Editor's Wallet.

Otago Witness, Issue 1506, 25 September 1880, Page 26

Editor' s Wallet.

HOW THE WELSH PREACHER READ THE SCRIPTURES IN FiVE LANGUAGES. A minister had been invited to preach as a candidate in a little rural church in Northern Pennsylvania, where the members although on a par with most distant churches' liked to flatter themselves, that they were •• pretty well posted. " Before starting for the place the minister met an old clerical friend, who had had some experience in the same neighbourhood, and who advised him to " give them some Latin and Greex • it will tickle their vanity, and they'll set you down for a very smart man." There waa a little difficulty in the way of the minister's giving his hearers a dose of Latin and Greek, for he knew no more of either language than the people he was to preach to did. But he was equal to the emergency. He was a native of Wales, and spoke Welsh as welj as he did English, though these two were the only languages he knew anything about. When he had got nicely Into the sermon, he introduced a little passage of Scripture and said : ' :': ' "This passage, brethren, has been slightly altered in the translation. ■ It is only in the original Hebrew that you can grasp its 'full meaning. I will read to you in Hebrew, so that you may comprehend it more exactly ;" and he gave them the passage ia very good Welsh. The old deacons looked at each other, and nodded approval, aa though they would aav " That's the stuff j that's the kind of thing we want." Presently the minister, wha saw by the faces of his hearers that he had made a hit, came upon another Scripture psssage that could not ba correctly rendered in English. " This passage/ said he, "has to be read in the original to be appreciated. In all languages there is none I know of in which the meaning can be bo well expressed as in Greek;" and again he gave them a long Welsh sentence. " •'. Again the deacons nodded approvingly, and before long the minister found it necessary to read a verse in Latin, " got hi 3 hearers might understand it thoroughly " aud gave them a little more Welsh. ■. ' Everything was going along smoothly,' and the minister, aa he approached the end of his sermon, thought he would give them just one more taste of the dead languages. - ' " I am about to read you," said he, " another passage on this subject. : But it is another of those passages that have been altered in the translation, and I will read it to you in the Chaldaic, iv which it waa written." He was just about to give them a little more Welsh when, casting hia eye over the congregation he saw seated near the door a » jolly looking man, who waa holding hia sides