The Life and Work of William Tindale by William Barrett Cooper - HTML preview

CHAPTER VIII.
 CONCLUSION

ON issuing his translation, and again when sending forth his translation revised, Tindale solicited the aid of scholars in amending his version wherever they could. This was not a mere fashion of speech. It was the expression of his sincerity and his modesty. This one thing he desired, as he cared for nothing else, that the Bible in English be as perfect as possible.

Succeeding generations of scholars responded to his invitation; in a spirit like his they labored. The Bibles of Coverdale, Matthews, the Bishops; the Geneva Version and the Authorized Version, are mile-stones by the way—evidence with what ardor the work of revising and perfecting the English version was carried on age by age.

NORTH NIBLEY, TINDALE'S MONUMENT.

To find on the one hand this devotion in rendering the Bible into English, it is most strange on the other to find the larger vision  completely disappear, the larger vision of Erasmus that it should be rendered into every language. It is as if no such ideal had been conceived.

Now, three hundred years had to pass by before we find it being recovered, or before men were moved with any degree of sympathy for the ideal which the Dutch scholar had so bravely ventured to describe.

The universal destiny of the book had stirred his heart and fired his imagination: but not until the Evangelical Revival had deeply moved the people of England, and the modern Missionary Movement had come in its train did any men catch the vision of the Bible for every nation in the native speech.

"With the vision came the power". A group of men, God-fearing and very courageous, resolved to enter upon this vast enterprise, and thus in 1804 was born the British and Foreign Bible Society.

The undertaking was greater than they could foresee. It was decried as chimerical; but month by month, year by year, they pursued their high purpose: their successors continued  it, and now, 1925, when a hundred and twenty-one years have sped, the Society has published or has had in circulation the Scriptures translated into five hundred and seventy distinct languages.

Moreover in other lands the establishment of independent Bible Societies was encouraged. In the United States of America, soon after the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, in 1816, the American Bible Society was established. Noble service has been rendered by it. It has aided in the translation and circulation of the Scriptures in 175 languages; some of which are included in the total, 570, given above.

Translation seldom fails to exact great sacrifice. Often life itself succumbs. The roll of honor is a long one, nearly every language taking its toll in one form or another. Tindale's was the first English sacrifice.

But the end, is it not worthy even at so great a price? To spell out, in the tongue they understand, to those sitting in the land of the shadow of death the tidings of Truth  and Grace; to set men free in the liberty of Christ; and to widen the bounds of His kingdom so that all nations may become His inheritance—what mission can be named so worthy of the uttermost devotion?

Much remains to be done; but if the morale of these men awaken admiration in us and we share their faith, great as is the undertaking that remains, it will be overtaken in the good providence of God.