In 1539, “Diverse excellent learned men expert in the ‘foresaid tongues’” (Hebrew and Greek), under Cromwell’s orders made a true translation of the whole Bible, which was issued in 1539–40 in four editions, and remained supreme till A.D. 1568, when the Bishops tried to improve it, and made a heavenly mess of it! And then the present Authorised Version, issued in A.D. 1611, became the Bible of the Land, and still holds its own against the recent pedantic Revised Version of A.D. 1884. No one likes it. It is literal, but it is not spiritual! In the opinion of Great and Holy men, Cranmer’s Bible (as it is called), or “the Great Bible”--the Bible of 1539 to 1568--holds the field for beauty of its English and its emotional rendering of the Holy Spirit! Alas! we don’t know their names; we only know of them as “Diverse excellent learned men!” It is said they did not wish to go down to Fame! “It is the greatest achievement in letters! The Beauty of the translation of these unknown men excels (far excels) the real and the so-called originals! All nations and tongues of Christendom have come to admit reluctantly that no other version of the Book in the English or any other tongue offers so noble a setting for the Divine Message. Read the Prayer Book Psalms! They are from this noble Version--English at its zenith! The English of the Great Bible is even more stately, sublime, and pure than the English of Shakespeare and Elizabeth.” ACTION “Ye men of Galilee! Why stand ye gazing up into Heaven?” (Acts, Chapter i., verse 11.) The moral of this one great central episode of the whole Christian faith (which, if a man don’t believe with his utmost heart he is as a beast that perisheth, so Saint Paul teaches in I. Corinthians, Chapter xv.), the moral of it is that however intense at any moment of our lives may be the immediate tension that is straining our mental fibre to the limit, yet we are to “get on!” and not stand stock still “gazing up into Heaven!” Inaction must be no part of our life, and we must “get on” with our journey as the Apostles did--“to our own City of Jerusalem!” It is curious that Thursday (Ascension Day) was not made the Christian Sabbath. No scientific agnostic could possibly explain the Ascension by any such theories as those that try to get over the fact of the Resurrection by cataleptic happenings or an inconceivable trance! The agnostic can’t explain away that He was seen by the Apostles to be carried up into Heaven when in the act of lifting up His hands upon them to bless them “and a cloud received Him out of their sight!” _Vide_ the Collect for the Sunday after Ascension Day! RESENTMENT The prophet Zechariah says in Chapter xiv., verse 7: “At evening time It shall be light!”