Please note that we still have opportunity for final revision, in which many defects will be eliminated. There are places not a few with which I myself am dissatisfied, many of which I see can be improved. I refer especially to texts that are excessively literal, and where foreign idioms are used to the detriment of the style. It must also be remembered that many terms and expressions that seem strange and perhaps inexpressive at first will on further use seem good and even admirable. Every new translation must have a little time to win its way. That our version will appeal strongly to the great mass of the Chinese church I have no doubt. During the long years he was engaged in this great undertaking he learned some valuable lessons concerning the translation of the Scriptures. He came to speak of it as an art, for which special training and experience are needed. In an article which appeared after his death, in the November issue of “The Chinese Recorder” for that year, he gave at length a discussion of “Lessons Learned in Translating the Bible into Mandarin.” He pointed out difficulties that hamper the making of a version in the Mandarin as compared with the Wen-li in either of its forms. To appreciate these, one needs to be a master in those tongues. But he also indicated others that lie in the way of a translation of the Scriptures into any sort of Chinese. Many of the very ideas of the Bible on moral and spiritual subjects had never entered the Chinese mind, and consequently there are no suitable words or phrases to express them. Just as western science has to invent its own terms when it enters China, so also within limits must the translator of the Bible introduce a vocabulary suited for his purpose. He believed that in the China of to-day prejudice had so far begun to yield that this could be effectively and wisely done. In fact, each branch of modern thought that has been grafted on the stem of the Chinese has already brought with it new words, so that hundreds of these have recently been coined and are on the tongues of the leaders. Along with the lack of an adequate vocabulary goes another thing that adds to the difficulty. In the translation of other books the main need is to express the thought, and in doing this considerable freedom is usually tolerated; but accuracy of expression, because of the very nature of the Bible, is of the first importance in a version. Besides, the Chinese Christians seem especially disposed to insist on this quality. The tendency of a translator is apt to be toward adapting the Scripture to what is conceived to be the taste of the Chinese, to write up to the style with which the educated are familiar, or down to the level of the uneducated speech. Another defect is to magnify or to minify peculiarities of expression originating in the region where the Scriptures were written. Dr. Mateer thought that he