THE OPEN BIBLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 7

THE OPEN BIBLE.

THANKSGIVING SERVICE.

TOWN HALL ARRANGEMENTS.

The service of thanksgiving to mark ] the 400 th anniversary of the occasion on which the Bible was made available to j the English people in their own lan- ! guage will begin in the Town Hall to-morrow afternoon at 2.45. Archbishop Averill will preside, and addresses will be given bv the Rev. A. C. Nelson and the Rev. J. W. Shaw on the influence of, the English Bible on the character and literature respectively of the British I peoples. j Reference will be made to the occasion in all Protestant churches tomorrow. | These celebrations are part of an Empire-wide commemoration, whose purpose was summed up in a recent address in England bv the Rt. Hon. Isaac Foot, P.C. He said: — "Our celebrations this year are not cnlv of the Bible, but much more of the open Bible. Once the Bible was closed to ns. It was closed mainly by the seal of a foreign language. "The lesson of Pentecost was that God speaks to His children in their own language. And so the translators gave lis the Bible in our mother tongue; they opened it, and opened it at great cost ... "Let the common people hold fast our common possession. Therefore let us read the Book. Let us read it for ourselves. Better still, let us read it in fellowship. The most hopeful movement to-day is the frrowth of the associations which enable hundreds of thousands of our people day by day to read together the same passage and to sfudv together the same theme. Our fathers laid it open in 1.~,3R. Tf we have not helped to spread it, let us do so from now on."