Our learned Selden, before he died, sent for the Most Reverend Archbishop Ussher and the Rev. Dr. Langbaine, and discoursed to them to this purpose that he had surveyed most part of the learning that was among the sons of men; that he had his study full of books and papers of most subjects in the world: yet at that time he could not recollect any passage out of infinite books and manuscripts he was master of, wherein he could rest his soul, save out of the Holy Scriptures.'-LORD BERKELEY.

surprise is great when they come across the unfamiliar books bound up with the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Yet in 1604 a company was appointed to translate these books, and in 1611 they were issued along with the other books, very much as a matter of course. Not that the translators of the Authorized Version thought of the Apocrypha as having the same authority or as being of the same value as the other books. At least from the days of Jerome it had been recognized that it stood on a very different level from these other books; and especially among those with the tendencies which were to harden into the Puritan convictions of the next generation, the feeling was rapidly gaining ground that they ought not to appear in the same volume as the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments.

Tyndale had translated some parts of the Apocryphal books for Church Lessons, but Coverdale's version of these books was the first printed in English, and he not only separated them from the rest of the books, but wrote an interesting preface to them. These books and treatises, which among the fathers of old are not ' reckoned to be of like authority with the other books ' of the Bible, neither are they found in the Canon of the Hebrews.' 'These books are not judged among 'the doctors to be of like reputation with the other 'Scripture.' 'And the chief cause thereof is this; there

'be many places in them, that seem to be repugnant unto the open and manifest truth in the other books of the Bible. Nevertheless, I have not gathered them ' together to the intent that I would have them despised, or little set by, or that I should think them false, ' for I am not able to prove it.'

The only change made in the Geneva Bible, which is often said not to contain the Apocrypha, is that the Prayer of Manasses is put after Second Chronicles. In Matthew's Bible, the Apocrypha appeared with something of the nature of a protest. The third book of Maccabees first appeared as a portion of the English Bible in Taverner's version of 1549. In the year 1615, proof of the growing dislike for the Apocrypha is afforded in Archbishop Abbot's action in forbidding its being left out of the sacred volume, on pain of a year's imprisonment. Yet in 1629, an edition of the Authorized Version actually appeared without the Apocrypha, the letters APO still remaining below the tail-piece at the end of Malachi. And this seems to have been but a beginning, for we find Selden entering his protest: 'The Apocrypha is bound with the Bible of all churches 'that have been hitherto. Why should we leave it ' out?'

In the year 1643, the Westminster Assembly of Divines excluded the Apocrypha, equally with tradition, by their declaration in the Shorter Catechism that 'The 'Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the 'Old and New Testaments is the only rule to direct us 'how we may glorify and enjoy Him.' In that same year, too, the learned Dr. Lightfoot, preaching before the House of Commons in St. Margaret's, Westminster, spoke of the 'wretched Apocrypha' as a patchery of human inventions' which divorced the end of the law 'from the beginning of the Gospel.' In the last folio edition of the Geneva Bible, which was issued in the following year, 1644, the place usually assigned to the Apocrypha was occupied by an address from the Synod of Dort, ordering it to be omitted, and speaking of it in far less respectful terms than Coverdale had used. In the first Bible, which was issued from the Oxford Press

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in the year 1675, the Apocryphal books were printed in smaller type than the others.

John Bunyan has recorded how profoundly he was comforted by the verse, 'Look at the generations of 'old, and see: did ever any trust in the Lord, and was 'confounded?' (Ecclesiasticus 10. 2), and how he was at first a little damped to find that it only occurred in an uncanonical book, but that he was comforted by regarding it as an epitome of many Scriptural promises, so that 'the word doth still oft-times shine before my face.' Eighty-five years ago, too, all Scotland was convulsed over the question whether the British and Foreign Bible Society was warranted in publishing Bibles containing the Apocrypha, in order to obtain an entrance for the Word of God into communities where it was most desirable to carry it, but where it would be vain to attempt to introduce it unless the Apocrypha were included. These were the Greek Church; the Roman Catholic Communities, where the Apocrypha, was revered and had the sanction of the Council of Trent; the Lutheran Communities, where the decree of Trent was not allowed, but where the book was valued and allowed a certain degree of inspiration and authority; and certain Reformed Churches on the Continent, where it was regarded, as it is in the Church of England, as useful for edification. The controversy waxed very fierce, and the end of it was that since that time the British and Foreign Bible Society has issued no copies of the Bible containing the Apocryphal books. Indeed, with rare exceptions there have been no ordinary editions of the Bible issued anywhere since that period in which the Apocrypha is included; a fact which goes far to explain its neglect and the ignorance which prevails regarding it.

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, in advertising their list of Bibles and calling attention to the fact that they all contain the Apocrypha, say that 'it is not generally known that the only Bible which 'has legal and official warrant, besides ecclesiastical warrant, contains the Apocrypha.' They quote the Archbishop of Canterbury as saying that he has no hesitation in declaring that it is desirable that systematic

effort should be made to extend the knowledge of the people generally about the Apocrypha, and to encourage its more careful study; and the late Archbishop of York as declaring that there is no doubt that for various causes the Apocrypha does not hold the place to which it is entitled in Biblical Literature, and that the attention of Christians generally should be turned towards these singularly interesting and often very beautiful books. As has just been shown, there is no Bible now on sale, whether with the Apocrypha or without, which has any legal warrant; but the question of the place and value of the Apocrypha is of great interest in connection with the history of the Bible, while its historical importance can hardly be exaggerated.

The Apocrypha comes to us, said Professor A. B. Davidson, as the only utterances out of that dark night 'which came down upon the Jewish Church, when it 'slept for four hundred years, and awoke and arose, ' and found itself Christian. Even the dreams of such 'a time, the troubled moanings of such a weary trance, ' we may turn aside to look upon with a fearful interest.' These long years were a period of preparation for the coming Christ, a time of deep inward development, and therefore it is that in spite of its many inconsistencies and even absurdities, the Apocrypha helps in some measure to fill up this interval between the Old Testament and the New. The rise of the several ecclesias'tical parties there are seen in our Lord's time straight 'for the mastery; the phenomena of Essenism, Phariseeism, and Sadduceeism; the growing importance of 'the high-priestly office in a worldly sense; the develop'ment of the doctrine of angels and of a future life'these and other spiritual forces that are seen at work ' in the days of Christ and the Apostles can be studied in the Apocrypha by the student of the Gospels as nowhere else.'

The very difference between the canonical and noncanonical books alike in tone and substance gives the latter a new significance and value, and nowhere does the simplicity or authority of Scripture shine out more grandly than in contrast to the artificiality even of the