifice
of 1611 would have been impossible. In commemorating Tyndal we commemorate
the birth of the English Bible.